MELT your butter

MELT Buttery Spread is a new choice in the Butter Case. It's made primarily with organic virgin coconut oil. Not your mama's butter.

Smart Choices in the news....

If you occasionally shop at a supermarket, you may have already seen the green "Smart Choices Made Easy" label on food packages. In an article entitled "Smart Choice Foods: Dumb as They Look" in Forbes, the writer, Rebecca Ruiz, details the absurdity of the label. The subhead for the article says it all: "Processed-foods giants spent more than $1 million to create nutritional guidelines for a labeling system that favors their own products."

So what products made the cut: Fruit loops and Fudgsicles. I haven't noticed the Smart Choice label on any products that the Coop carries--maybe Kellogg's Raisin Bran is too, too healthy. But then I haven't looked.

Have you tried these delicious new Lebanese products yet? Made in the neighborhood at Tripoli Restaurant on Atlantic Avenue—now that's LOCAL!

 NEW PREPARED FOODS FROM TRIPOLI RESTAURANT:

Mujadra Burgule (lentils with cracked wheat) Pint- $3.93

Mujadra b’ riz (lentils with rice) Pint- $3.93

Wara Anib b’ zeit (vegetarian grape leaves) 8 oz $3.80

Baba ghanouj 8 oz $3.75

Hummus 8 oz $3.15

Bamia b’ zeit (okra w/tom & pomegranate) 8 oz $3.33

Khair ‘b leban (cucumber salad) pint $3.15

Spinach pie 2 piece- $4.11

Foul m’damas (fava beans and chickpeas) pint $2.42

Baklava 4 oz. $3.63

Rice Pudding 4 oz. $3.63

 Black Olives (in the Cheese case) $2.52/lb

 NEW NON-REFRIGERATED ITEMS INCLUDE:

Ancient Tree Olive Oil 750 ml $9.68

Distilled Rose Water 250 ml $7.05

Distilled Orange Blossom Water 250 ml $7.05

Pomegranate Nectar 350 gm $7.87

(Non-refrigerated items are currently being stocked on the display end cap across from the chicken.)

Ancient Tree Olive Oil Soap 5.33 oz $3.03 (located in aisle 5A)

Three new cheeses from Valley Shepherd.

Let's give a warm welcome to Valley Shepherd, a creamery located in Long Valley, NJ in the heart of Morris County. The 600 East Friesan ewes graze on over 120 acres of wild pasture and the cheeses are aged in caverns built directly into the hillside. The result is cheese worth eating.

Valley Thunder is raw mixed milk cheese (cow and sheep milk) hand milled in a process similar to traditional Cheddars. Crumbly but smooth - cave-caged a minimum of 9 months.











Oldwick Shepherd - is a raw sheep milk cheese in the Ossau-Iraty style - semi-firm and smooth with a nutty flavor. Cave-aged a minimum of 3 months.









Nettlesome - another mixed raw milk cheese with stinging nettle leaves. Smooth texture and chive-like flavor and aroma.

Pur replacement water filters are now in stock

Our previous supplier of the Pur products was recently sold, and we were unable to get the Pur replacement filters. Karen tracked down a new supplier, and we expect to be able to get these filters on a regular basis.

Saffron in the news

Saffron--the world's most expensive spice topping off at $3,000/lb according to WSJ. Adulterating saffron was a cause for burning at the stake in medieval times! Must be picked before sunrise! Eat too much and it'll shut down your liver! Lots of other facts in this WSJ article, accompanied by a video of a former Deadhead, who is from Iran, purveying by bicycle the world's best saffron to NYC's finest chefs.

The coop does indeed sell a low-grade saffron, packaged by Roland, hanging in Aisle 2A over the bulk spices.

Supplements in the news

Interesting article on supplements in today's Wall St Journal. The message seems to be you can never be too careful when taking supplements, especially those claiming to lead to weight loss and/or muscle gain. But even the most basic multivitamin may be suspect. The FDA does little to nothing to regulate the industry. At the end, the article cites some sources which may help in selecting a supplement.

Taza stone ground organic chocolate

It's not smooth or milky. But no, it's not like eating cocoa-dusted ground glass either. Taza chocolate is grainy, crunchy, chocolatey, not too sugary, with a hint of vanilla. And that's all that goes into it, all organic and minimally processed. It's produced by a small, environmentally- and socially-responsible company based in Massachusetts. Find it on the display endcap across from the Coop Tees.

Also look for Taza discs—for hot chocolate, cooking or eating out of hand. They come in flavors like yerba maté, guajillo chili and salted almond. Don't bother looking for instructions on how to turn those discs into hot chocolate anywhere on the packaging. It's not there. But it's here, from Taza's website. You won't see it below, but Taza's detailed recipe mention something about adding rum, bourbon, tequila, vanilla...

Field Day Facial Tissues--100% Post consumer

We just replaced the Marcal facial tissue "cubes" with Field Day tissues. The Field Day tissues are softer than Marcal, yet made of 100% post-consumer recycled paper. Please consider making the switch from Kleenex, which has no recycled paper content. And you'll save money--Field Day is at least 40% cheaper than Klennex.

You can download Green Peace's recommendations for purchasing paper products here.

Tales of the Unexspeckted

You may have noticed the cured meat item next to the new prosciutto and pancetta down in the meat cases. The La Quercia brand. And you may have wondered, what the heck is Speck?

Speck is a smoked prosciutto from the Tyrol, a region on the border of Italy and Austria. After being cured in salt and spices, the ham is cold-smoked, using a hardwood like beech or (as ours is) applewood.

Okay, so what does this mean to us?

In short, it means we now have a delicious and comparatively low-fat alternative to smoked bacon, which can be used in dishes that call for prosciutto or pancetta but in which you want a hint of smoke flavor. Or in dishes that use smoked ham or bacon, but you want to strike a more subtle note.

The classic Roman pasta all'amatriciana is a fine example. This simple combination of bacon, onion, and tomato benefits enormously from the flavor of speck. The other night I sauteed 3 ounces (one package) of speck, chopped, in a tablespoon of olive oil. When it began to color I added a chopped onion and a few gratings of black pepper. When the onion went transparent, in went a half-dozen large quartered plum tomatoes. A half-hour of simmering yielded a thick and aromatic sauce to be stirred into cooked linguine and topped with grated asiago. Best all'amatriciana we ever had...and I've made in in the past with everything from deli ham to guanciale.

When we sampled the La Quercia pancetta and prosciutto, we didn't think speck was something that would become a Coop favorite. But after tasting it, everyone here agreed that it certainly deserved to be.

Two New Buffalo (Bufala) Cheeses

Casatica di Bufala - A soft-ripened wonder with a soft, delicate and sweet flavor










Moringhello di Bufala - A semi-soft table cheese with a natural-mold rind. Intense and slightly spicy but well balanced.

smooze! coconut ices

Now that they are about to disappear as it will soon no longer be the season....... Smooze! coconut ices have been a big hit this summer. They come in shelf stable packaging, ten to a box, that you freeze. Four flavors--passion, mango, guava and pineapple. The aseptic package is admittedly difficult to wrangle: you need kitchen shears rather than kiddie scissors.

They are vegan, relatively inexpensive, not too heavy on the calories (70) and refreshing. But soon they will disappear along with the ever-popular Cool Fruits pops, so stock up now.