Interesting on the pork belly - you’ll have to watch some cooking shows to see what to do with it!
CT1417, thank you for your input!
Isn’t pork belly basically an uncured slab of what would be bacon? why in the heck would anyone want to buy (pay for), cook or eat a bunch of fat (unless you were living in a polar region and needing 8000 calories per day)???
When I cook bacon (seldom, though I like it) almost all the fat has rendered out.
I generally follow foodie trends but this one has me gagging.
I live in FL so probably only need 6500-7000 calories a day. lol
I like to experiment with cooking. I like the idea of uncured bacon as it has no chemicals in it. I have had some amazing dishes with pork belly as a garnish or flavor enhancer or whatever you want to call it and a very small piece of PB can elevate a dish to a whole new level. Opt out if you wish.
Just curious about small households. Now that the children are “flown”, I find it difficult to buy anything at Costco that won’t last me 2 years! Some of the food looks so tempting, but it just won’t work for 1 or 2 people anymore. Have you found it remains worthwhile to keep a Costco membership for only 1 or 2 person households?
We discovered pork belly while traveling in the south. Imaging my surprise when it was offed as an item at the Whole Foods Salad Bar!!! Out here on the West Coast it can be priced as a bit of a connoisuer item, you know…served in small portions at high priced dining establishments. It’s officially available at charcuterie type establishments. They also sell the rendered lard at a nice price.
H got access to a restaurant supply facility and bout 40 lbs of the stuff for $1.50/lb. so we are experimenting. It is fantastic if cooked properly, and at $1.50/lb we eat the ‘crackle’ on the top and the meat on the bottom. I then render the fat and use the lard of flavoring and other cooking. Just like back on the farm.
@kjofkw My husband and I are empty nesters and I still enjoy our Costco membership. For the meat, I just repackage it when I get home into smaller portions. Same with rolls or any baked item, but we don’t buy much of that anyway. I can’t think of too many other things that don’t keep, even if they do last longer. The savings on car rentals is pretty sweet too. My daughter has our second card and she also makes very good use of it, and for her, it’s just her and her SO.
Another tip for smaller households. Don’t get tempted to buy 5 different types of large containers of fruits or vegetables! I choose 1 or 2 - let’s say blueberries and strawberries - and that is our fruit for the week. Next time I make another choice of 1 or 2. Same with vegetables - if I buy the cubed butternut squash, sugar snap peas, green beans and asparagus - we aren’t going to get through it all before it goes bad! So I choose a couple and then focus our meals on those.
Repackage the meats. Put baked goods in “for two” serving size bags. Freeze cheese. I love their thicker sliced bacon. As soon as I get it home, I slice each package in half - there are two packages so I end up with 4 - easy to freeze this way. Then on the weekend I pull a package out, use it for breakfast (and now my mind is trained that a “slice of bacon” is actually the half size!) and then use any leftover throughout the week for other dishes.
Just the two of us. I buy the butternut squash. I roast it and we enjoy it for dinner then I purée the rest of the leftovers and make soup with chicken broth and sautéed onions/ garlic and a touch of curry powder. I might add a splash of cream. Last time I added some Greek yogurt. Yum!
Lol, abasket! I buy 5-6 containers of berries every week in addition to bags of apples and other fruit. Mr. can eat a container of blueberries in under 5 min if I can’t stop him.
I freeze Coscto butter and bacon, ground turkey and meats. Other stuff - we just eat!
Ditto on the butter - in fact, I need to buy some this weekend!
Hey, if you are eating all the berries and not dumping them - by all means buy them! My H can be bad about buying 3 things - and barely touching them - ugh. So if I’M shopping, I stick with a couple choices and eat them exclusively!
My 82 year old mother is coming to spend part of the weekend with me - we will make a trip to Costco tomorrow morning - she thinks that is the biggest deal! 
We have bought the whole filet mignon, and cut it up into steaks for parties or to freeze separately and save. It’s a great deal!
Has anyone ever ORDERED bulk flowers from Costco???
It’s usually just DH and me, and I buy a lot at Costco. Ketchup, tuna, cereal, juice (I don’t drink it but DH does), Coke, laundry detergent, dishwashing liquid, meat (which I then freeze in smaller quantities), stationary items, soap, CeraVe lotion and dental floss. I have learned through the years not to buy a ginormous bag of something I’ve never had before – too often I don’t like it.
Hallelujah! Costco is opening a warehouse in our city this summer. Right now the closest one is about 1-1/2 hours away and we don’t get there often enough.
Last year I noticed they started carrying two kinds of Hatch chile sauce in big jars. I made enchiladas last night and poured most of a big jar over them after I pureed it. The level of vitamin C in that stuff is insane! And it’s pretty tasty too.
Back from Costco and they had both a GIANT three (four?) layer cake it was like 7 or 8 inches high and a bundt. I took the bundt.
Thought I’d pass on something I do at costco that always gets me raves from the cashiers and makes checking out easier. I put all boxes with upc faced up so that the cashier just wands most of my items without unpacking them. The loose stuff goes in a box.
Was at Costco for the first time since the New Year today. I try to watch my bread eating (love it, but really try to limit eating it!) - got sucked into buying this seeded multigrain in the fresh bakery area - I did split the package with my mom and froze some but “oh my” it is amazing! Nice, crusty, grainy, nutty - I caved in and had a piece with butter and honey. It’s TROUBLE.
I’d skip the bread and just go with the butter and honey. Think of the calories you’ll save!!
Went to Costco to pick up more berries and clementines for my fruitbat Mr. and ended up hauling home some interesting stuff! The frozen food section looked like an international food market: Brazilian cheese bread, Aussie pot pies, Japanese gyoza, Korean dumplings, etc. Yumm!!!