Costco Thinks It's Better Than You. Because It Is.

[livius drusus]

I am inordinately pleased when I find things at Costco that are best in class, and it happens pretty regularly. Before I started shopping there, I assumed all big box stores had shitty budget versions of The Real Thing, whatever that Thing was, but then I encountered the seven-pound can of San Marzano tomatoes. You simply cannot get better canned tomatoes in any American grocery store, not even in the most rarified Whole Foodian ones.

Here is a list of all the other top of the line products I score at Costco:

• Special issue once-a-year Tuscan olive oil lisarea harassed me about; seriously gourmet shit. (Their regular olive oil is outstanding too.)
• Greek feta, the best I've ever found down south. There are many Greeks up in CT where my parents are, so they can easily get the for reals stuff, but down here it's much more challenging.
• Jarred roasted red peppers, the best I've ever found anywhere -- completely whole, perfectly peeled, toothsome texture, no mushiness or broken up fragments.
• Frozen mini baguettes, guest quality from freezer to table in 20 minutes.
• Parmegiano Reggiano, the real deal, recognizable from its trademark rind stamp, repackaged under the Kirkland label.

What gems have you unearthed on a hike through the Costco aisles?

[beyelzu]

Employees who are paid well and happy?

Seriously, though, like Nebraska pussy, I have not had the privilege of costco shopping

[lisarea]

SEE? The moral of this story is that everyone should always listen to me.

Olive oil and parmesan are two of our mandatory Costco items. In fact, not long ago, I tried to put off a Costco trip by getting a small bottle of olive oil at the regular grocery store. IT TASTES NOTHING LIKE OLIVE OIL AT ALL. Nothing! All of a sudden, all those stories about fake olive oil made sense to me. So we went to Costco to get some more, and I'm using the rest of the lol-no-this-is-not olive oil for stuff where it doesn't matter.

Holy crap, the feta too! They recently seem to have discontinued my favorite kind, probably because the bags kept springing leaks, but it was a sheep milk feta and I think it was actually French. The other kinds I don't like quite as much as I liked that, but they're still 10x better than the kinds at the other stores I go to.

One other thing I can think of right now is their coffee, which is another mandatory Costco run for us. We used to go to a local roaster to get coffee, but they started declining and we got rancid coffee beans TWICE. At the actual roasting facility! So now we just get the Kirkland Signature coffees. At our store, anyway, they alternate among the different varieties, so we just buy whichever one they have, and it's consistently good. Never gotten a rancid bag yet. Some Costcos from what I've heard actually roast on site once a week, but I don't think any near here do it.

Oh, but what do you do with a seven pound can of tomatoes? Do you re-can it, or do you somehow use all seven pounds at once, or what? Because I would totally try that, but I don't know how.

[Adam]

I really should renew my membership. I had one a couple years ago because Jeep tires form Costco plus the cost of a Costco membership were still cheaper than Jeep tires by themselves anywhere else that had the ones I needed. And, yah, the groceries I got there were way better than the ones I got at my local grocery.

[livius drusus]

Originally Posted by lisarea

Oh, but what do you do with a seven pound can of tomatoes? Do you re-can it, or do you somehow use all seven pounds at once, or what? Because I would totally try that, but I don't know how.

I use it in three stages. First open is almost always a simple tomato sauce like the one your dad stole from Marcella Hazan and fobbed off on you as his own. I make a large batch from two quarts of tomatoes, use a couple of cups for that night's dinner and freeze the rest in good-to-go servings. The tomatoes left in the can get transferred to a large rectangular tupperware and popped in the fridge.

The next stage takes place a couple of days later and is almost always a soup, probably lentil. I use significantly fewer tomatoes for this -- like 8 of them plus juice.

The last stage is within a week of the first and it is another pasta sauce, this one more complex -- a Bolognese if I have the meat, a non-honkey Puttanesca if I don't, or a red wine and tuna, or a thyme and gorgonzola, or an Arrabiata if the cold is getting me down. If this stage happens to land on a weekend, I'll make two difference sauces. Again a small part of it will be et that night, and the rest frozen in portions.

The stock lasts about a month, a month a half, assuming I haven't had guests. Once I'm on the last bag or two, I reup with the giant can.

P.S. - Full disclosure: it's actually less than a seven-pound can. It's six pounds ten ounces.

[lisarea]

My dad once impulse purchased a Ford F150 from Costco, and my mom got that sort of mad where you're legitimately angry about something but you can't talk about it without laughing. They weren't even talking about getting a new car or anything.

He just went grocery shopping and bought a truck.

[SharonDee]

I would shop at Costco if I could. But I just used up the last of the toothbrushes and deodorant and toilet bowl cleaner I bought in bulk four years ago. So ... if I still had kid + spouse or if I had more dogs, it would be a good deal. Not so much otherwise.


ETA: I'd love to shop there because they treat their employees better than does Sam's Club. It's also why I shop Publix instead of Kroger.

[Janet]

I am making notes for my Costco run this weekend. I had a membership years ago when they said they were going to build in Flint. Then they cancelled it and I let it lapse. But I realized that I go down past the nearest one at least once a month to take my mom visiting people or shop at Trader Joe's so I might as well join.

I second the recommendation of the coffee. I buy their Fair Trade version. I have a percolator and no interest in getting my own grinder, so I need to grind in store. The grocery stores near me with grinders either closed or got rid of the grinders, but Costco still has one. Hooray!

Now, I don't know if this is still limited to the Midwest, but there is something you have to try if you can find it there. They have Sanders Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Caramels in special Costco packaging. Bought that way it costs about a third of what it costs boxed, $9.99 for a pound I think. Sanders is a Detroit tradition and these are highly addictive, so be warned.

[Dingfod]

No Costco for me.


Soon, maybe.

[livius drusus]

My parents are also in a Costcoless zone, although really it's just an hour away so I think they should suck it up. It's not like you stop by once a week. It's worth the commute.

[ShottleBop]

We shop almost exclusively at Costco and Trader Joe's. We go to Ralph's for the chorizo (although, if we lived up near Los Feliz (LA), I'd be all over the chorizo Costco sells there) and smaller cuts of meat--and flossers.

Special treats: double-creme and triple-creme brie, the Evergood Louisiana hots, Kirkland vodka (to soak cinnamon sticks in to make cinnamon vodka), organic salad greens, huge-ass avocados for only a little over $1 each (I have one for breakfast every morning). BASIL PESTO. Olive Oil. Feta. Crumbled bacon. Kerrygold Irish cheddar.

We live maybe two miles from our Costco. Mrs. ShottleBop stops in a couple of times a week. Just not on Saturdays.

Back in 1978, when Price Club first opened in San Diego, I interviewed with them (I'd worked for the Price family, at FedMart, for 9 years). They were going to hire me, until I said I needed to work full time. (We'd just bought a house, and the house payments were $309/mo--half my takehome at the time. What with driving all the way from El Cajon to Morena Valley every day, I'd really need 40 hours a week.) They couldn't do that. Instead, I quit FedMart and went to law school. My former head cashier (from FedMart, where all of the Price Club/Costco folks got their start) ultimately became Costco's VP in charge of all their labor negotiations.

[LadyShea]

NO Costco, though I hear tell of one going up about an hour away

[livius drusus]

Oh yeah, the Kirkland pesto! That shit is the bomb.

[LadyShea]

I like Kirklands Mediterranean Sea Salt and Tellicherry Black Pepper grinders. It's what I keep on the table instead of shakers. Have to beg them off people who live in Costco zones

[Janet]

My brother has been touting me on their avocados. I guess it's time I listened. I wish I went through greens fast enough to justify buying them there, but the last time I bought their spring mix I threw more than half of it out.

[livius drusus]

That just means you need a killer recipe for a giant dinner salad.

[Janet]

My salad addiction at the moment is Spring mix, pine nuts, pear, and goat cheese with a lime juice & olive oil dressing. I just don't eat enough of it.

[ShottleBop]

My dinner almost always includes salad greens. Omelet? Presented over a bed of salad greens. Pizza? Scrape the toppings off of a Costco "Works" pizza onto a bowl of salad greens. Cut up Costco's Carando hard salami and Finlandia cheeses over a bowl of salad greens, add some Kirkland-brand marinated artichoke hearts and Tasso Mammoth pimento-stuffed olives, and drizzle with olive oil.

BTW, the Kirkland brand blue jeans, black jeans and dress shirts are great, too. Also, Italian wool dress slacks for $50.

[chunksmediocrites]

Once a year I get my father-in-law to take us to Costco and I get disposable razor heads at a great price and the Kirkland brand of a Claritin knock-off which is 360 pills in two tiny bottles for about 30 bucks which is hella affordable considering the equivalent number of pills elsewhere would be easily four to five times as expensive. I think Qingdai likes the deals on wine as well. And my mother-in-law got me two v-neck wool sweaters there a couple Christmases back and they are my favorites.

[Dingfod]

Wine, that's the big hold-up in getting Costco and Trader Joe's in Oklahoma, its liquor laws being a half century or more behind the rest of the nation.

[lisarea]

LOL no. Colorado has the stupidest liquor laws!

Nobody is allowed to own more than one liquor store here, so our Costcos do not have alcomohol. Grocery stores can sell 3.2 beer, but it's pretty much the only function 3.2 even serves here anymore. (The drinking age used to be 18 for 3.2 beer, and 21 for everything else, so when I was 18, there were 3.2 bars. Ha ha.)

I actually sort of like that one store law, though, because liquor stores are the one type of business that don't have to worry about some massive retailer rolling in and shutting them all out. The vast majority of them are little mom and pop places, often owned by recent immigrants. It's pretty great.

So anyways, our Costcos don't have liquor. We did have an issue getting Trader Joe's to come to Colorado, but Costco didn't seem to have a problem with it.

[Dingfod]

More stupid than liquor stores not being able to sell refrigerated beverages? Oklahoma has that differentiation between alcoholic beverages (under 3.2% alcohol) and liquor (everything else) too, and used to have an even weirder age differentiation. When I first moved here, women 18 or over could buy 3.2 beer, but men couldn't until they were 21. So, we just got girls to buy our beer.

[LadyShea]

The drinking age used to be 18 for 3.2 beer, and 21 for everything else, so when I was 18, there were 3.2 bars. Ha ha

They raised the drinking age to 21 when I was 17 . I wanted to go to bars and clubs, not drink beer really, but I got denied.

Also our liquor stores are state owned and run (though groceries can sell beer and wine). So much for free market and small government!

[ceptimus]

Costco is in the UK, but you can't join unless you:

A. Run your own business.
B. Prove to them that you are some kind of high-class person like a lawyer or doctor or that you are a soldier, policeman or similar.

So most normal people are barred.

[lisarea]

Yeah, I just got in under the wire for that law. If it helps any, you still couldn't go to regular bars. They had these special 3.2 bars. There was one in Denver and one in Boulder that I knew of, and they were mostly just these weird hookup bars that played generic dance music and had cops crawling everywhere. They were really only useful if you wanted to drink a whole lot of overpriced, low alcohol beer and then make out with a stranger.

The only times I went to those places was when I literally didn't have anything else to do.

But OK, I guess everyone's blue laws are pretty funny. Oh, hey, you also can't buy a car here on Sunday. Everyone loves that law, too, though, because you can go and look around at car lots on Sundays without having salespeople bother you.

Oh, and I forgot to say that Costco's wool socks are also really good. They have thicker, single color ones, and thinner ones with stripes and stuff. Both are way cheaper and better than Smartwool and other kinds. BOOM. ON TOPIC. YOU CAN'T BAN ME.