Costco "secrets"

Even though we are only recently a family of three, I am a Costco junkie. I love going up and down their aisles, looking for things to fill my home with.

Here are some Costco "secrets" that I've discovered...
1. Those items ending in '.97' are clearance items. Get 'em while they last!

2. For Canadians, it's better to buy a Costco cash card in Canada and use that in the States versus using your Amex credit card. The exchange rate is slightly better but I still find it more beneficial to take cash down. That way, you determine the exchange rate  you pay. (i.e. buy American $ when the rate is good!)

3. I recently had to renew my membership. By coincidence, I happened to be shopping at the Bellingham Costco when it came up for renewal. The cost? $100. With no tax. So, factoring in the US/Canadian exchange rate AND the fact there's no HST charged, I saved!

4. The States doesn't always have better deals. I was recently comparing electronics (SD cards, external hard drives) and Canada was better.

5. In the States, they don't give you coupons at the door. You have to go to the membership desk to ask for the coupon booklet. Be careful too. If a coupon book has just ended, they only give the new ones out the following Thursday. So there's a few days there where no coupons are in play.

6. Eggs, cheese, milk, chicken and pork are so much cheaper in the States. For example: Organic brown eggs in Canada? Over 8 bucks. Down in the states? $4.50.

7. For Vancouverites that cross-border shop: the best place to buy gas is the Bellingham Meridian Costco. Line-ups are horrendous because of all the Canadians that buy, but it's worth it. For example: Current price of 87 octane in Greater Vancouver: $1.38/litre. Down at the Costco in Bellingham: $3.79/gallon.

8. Costco memberships are good all over the world!!! Handy if you happen to be traveling.

9. Finally, it pays to check out this thread before you go shopping in the Costco West stores in Canada: http://forums.redflagdeals.com/costco-west-deal-pointer-thread-1056914/#post13431334
A fellow shopper posts the latest coupon deals and even goes into the store to post photos and prices of those not advertised in their weekly flyer. I'm pretty sure he's influenced Costco sales in the West. He's even been accused of being a Costco employee (which he is not).

Plum and Ginger sorbet

On a recent trip to Napa Valley, my friend Mela and I visited the Culinary Institute of the Arts. It was my Holy Grail. She even surprised me with a cooking class! We got to cook in the CIA kitchen under the instruction of an author of one of their cookbooks.
The chef I cooked with was Cate Conniff, the author of Seasons in the Wine country. We were divided into separate groups and given a few recipes to execute. Afterwards we all sat down together to eat the fruits of our labor.

One of the dishes I really enjoyed was the plum and ginger sorbet. So upon returning home, I found an ice cream maker in my parents magical basement (if you wish for something, I swear it just turns up) and this week with the weird hot spell, I put the recipe into action.

Here's what you need:
- 2 lbs of ripe sweet plums. Washed, pitted and quartered
- 2 cups cold water
- 1 cup sugar
- one inch of ginger, peeled
- 1 tablespoon vodka (lemon flavoured, plain or limoncello)
- pinch of kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice


Combine the plums, water, sugar and ginger. Bring it to a boil and then simmer for 20 minutes. Take out the ginger and then blend it until it's smooth. Strain the mixture through a sieve and then stir in vodka, salt and lemon juice. Chill (at least 2 hours). Then pour it into the ice cream maker.

Yeee-um. It was so easy that now I'm dreaming about making all sorts of ice creams and sorbets with fresh fruit. Blackberries, peaches, strawberries... the possibilities are endless!

Cherry crisp

Cherry crisp product. Pitting was the pits. Tasted ok although I think almond extract would have made it better.

Cherries Galore!

I've recently come into possession of a sh*tload of cherries. I'm talking a good 10 lbs of them. I love cherries (even though I had an unfortunate reaction to them during my pregnancy) but now I have no idea what to do with them.

Yesterday I made a cherry pie from this website: http://www.joyofbaking.com/printpages/CherryPieprint.html

The result was... well, it tasted ok (my friends even went back for seconds) but I was so embarrassed. It wasn't as thick as I would have hoped and there was cherry liquid everywhere! I'm thinking the "Tapioca starch" I bought wasn't the same as "quick cooking tapioca" the recipe called for. My dad tried it and loved it. He gave it a 9 out of 10 and had three pieces. I'm thinking next time I'll find a different recipe that uses flour or starch instead of this "quick cooking tapioca" (whatever that is).

Anyway, here are some of the highlights of my cherry pie making experience:
1. I don't own a cherry pitter. However my brother-in-law Zac (who wins pie making contests!) told me that a chopstick works just as well. That way,  you can "feel" the pit before you push it through and it makes less of a mess. My experience? It went fabulously! I did get cherry juice all over the hand that was holding the cherry but a pretty simple task. Just pull off the stem, insert the chopstick into the stem end, feel around for the pit and then push.

2. The crust is key. I used the tenderflake recipe on the back of the box but instead of water, I used vodka. That's right. booze! My brother-in-laws secret to an amazing flaky crust. Sorry Zac. Secret's out!

3. Transporting a leaky pie. I'm not kidding when I tell you cherry juice was everywhere. I wasn't sure how i was going to transport it to my friend's house. Then I looked around and found an empty sushi tray. You know, one of those huge round ones? Perfect for transporting in my car. It did get a little messy but at least I didn't have cherry juice on the fabric of my car seats.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of the pie. Tonight I'm going to attempt cherry crisp so I'll be sure to snap a few then!

Warm Shrimp Salad

Went to Market at Shangri-La with Mela and enjoyed this amazing shrimp salad. She had mentioned she had it before and was totally hyping it up. Now normally, when something is hyped up I'm disappointed with it but this one was true. It was AMAZING. Now I just have to figure out how to make champagne vinaigrette!  Found this recipe... something to definitely try in the future.

http://how2heroes.com/videos/seafood/warm-shrimp-salad

Lemon Tart adventure

Whole Foods Lemon tart ingredients

On Thursdays, I get together with my friends to watch "So You Think You Can dance". It's a girls night, complete with dinner, dessert and a lot of shouting at the t.v. as we pretend to be judges.

A couple of Thursdays ago, my friend Vania bought a lemon tart from Whole foods. We had to stop the PVR to relish it. Janine claimed it was a slice of "lemon heaven". And it was. It was light, fruity, sweet and yet slightly tart. The crust was delicious too and I'm not a huge crust fan!

the Whole Foods lemon tart

So I made it my goal to try and recreate it. As soon as I got home, I googled "lemon tart whole foods recipe" and unfortunately, the *exact* recipe was not to be found although there was a whole foods berry tart recipe. Essentially what they said was to use a pre-baked pie shell and add lemon curd. The thing is, it tasted like there was cream in it and sure enough, further google searching found other recipes that did this.

I was heading down to the States that weekend so on our usual trip to Trader Joe's, I picked up pie pastry and lemon curd in anticipation of making it for the next SYTYCD night.

It has been a comedy of errors trying to make this tart but the short of it is that I wasn't able to make it in time of the next SYTYCD night but I was successful in making something that was similar. Here's what I did:

1. Whip 1 cup of whipping cream until it's thick
2. Add 1 jar of Trader Joe lemon curd and mix together
3. Pour into baked Trader Joe pie shell
4. Refrigerate and garnish with fruit

Yes, it's truly that easy. I let Nica lick the spoon from the lemon curd/whipped cream mixture and he loved it. Mom and Dad both praised the crust and they're really judgmental about pastry. I know it doesn't look that tasty in the photo but it was really good! Honest!

Next time I might actually attempt to make lemon curd and the time after that maybe I'll try my hand at pastry dough. We'll see!

Trader Joe's Lemon Curd: $2.99
Pretty good on its own, even better when mixed with whipped cream. Quite sweet with a tart finish. Strong lemon flavour. Imported from England. Would buy it again!

Trader Joe's Pie Crust: $3.99 for two.

Instructions

They give you two in the event you want to make a double crust pie. I thought it would come in a pie shell but it doesn't. You have to thaw and then put it in a plate yourself (which to be honest, is more environmentally friendly anyway). Very delicious. I would easily buy this pie shell again for future pies for its convenience and taste. I only forked the bottom of the pie before putting it into the oven to brown but I really should have pricked the sides as well. Failure to do this resulted in the sides puffing up. Still tasty... but definitely not pretty.

Pavlova WINNING

After telling my tale of pavlova woe to my friend Victoria, she sent me her pavlova recipe:

3 egg whites

.75 cups white sugar (regular will do, or you can take the coffee grinder to it for superfine sugar)

pinch of salt

whipped cream and fruit for topping

hand beater is a must

line a cookie sheet with parchment paper

whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt in a large bowl until they for white, soft peaks -- can stand up on their own but are still kinda foamy

whisk in the sugar, a little at a time, whisking until the sugar is completely absorbed/incorporated into the egg 

it needs to be white and glossy and be able to stand up in a peak on its own

spoon it onto the baking sheet. i like to make a blob and then smooth it into a circle or whatever, and peak it up at the edges.

preheat the oven at 275 F or 140 C, cook for 1.25 hours.

turn off the oven but leave it in there.

for at least another hour. really, until its cold.

i've left it over night. if you aren't eating it that evening make sure you store it in an airtight container. 

and don't prep it until you are ready to serve it, or it will go soggy.

My modifications:

I know Victoria said it was a must, but I couldn't find my mom's hand beater so I used a Kitchenaid mixer. And I made little pavlovas instead a singular large one because I had pavlova meringue on my mind (I was trying to imitate what I had at Bistro 101 the day before). Finally, I had to turn off the oven at about 45 minutes because it was browning and they were super dry already. Which makes sense since there were many little pavlovas instead of one large one. 

Although I wish I had turned off the oven a little bit sooner, the mini pavlovas were delicious. They melted in my mouth and tasted a little like the outside of a toasted marshmallow. They were the perfect accompaniment to my mango chantilly cream (whipped cream beaten with pureed mango added at the end) with fresh raspberries and mango coulis. It was a nice light dessert and got thumbs up all around.

I'd like to try this again, adding some strawberry flavour to the meringue. I'd also like to make all the pavlovas the same size to try and make little mini cookies (like macarons but without the ground almond). I'm also going to make white chocolate buttercream. Stay tuned!

June 13, 2011 update:
I did indeed make the meringues again with freeze dried strawberries from Trader Joe's. I had to grind them up in my mini food processor which worked ok... it created a cloud of strawberry smoke which I'm sure was bad to inhale. It didn't do a consistent job either. Maybe next time I'll use a coffee grinder. Anyway, the freeze dried strawberries totally tasted like the strawberries you get in the Special K Berry cereal.

My mom loved the mini strawberry meringues. I couldn't quite make them look like macarons because when you pipe them, they always get a peak and they only harden and don't melt in the oven. So instead of meringue sandwiches, I served them singly with a dollop of white chocolate vanilla cream. I sort of followed this recipe from the bravetart website for it:

To make white chocolate ganache for the filling, bring 6 ounces heavy cream to a simmer with a split vanilla bean. Shut off the heat and steep for 10 minutes or up to an hour. Remove the vanilla bean, scraping out the cream from inside each half-pod, and return the cream to a boil. Shut off the heat and whisk in 10 ounces good quality white chocolate, chopped and 1/2 tsp salt. Depending on the sweetness of your white chocolate, you may find you need more salt. Cool the mixture to room temperature, and then whip on medium speed with a whisk attachment for about 5 minutes to lighten it a bit.