Costco

Things I bought at Costco last week: Crackers, gift wrap set, X-mas cards, bows, along with a few gifts, cereal, dried blueberries, green tea, and string cheese. You can’t do better for quality and quantity at a reasonable price. If you intend to buy Christmas items from there, do it very soon. They run out of stuff and do not restock. For two years we have gone around trying to decide if we wanted to buy an artificial tree from them. They look good, but the lights stay on, they don’t twinkle. In the end we haven’t done it yet, sticking with the real thing for now. I’m not a fan of all their Christmas items, some of them seem to be too big, too gaudy, too much.

We stopped in around 6 pm one night to pick up something quickly and could not believe that no one was there. I always rush to get there on a Tuesday morning at 10, before the let the general public in. And it’s still busy, but at least it’s not the deadly Saturday crowd. It seems that evenings are the secret. Although I’m sure that it will become more impossible as we get closer to Christmas.

Before you leave Costco, pick up two of their gorgeous roasted chickens. The grocery store ones are downright puny compared to these beauties. This is an idea for two dinners during these crazy days from the December issue of Fine Cooking: eat one for dinner, then use the second one for another dinner later in the week. Some ideas: cut it up to use in soup or stew, green or creamy salads, grilled cheese sandwiches, tacos. Try it in pasta with chicken, artichoke hearts, garlic, lemon, and black olives. Or a casserole of diced chicken, béchamel sauce, asparagus or broccoli, parmesan.