Costco newbee with questions

[Maurice]

Some great replies. Although it sounds like Costco isn't worth it for me until I move out of the city and get a car.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Bottle of wine and a nice chunk of stilton with six little loaves of crusty italian bread in a backpack works for me

Get a trailer for your bike!

[Nords]

Originally Posted by cute fuzzy bunny

I saw yesterday that inflation is having its way with some food court items.

Hasn't made its way out here yet. We've been paying the same pizza & fro-yo prices for literally years.

I got a Costco rebate card for returning a contact lens, and we've been chipping away at that to dine on Friday-night pizza for weeks...

[cute fuzzy bunny]

The pizza and the roast chicken both went up a buck in the last year. But the chicken - which was already way bigger than the supermarket roasters - got even larger.

I brought one home the other day and my wife shredded about 1/3 of it for a salad. Iit was so much I thought it was the whole thing.

[Purron]

Yea, those Costo chickens are great. I love bringing one home, having a nice roasted chicken dinner, then using up the rest the next day. I like to cook up some pasta, throw some veggies and dressing in, and make a cold chicken pasta dish. DH loves it!

[cute fuzzy bunny]

You can eat it in two days?

The only way I can pull that off is by getting help from the dogs AND the cat who thinks its a dog.

[Purron]

Originally Posted by cute fuzzy bunny

You can eat it in two days?

The only way I can pull that off is by getting help from the dogs AND the cat who thinks its a dog.

Actually, I usually freeze some for another meal. Plus, my kitties all enjoy a healthy healping too!

[cute fuzzy bunny]

The end of it makes for a nice chicken soup too. Theres always a lot of tasty juice in the bottom of the container, plus the bones and some stock, veggies and at the end toss in the remainder of the diced chicken.

I also make a rapido chicken and dumplings sort of thing with it when I'm just tired of eating roast chicken and chicken sandwiches. Put a couple of cans of chicken stock and some frozen peas/carrots/whatever in a big pan with a lid, bring to a boil. Add something to thicken it a little if you like. Toss in some diced chicken meat and then drop some supermarket pop-the-can biscuits on top about an inch or so apart, cover and let simmer until the biscuits are done using the toothpick test. Let it stand for about 15 minutes and the biscuits will soak up a fair bit of the liquid and become dumplingish.

Very nice for a meal that takes about 10 minutes of active work.

I usually end up with 3-4 uncooked biscuits left over. I make them the next morning in the toaster oven for breakfast with jam and honey.

[clifp]

Costco chickens take me about 4-5 days to finish off. I generally make chicken stock or chicken soup with the carcass.

The cats like the chicken when it is on the counter waiting to be sliced or on my plate. But I am always surprised when put the Costco chicken skin in their plates that they don't gobble it up. Purron do you heat it served cold, chop it?

They raised the price to $5.49 but at a buck or so a meal it is a heck of a deal.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

It is that...

They rub the chickens with Lawry's seasoning before rotisserieing them. Maybe thats what puts your cats off.

If it has any effect on dogs, its post mortem. They gobble up the skin and give me the "MORE!" look.

Its fun looking at the range of things Costco makes from the chickens that dont sell. Not sure what the offerings are in hawaii but we get rotisserie chicken enchiladas, greek pasta salad (with pasta, red onion, cherry tomatoes, feta, and a greek dressing), caesar chicken salad, etc. The unbought chickens do not go to waste.

That greek pasta salad is killer on a hot day. My wife, who is a chicken enchilada connoisseur, says that with the sauce I make from pureed organic salsa (about $4 for five metric tons at costco), a little pepsi, a little orange juice and some smoked jalapeños...well...something magical happens within a few hours...

[Texas Proud]

The first time I saw precooked roasted chicken was in 2000 in Sainsbury in the UK... it was like heaven!!! Cheap, ready made and GOOD..

They sold half chickens.... and the store would close at 10PM, so around 9PM they would discount them by half... so it was much cheaper than KFC.. and better...

Kind of got bummed when for a short time they decided NOT to discount them since there was a regular group of people there ready to scarf them up when the sticker hit them... they then got better at judging how many they needed and did not have as many sitting around...

I don't like it when they take their old meat that has been hanging around (not at the proper temp) and make something else out of it which they also don't store at the proper temp...

[TromboneAl]

We bought eight chickens at Safeway yesterday, since they are on sale at 67 cents/pound -- a price I haven't seen for a few years.

Same here: each bird gets roasted for one dinner. Next night might be an open-faced sandwich, a lunch or two of "churkey sandwiches" (like post-Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches but with chicken), then broth is made and used for some soup.

[Maurice]

Originally Posted by TromboneAl

...a lunch or two of "churkey sandwiches" (like post-Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches but with chicken)...

Around these parts they call those 'chicken sandwiches'.

[saluki9]

My last costco roast chicken was raw on the inside, I haven't bought one since. I will have to give them another try soon I suppose.

[2soon2tell]

To Nords and other military retirees I am curious how the commissary and exchange prices compare to Sams and Costco?

2soon

[Nords]

The "problem" with Costco rotisserie chickens is that we usually make an impulse buy from the hulihuli fundraiser by the side of the road. It never occurs to us to buy from Costco, or maybe it's just the thrill of seeing a 20-foot trailer grill smoking out the neighborhood while you're getting your purchase in a greasy plastic bag. Guess I'll have to compare prices sometime.

Originally Posted by 2soon2tell

To Nords and other military retirees I am curious how the commissary and exchange prices compare to Sams and Costco?

It's such an arms race that we refuse to ping-pong between the two. We've been tracking prices (at Schofield Barracks and the Waipio Costco) for a couple years and they seesaw back and forth. It's almost as if they keep an eye on each other's prices and change accordingly.

We're at Costco every week for pizza night, so we make routine purchases then. We have things that we buy only at Costco (since the commissary doesn't usually carry that brand or flavor or whatever) and we may buy a loss-leader like milk or fresh fruit. If we need gas then we gas up too.

We usually shop the commissary only for staples, milk, veggies, & fresh fruit that we can buy in quantities much smaller than Costco. The commissary only charges cost + 5% so they're frequently able to beat Costco's cost + 14% + 4.5% excise tax... but not always. The base gas station occasionally beats Costco's pump prices but Costco is the state's largest gas seller and cheerfully acknowledges its use as a loss leader.

If we could consume quantities by the pallet before it rots then we'd probably buy it from Costco. But our ER convenience time is more valuable to us than a few pennies per pound or gallon, and if we're buying something at one then we probably won't drive "all the way" to the other (they're about eight miles apart).

We buy most of our furniture & electronics from Craigslist (beats the snot out of all retail establishments) but if we were buying new (like a laser printer) then we'd rather deal with Costco's liberal return policy than the exchange's "take it or leave it" attitude.

Wal-Mart is pretty competitive with the exchange stores too, and it's five miles closer...

Overall I'd have to say that big-box stores have nearly eradicated the on-base advantage in all categories.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

In case there were any further questions...

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