Trader Joe's Amarena Cherry Goat's Milk Cheese

Growing up, there were a bunch of food allergies in my family so we avoided many common foods like cow's milk dairy products. We'd frequently buy goat's milk and goat's milk cheeses from local farmers as alternatives.

Oddly, it seemed we only ever bought savory goat cheeses. It wasn't until after I tried a few varieties of Trader Joe's chevre cheeses many years later that I learned to appreciate goat cheese as a sweeter dessert-style cheese. Even unusual combos like jalapeño and honey chevre became fast favorites of mine, garnering some of the highest scores we've ever bestowed upon TJ's products in the entire 15 year history of this blog.

If anything, this amarena cherry goat cheese tops them all. It's absolutely delicious. Somewhere between a cherry flavored cream cheese and cherry cheesecake, this spread is rich, creamy, yet not over-the-top sugary. It's got a great balance of the goat cheese and sweet-tart cherry flavors.

It's perfect on crackers or sourdough just by itself. We also tried adding some real fruit preserves, and it worked great that way, too. It's a seasonal product that will disappear pretty soon if it hasn't already, but it will reappear next year around early February if history repeats itself. It IS still available at our nearest Trader Joe's location as of the writing of this post.

$2.99 for the four serving package. Product of Canada. Sonia just wishes they sold a larger package of the stuff. This one will be gone in no time flat, and we'll have to wait almost a year to buy some more. The nutrition info is pretty reasonable, too, considering how scrumptious the product is. Nine and a half out of ten stars from Sonia for Trader Joe's Double Cream Amarena Cherry Goat's Milk Cheese. I'll throw out an exceptionally rare perfect ten out of ten on this one.

Bottom line: 9.75 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Sourdough Boules

Apparently "boule" is (one of) the French word(s) for "ball." Some places say it's pronounced "bool" and other say "bool-eh," so I don't even know. I say "bool" in the video. If that's wrong, I'm sure someone will call me out on it.

These are big roundish loaves of crusty sourdough and we turned ours into bread bowls. They were pretty good taste and texture-wise, and they retained the soup quite well. We just wish you could taste that tart sourdough flavor a bit more. We particularly enjoyed the crusty outer portion of this bread.

I've had my share of bread bowls with soup and I'd say this one is better than average. I'm glad Sonia cut the indentations for the soup because I'd have probably mangled the things beyond recognition. And the "lid" makes the perfect dunkable for the soup.

$2.99 for two big bread boules, found with the breads and baked goods. The best by date on our bag was just two days after we purchased it, so we had to eat them fast. Would buy again. We'll both go with seven and a half stars out of ten for Trader Joe's Sourdough Boules.

Bottom line: 7.5 out of 10.