The Costco Craze Premeres Tonight On CNBC

The Costco Craze: Inside The Warehouse Giant  premieres tonight and will be rebroadcast a number of times over the next few days.

I will be updating this post with my comments.

I will be curious to see what they say about the food at Costco.

Update:


I was generally pretty pleased with the broadcast. It elaborated on a number of things I was already aware of such as their private label products and their small selection, But it also talked about their major sales in areas such as toilet paper and wine.

I was also pleased that they said their prices for food were 30% lower than the typical major grocery store.

And in the area of wine, I was impressed by the analyst who said they have played a part in upgrading America's taste in wine. (I am paraphrasing).  No wonder the independent Costco Wine Blog is so successful and useful.

I was also pleased with the interview with my friend Kim at the Addicted To Costco blog.  That was fun and it was exciting to see another Costco blogger on tv.

While the show definitely portrayed them as aggressive negotiators and extremely shrewd marketers, I thought the overall tone was pretty positive. They have happy customers, they sell quality products and they treat their employees very well. They are also concerned about being true to their strategy.

It was a fun show and I recommend watching it.

Frozen Make Ahead Mini Meatloaf-Make One Big Batch And You Are Set For Weeks!

We have had tremendous success with freezing rotisserie chickens and ground beef.  Freezing Costco sized packages in smaller, ready to use containers is a versatile idea and I thought it would work well with meatloaf.  My wife concurred and she went searching for recipes.  She settled on Paula Deen's recipe and set to work.  She did make some minor substitutions such as using some breadcrumbs in addition to the oatmeal.  And while I thought of making larger meatloaves, my wife suggested using the 24 ounce containers for freezing them and her insight was absolutely brilliant!
Here is a photo of the frozen meatloaf.

One of the nice advantages of the mini-meatloaf is that it can be cooked in the toaster oven.  To facilitate cooking these, we typically let them thaw in the fridge for a couple of days beforehand to shorten the baking time.
Here is a photo of the finished meatloaf.

This was a good meatloaf recipe and the tomatoes in this recipe make it very moist.  And for us, the mini meatloaf is good for four servings so we have dinner and leftovers for lunch the next day.  As for serving ideas, this works really well with just mashed potatoes and a nice salad.

We are totally sold on this idea and I am sure we will do it again.  It is affordable, tasty and it is so easy to do.  I love the idea of homemade comfort food in the freezer and doing a big batch of it like this makes it extremely time efficient.

And of course, you can use your own favorite meatloaf recipe, so I encourage to explore and enjoy.

Pasta Prima Chicken & Mozzarella Ravioli With Rachel Ray's Peas And Prosciutto Sauce

We are big fans of Pasta Prima's Chicken and Mozzarella Ravioli and we have definitely enjoyed it before.  With it on sale again, we bought some to freeze and some to cook more immediately.  I thought something with a red sauce would be good and I remembered Rachel's Pasta, Peas and Prosciutto.  My wife seconded the idea and while she finished grading some papers for work, I got dinner going.

I did make a few of minor adjustments to Rachel's recipe.  The first one was that we don't any herbs from our garden yet, so I substituted some freeze dried basil.  Second, we left out the small can of tomato sauce.
Finally, I would say we added more like two cups of peas instead of one.

As for the result, it was very good. The peas add some color and texture you don't see in your typical red sauce plus it also adds another vegetable.  The prosciutto adds a bit of meat, but it is delicate and elegant in its flavor.  All these flavors went well with the ravioli.  And leaving out the small can of tomato sauce was exactly the thing to do. Otherwise, the dish would have had too much sauce.

This was definitely a success and it was a wonderful, flavorful Sunday evening meal that took very little work and time.

And it also left us enough for some nice lunches on Monday.

This positively gets two thumbs up from us and I am very confident in recommending this as an excellent use of this fine ravioli.

Costco Canine Cuisine Review: Jerky Treat Tender Strips-Treats So Good Your Dog Will Learn To Close Its Cage Door By Itself To Get Them!

While our dog is not able to blog, she also enjoys food from Costco.  We bought some Jerky Treats Tender Strips and she is very fond of them.  These treats are made in the USA by Delmonte.  They are on sale this month, so we stocked up.

Layla really seems to love them, as you can see she has quite a look of anticipation on her face waiting to get one.

Layla is a clever girl and she knows when we leave in the morning she has to go in her cage.  The other day, she trotted in well before I got the treats and it seems like she was able to figure out how to close her cage door after herself, which seems like quite a trick!

She is a good girl that deserves some pampering and we are happy to give her treats that she enjoys that are made in the USA.

The Costco Craze-Inside The Warehouse Giant: Premieres Thursday April 26 at 9PM EDT on CNBC

CNBC's special on Costco is going to premiere on April 26.   They have a couple of short teaser clips on their website and links to other Costco blogs and various Costco related articles.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

This is definitely on my "must watch" list.

Chicken Sausage and Quinoa Soup

This post was primarily written by my lovely wife as I was out walking the dog on this pretty but crisp day.

It is spring and that brings thoughts of grilling sausages in our household.  So this last weekend while at Costco, we perused the sausage section and came home with a package of Sabatino's Smoked Mozzarella with Artichokes & Garlic Chicken Sausage   It comes in two sealed packages that contain eight sausages each.

Our first menu item with this is a soup that starts with the standard mirepoix of celery, onion and carrot sauteed in olive oil with a spoonful of chopped garlic and a little salt.  Four of the sausages were sliced and sauteed in the pan.  Next was added a couple of quarts of homemade chicken stock which we made from the last two rotisserie chickens we bought.  Finally, a cup or so of cooked quinoa was added to bulk up the soup and it was done.

This was very filling and yummy.  There is a lot of flavor in the sausages so it doesn't require much other seasoning but in the future a little garam marsala may be added to warm up the flavor.

To serve with the soup, a piece of naan bread from Costco was cut into slices and toasted.

Aside from having another successful main dish, we were thrilled with how well the naan bread toasted and what a great compliment it made to the soup. I am sure we will be toasting some of it again soon!



  

Costco Coupon Book For 4/12 to 5/6 Plus A Link To Recipes For Items on Sale

Once again, I would like to thank my friends at the Addicted to Costco Blog for this month's coupon book.

Among the items on sale this month is the Pasta Prima Chicken and Mozzarella Ravioli.  Below are some recipes using this wonderful product:

With a sauce of Pancetta and Vidalia Onions

With a sauce of Italian Brats and Tomato

Also, the Tostitos Artisan Roasted Garlic and Black Bean Chips are on sale and here is a recipe and a review of them.

Chicken Taco Salad With Tostitos Chips

A review of the Roasted Garlic and Black Bean Tostitos

I am intrigued, it looks like they were on sale at this same time last year.

Also, the Hebrew National Hot Dogs are on sale. I highly recommend stocking up on these for your  ssummer grilling. These are definitely some of the best hot dogs you can buy.

Hebrew National Hot Dogs With A Side of Summer Squash

Leftover Easter Lamb With Tasty Bite Madras Lentils, Celery and Onions, Served Over Rice

We really enjoy the Tasty Bite Madras Lentils we get at Costco. They are flavorful, nutritionally sound and ready to go.  I was thinking that they would combine well with some left over lamb and my wife eagerly seconded that opinion.  Therefore, I chopped one small onion and one stalk of celery, which my wife sauteed while I trimmed and cubed the lamb.  We tossed the lamb into the pan, added the lentils and warmed everything up.  The meat mixture was then served over some rice.

My wife and I were totally pleased with how well this worked out.  Just serving the lamb and lentils together would have been fine, but I am thrilled with how we made the dish more substantial.  Adding the onions and celery and then serving the whole mixture over rice was effortless but it really made this a very complete dish. The lentils added an elegant but reserved spicy flavor, the onions and celery added crunch and the rice made a wonderful base to serve all this on.

We don't cook leg of lamb that often in our family, but the next time we do, I can guarantee that I will be thinking about this.  Also, for lunch tomorrow, we will be serving the lentil and lamb mixture over quinoa and I am looking forward to that for lunch already!

A Slight Variation To Giada's Sweet and Sticky Caramel Hazelnut Rolls

We bought a large multipack of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls a while back and my wife commented that she was intrigued by Giada's use of them  to make some very tasty looking rolls for breakfast.  My wife followed the recipe, except for substituting some nuts we had on hand for hazelnuts.

These rolls were tasty, stick, sweet, delicious and easy!  That is an incredible combination.  I am betting the next time we buy a bunch of them we will make some rolls like this again.

A Chicken Soup With Quinoa: Grandma's Home Cooking Meets A Bolivian Staple

My wife had a couple of long nights in a row with concert rehearsals and she told me in advance for her night off she wanted comfort food.

Few foods are as comforting as chicken soup so I quickly settled on that for dinner. Since she gave me warning, I pulled some of our frozen chicken from Costco out of the freezer the night before and put it in the fridge to thaw.

When I got home from work, I pulled out our big soup pot and drizzled in some EVOO. I then added a generous helping of Christopher Ranch Chopped Garlic we get from Costco and a small palmful of rosemary I crumbled in my hand.  Meanwhile, my wonderful wife chopped:

• 1 small yellow onion
• 2 stalks of celery
• 1 cup of baby carrots

These were added to the pot and I sauteed them until the onions were tender. While this was going on my wife thawed out a couple of quarts of homemade chicken stock and added that to the pot while I tossed in the somewhat thawed chicken.

She then rinsed a half cup Nature's Earthly Choice Quinoa  and threw that in the pot with about a cup of boiling water.  We brought everything to a boil then turned it to a simmer for about 15 minutes to cook the quinoa.

This dish was absolutely a home run!  It was a delicious, healthy, hearty chicken soup with lots of comfort but it also had a distinct character.

Rosemary and chicken are a natural combination and while parsley is a great seasoning for chicken soup, the rosemary gave it a bit of panache.  Also, the garlic helped give it a more varied and hearty flavor profile.

And finally, the use of quinoa instead of noodles gave it a twist without making it so out of the ordinary it was no longer comfort food.

And by using all the foods we had in a cupboard, fridge and freezer, this went together in very little time with minimal effort.

In every way this dish was a success:

• Taste
• Ease
• Cost
• Comfort

I am positive we will do something like this again and it only reaffirms our strategy for rotisserie chickens.

Two Birds In The Hand From Costco Is Worth Five Packages of Chicken And Four Quarts of Stock In The Freezer

Buying things in bulk and having them ready to use can be a big time and money saver.  For example, we love cooking up the big family size packages of ground beef we get at Costco and freezing them in a number of small packages that are the right size for a single recipe.

Recently, we expanded upon this idea with the rotisserie chickens we buy at Costco. I bought two of them and while I was putting away and organizing the other items from the shopping trip, my lovely wife cut up the birds and diced the chicken into bite-sized pieces.  She then took and put all the chicken in a number of containers that we then froze.

After all the chicken was put in the freezer, she then threw the carcasses in a pot with some onions, carrots and celery and let it all simmer together.  Then she strained it and put it into some containers (which I think were from soup we bought at Costco) and froze them.

As I said, this gave us five packages of high quality ready to use chicken and a couple of containers of delicious home made stock.  Doing all this at once right when the chickens were bought was extremely time efficient.

The number of different meals we will get out of these two chickens is really pretty impressive from both a time and money aspect.  Plus, rotisserie chickens are tasty and chicken can definitely be one of the healthier meats to eat.

And I have to say, homemade stock is wonderful stuff. In addition to having lots of real chicken flavor, it    is much lower in sodium than what you typically buy at the store.

My wife and I are absolutely thrilled with this idea and I can guarantee you we will be doing it again.  There are so many plusses to it that I simply can not recommend this enough.

A Review Of Costco's Chicken Alfredo

My wife and I enjoy cooking, but the deal on the Chicken Alfredo on sale this month was just too good to pass up, so we took the plunge.  Aside from covering it with aluminum foil, there is no real prep involved other than putting it in the oven.  Cooking time was about an hour, but when you figure out how long it takes to get to a restaurant, order a meal and have it come to the table, that time is really not bad.

My wonderful wife removed the foil near the end of the heating to help brown the cheese a little.  The chicken is pre-cooked, so that makes the process of heating a bit quicker than baking it from scratch.

The dish had good flavor and we enjoyed it, although we both thought it was more alfredo with chicken than Chicken Alfredo. Still, there was enough meat in the dish you didn't feel cheated.

This was a good alfredo, about the quality you get at a place like Applebee's or Fridays.  Even before the coupon, it is a very good value and the coupon makes it a great value.

Thus, I give it a solid thumbs up: great value and tasty food.  Not the world's best alfredo, but competent and satisfying.

Pasta In A Hearty Red Sauce With Fresh Spinach

A basic red sauce and meat pasta is a very reliable dish: it is tasty, easy, quick and satisfying.  Another thing going for it is that it can be spruced up in a variety of ways.  You can adjust the seasoning, add different vegetables and use basic dried pastas or filled ones.

In this case, my lovely wife kicked it up by adding some of the fresh spinach we buy in great big bags from Costco.

Aside from adding flavor, the spinach adds another layer of texture and it has some great nutritional aspects.

If you have been wondering what to do with some of that great big bag of spinach, try throwing some of into your pasta.  You might be very pleased with the result.

Jarlsberg Cheese Dip With Gluten Free Crackers From Costco

My friend Bill at work requires a gluten free diet and so to celebrate Fat Tuesday and my six months at the job, I brought in a treat he could eat.

There are only four ingredients in this recipe that I found and the prep is very easy. This makes for both a great return on time and money.

I served the dip with two types of gluten free crackers: the Mary Gone Crackers ones that are on sale this month (until 2/26) and the Food That Should Taste Good Sea Salt Brown Rice Crackers.

I was pleased with the result and I enjoyed the crackers with the dip.  I will say though that for this particular dip, I thought the Food Should Taste Good Sea Salt Brown Rice Crackers went with the dip a bit better than the Mary Gone Crackers one did. This dip had a couple of onion flavors in it and I think the Sea Salt crackers with a more subtle flavor made for a better pairing.

But let me be clear that I  think both of them worked fine. And I have to say, the price on gluten free crackers at Costco is a bargain compared to other stores.

So be nice to your friends Celiac Disease and serve this tasty, easy dip with fun and safe gluten free crackers.

Coupon Book For February

Once again, I have the coupon book from Costco courtesy of my friends at Addicted to Costco.

Happy World Nutella Day!

Nutella is one of our favorite products to buy from Costco. We love the stuff and it is vastly less expensive to buy at Costco versus the grocery store.

Therefore, I want to make note that today is  World Nutella Day.  Here is a link to recipes that celebrate this magnificent product.

Also, here is a quick thing I did with Nutella a while back:

I got some chocolate bread from Costco and toasted it.  Then I added sliced bananas and Nutella. Presto,  I had a delicious breakfast sandwich. The actual prep time for this was mere moments but the return on the investment was great.

Saving Time And Money With The Family Sized Packages Of Ground Beef At Costco

As much as we enjoy cooking and eating together, my wife and I both work and when we get home at the end of the day, we want to eat dinner not very long after we get home. One of the strategies my lovely wife came up with that support this is to always have cooked, browned ground beef in the freezer ready to go.

What we do is we buy those big five or six pound packages of ground beef at Costco and then we brown all the beef at once.  Browning one great big package is really not that much more work than browning one or two pounds.  After the meat is browned, we let it cool, put it in containers and freeze it.

This saves us a lot of time in many ways:

• As previously mentioned, browning a big package of meat is very time efficient
• We have the meat divided up into easy to use packages
• There is always cooked meat in the freezer, ready for us to make dinner with
• Using frozen cooked meat is much faster than taking frozen  raw meat and then cooking it

 So even if you are a couple or just one person, buying the big packages of ground beef makes a lot of sense. It is both economical and a huge time saver.

A Review Of Skotidakis Jalapeno Greek Yogurt Dip On Sale

The current coupon book ends tomorrow 1/29 and I thought I would make a few comments about this fun dip that is on sale.

It comes in a 24oz container, so there is enough if you want to serve a larger group of people.  As for the dip itself, it is a competent, well made product that I think has a lot of uses. It has a bit of heat that builds but it is not heat only for the sake of heat, it definitely has flavor.

However, it is not an overpowering flavor, so it should be a good crowd pleaser. People that want some "zing" in their dip will like it but those with milder tastes will not find it overpowering.

And I think it is versatile too. We had it with some the Garlic and Black Bean Tostitos that I am fond of and it worked pretty well.

My wife also suggested that it would be great on baked potatoes and I think that would be a excellent thing to do to a spud.

I also see this as a garnish on Mexican style dishes.

While not the most amazing dip on the planet it is a good product and being yogurt based, it is probably healthier for you than something based on sour cream.

I recommend the product and the next time it is on sale, we will probably buy it again

Been Gone And Now I Am Back With: Peroggies With Spinach & Crumbled Black Bean Burger

It has been a long time since I posted and a lot has happened. The Holidays came and went and I got a great gift for Christmas:  A New Job!  That and a few other things have been a distraction but it is time to return to blogging.


As time goes buy, I will probably be posting a few things that I have not gotten around to over the past few months but I do hope to keep more current with what we are cooking and eating.


As for this dish: my wife and I are very fond of those lovely  black bean burgers we get from Costco.   They are great being served as burgers, but for a long time, I have wondered how they would work as an ingredient in a recipe.  One night, I came home from work and my wonderful wife answered the question for me.


She took some of that wonderful spinach we get from Costco and mixed it with some of the crumbled black bean burgers.  Then, she tossed them with some pierogies.  She was thinking the dish would either be a disaster or a big success and guess what, we both thought it was a big success. And it was interesting to look at too.

The flavors really worked well together.  The black bean burger gave a bit of zing without being heat for the sake of heat. The spinach gave a lively, fresh vegetable flavor to the dish. Finally, the pierogies added some nice heartiness to the meal. And all this came from what we had on hand, so the dish went together in minutes.

I am sure we will do more with the black bean burgers and we will probably do this particular variation again.

White Bean Dip With Mission Tortilla Strips And Baby Carrots

Food is a way I express affection and appreciation, so bringing in something for my coworkers to enjoy made a lot of sense.  One of my coworkers has Celiac's Disease, so making something gluten free seemed like a great idea.  As I am very fond of the tortilla strips and baby carrots we buy at Costco, some sort of dip to serve them with seemed pretty natural and the first one that came to mind was this white bean dip.

This recipe was simple, delicious, easy to make and gluten free for my friend.  And it certainly was a big success at work.