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Showing posts with label meh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meh. Show all posts

Monday, March 11, 2024

Trader Joe's Italian Tomato & Red Onion Focaccia


"Focaccia" sounds so much fancier than "pizza," right? Pizza is what kids eat at Chuck E. Cheese. Even "flatbread" sounds kinda lame and boring if you think about it. All bread is pretty much flat. Why would I want to eat bread thats most noteworthy feature is its flatness?


Fortunately, the bread in this product is quite delicious. It's puffy, rich, and doughy with both wheat and rice flours. It's gourmet quality all the way...and it's by far the best part of the product.

The toppings? Well, the quality is there in my humble opinion...but the quantity? That's a problem. We need more of everything. We need a sauce. We need some cheese. We need about ten times the onions and at least double the tomatoes. Sonia agrees. The few toppings that were there were all crammed in the middle, too. The outer portions were completely bare.

We need big slabs of buffalo mozzarella or some pecorino romano here. We need calabrian chili sauce or some top-shelf marinara. I dunno. It just needs...more. I know, I know, I can dress it up myself, but the packaging makes it look like a standalone appetizer if not a standalone meal.

Three bucks for a decent slab of focaccia bread isn't a terrible deal, but we both just expected better from the fixins. Probably wouldn't buy again. Three and a half stars from the beautiful wifey. Three out of five stars from me for Trader Joe's Italian Tomato & Red Onion Focaccia.



Bottom line: 6.5 out of 10.

Monday, February 26, 2024

Trader Joe's BBQ Chicken Pizza


Aside from plain cheese, I think barbecue chicken might be my favorite pizza flavor of all time. I'm not really a pepperoni guy. Neither veggie lovers nor meat lovers appeals to me much, although I've had a decent beef brisket pizza or two in my day. I find the concept of breakfast pizza intriguing, but the execution usually leaves me wishing I'd gotten something safer.

Something safer...like barbecue chicken. Yum. Throw a couple different cheeses and some onions on there and it's an easy crowd pleaser. It's always interesting when Trader Joe's does something simple and classic like this. They often try to Trader Joe's-ify it somehow—like those cheeseburgers from last year. I think they're the best frozen cheeseburgers I've ever had, but more than half the people I talked to about them disagreed.


My take on this pizza? It's adequate, but not much more than that. I wish they would have Trader Joe's-ified it. Like why wouldn't they have used one of their own top-notch barbecue sauces on this product? It lacks that je ne sais quoi that TJ's products often deliver. No wonder they didn't do anything fancy with the packaging. This is typical grocery store fare all the way—not terrible, but not what I'm looking for at Trader Joe's.

In its defense, there's plenty of chicken, though it wasn't distributed very evenly around the pizza. That's easy enough to remedy. The quality of the meat is fine, too. The crust, the sauce, and even the onions just aren't doing anything particularly memorable. This pizza is very similar to, though not quite as good as, the California Pizza Kitchen brand frozen bbq chicken pizza.


At $5.49, this item is a little cheaper than most frozen pizzas I've purchased lately, but it's also a good bit smaller. Probably would not buy again. Two and a half stars from me. Sonia is much more positive about the pizza than I am, though she admittedly is extremely hungry AND she slathered hers with about half a bottle of Jack Daniel's brand barbecue sauce. Three and a half stars from her for Trader Joe's BBQ Chicken Pizza.



Bottom line: 6 out of 10.

Monday, February 12, 2024

Trader Joe's Salted Caramel Hot Cocoa Stirring Spoon with Mini Marshmallows


Here's a fun little checkout item that appeared at Trader Joe's around Christmas time. Although it's done for the season at most locations, it's still available some places since it's still winter, after all, and the red packaging is still appropriate...becuz Valentine's Day.

For 99¢ you get a real wooden stick, not unlike a tongue depressor that doctors use to check your throat for strep and stuff, except this one has a rounded part at the bottom just like an actual spoon. I, for one, am washing and keeping ours. You never know when a wooden spoon will come in handy.


Did I ever mention my mother used to use plastic instead of real silverware during thunderstorms because she was convinced the lightning would strike her, even in the basement, since metal is a good conductor? Yeah. She wouldn't drink water during storms for the same reason. Well, Mom, you should have been using wooden spoons since wood is an even better insulator than plastic. I digress.

Where were we? Oh yes. The stirring spoon. At the bottom of the spoon is a cubic chunk of chocolate with about ten mini marshmallows fused to it. You just dunk it in hot milk and swirl it around for a minute or two and you get salted caramel flavored hot cocoa.


It tasted good...but not outstanding. Sonia claims she didn't taste the salted caramel much. I did. There was a distinctly sea salty taste about the drink. Sure enough, there's sea salt listed near the end of the ingredients. I feel like I tasted something caramel-esque, too—almost like flan. There's plenty of chocolate flavor as well. Ten marshmallows is adequate for a single mug of cocoa I guess. You could always add your own if you're some kind of marshmallow fiend.

This isn't the first hot cocoa stirring spoon we've seen from Trader Joe's. And plenty of other retailers offer similar products, though they're usually somewhat more expensive than this one and aren't any better in terms of overall quality. If this product were any pricier, I'd be tempted to shaft it, score-wise, but as it stands I'll throw out a respectable three stars. I say it's a decent pickup for a Christmas stocking stuffer, a Valentine's treat, or if you're like me and you have a significant other with a birthday in between those two, it makes a fun little b-day surprise.

Sonia will also go with an even three stars for Trader Joe's Salted Caramel Hot Cocoa Stirring Spoon with Mini Marshmallows.

Bottom line: 6 out of 10.

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Trader Joe's Chicken Shawarma Bowl


Since this isn't the first shawarma product we've reviewed from Trader Joe's, I've given my spiel about chicken shawarma already. See: Trader Joe's Shawarma Chicken Thighs and Trader Joe's Shawarma Chicken Flatbread Wrap.

I found both of those products fell just shy of the mark for two completely different reasons, but neither was terrible, either. Roro's set the bar pretty high as my reference point for chicken shawarma. Trader Joe's has yet to offer anything truly outstanding in my book. But if they release 30 shawarma products this year, then you can bet I'll try all 30 and review them right here on this blog.


At any rate, I opted to heat this little bowl in the big bakey box rather than the microwave. It involves 40 minutes in the conventional oven, as compared to just five minutes when nuked. There's an arctic blast in effect as I compose this review, and we can use every Btu of heat we can get in the house right now.

In addition to shawarma chicken, we've got basmati rice, veggies, and a garlic sauce. None of the elements were particularly flavorful, nor did they approximate genuine Middle Eastern cuisine. Real shawarma bursts with the bright taste of yogurt and citrus, while this meat was dull and bland. The creamy garlic sauce was similar to the delightful Trader Joe's Garlic Spread Dip, but it wasn't quite as thick or delicious, and predictably, there wasn't nearly enough of it.

The chicken and rice was fine, texture-wise, though part of the appeal of real shawarma is the very thinly-sliced, nearly shredded format of the chicken, rather than bite-sized cubes. Also, I found the tomato pieces to be too large and squishy. I'm not a huge fan of raw tomato, though I'm usually okay when they're cooked like this. The spinach and peppers were hardly noticeable.

To call this a shawarma "fail" might be too strong a word. I'll call it another "missed opportunity." $3.99 for the single serving meal. Product of Canada..? Interesting. Stick to maple syrup, you Canucks. Two and a half stars from me. Three stars from the beautiful wifey on Trader Joe's Chicken Shawarma Bowl.



Bottom line: 5.5 out of 10.

Monday, January 8, 2024

Trader Joe's No Boil Noodles


Ah, here we have deliciously convenient No Boil Noodles. Let's make some for lunch today, shall we? I bet they're crazy easy to prepare. That's nice to not have to boil them. Let's see the heating instructions. <flips package>​ First, "Bring 4 quarts of water to a boil." Wait. What? <Rubs eyes> "Bring 4 quarts of water to a boil. Cook 5 minutes. Drain and serve." <flips package again> Reads product name: "Trader Joe's No Boil Noodles." <shakes head> For being "no boil" noodles, there's more boiling involved than I would have assumed.

Okay, okay. To be fair, that's only one of the recommended heating methods. The other simply involves stir frying the noodles with whatever sauce you want and does not involve boiling. But still...


No heating method seemed to give these noodles the perfect texture. They weren't hard per se, but they never got truly soft either. Cheap ramen has a better mouthfeel than these guys.

The noodles come in super-tangled nests. Only after heating them for a good long time do they start to unravel. Like most noodles, these are quite boring by themselves and are completely dependent upon sauces and additives to make them flavorful. We added onions, peppers, broccoli, and teriyaki sauce for a makeshift stir fry and found it palatable enough.

Sonia is pretty picky about her noodles and has tried many, many Asian noodle-based dishes. She's not exactly a connoisseur, but she knows what she likes and doesn't like. She's not hating on this particular product, but she definitely likes the Momofuku style squiggly noodles better than these.

$2.49 for 8.8 oz isn't a bad price. Product of Italy. We polished off the bag in short order but wouldn't buy these again. There are plenty of other cheap noodles out there that we like better than Trader Joe's No Boil Noodles. Three stars a piece from Sonia and me.

Bottom line: 6 out of 10.

Thursday, December 21, 2023

Trader Joe's Cranberry Butter Cookies


We've been plugging away at Trader Joe's brand Christmas goodies rather industriously here for the past couple weeks, so I'll spare you a long soliloquy today and keep this one short. I don't really have a ton to say anyway, so let's get to it.

Trader Joe's Cranberry Butter Cookies have a good taste and an okay texture. They're a little harder than I would have liked. They are firm and crumbly rather than soft and delicate. The cranberries lend a hint of chewy satisfaction, but there's not enough of them.


The flavor is sweet and buttery, tart and tangy. They taste a bit like the All Butter Shortbread Sandwich Cookies, but I liked the texture on those a good bit better than these. I feel like these cookies are too solid, and they lack the smooth jelly filling of the sandwich cookies.


I give Trader Joe's Cranberry Butter Cookies three and a half stars. Sonia gives them only three, also stating that they're too hard and need to be dunked in a hot beverage. $2.99 for the five serving pack. They're not the worst cookies I've tried, but knowing what else is out there, these are probably not a repeat purchase for us.

Bottom line: 6.5 out of 10.

Monday, December 18, 2023

Trader Joe's Iced Gingerbread Squares


Few foods are as overtly Christmassy as gingerbread. Apple pie is jovial and jubilant and all, but it's just as appropriate on the Fourth of July as it is during the holiday season. Pumpkin stuff is fair game around Yuletide, but those goodies are also ubiquitous in October and November. I guess peppermint and egg nog are flavors you can't separate from late December, but as far as actual food items go, gingerbread is about as inextricably woven into the fabric of Noël as anything I can think of...and that's one of the reasons we have to hold it to a high standard.


These iced gingerbread squares aren't exactly a disappointment, but I certainly wouldn't put them at the top of my Trader Joe's holiday wish list. When it comes to appearance and texture, these morsels are about as far removed from homemade as you can get. They look and feel fake, overly processed. The perfectly squared off gingerbread pieces feel almost rubbery to the touch while the icing looks and feels like hard plastic.

The mouthfeel is fine, however. Once you start chewing the product, the gingerbread is nice and soft, the icing may be a little stiff but not hard. Still, there's the sense that these sugary slabs were made by machines rather than human hands.

There's a molasses and brown sugar sweetness to the taste, and the spices are blended fairly well. They're not overdone or harsh in any way. If anything, once you factor in the layer of icing, the squares may teeter on the verge of being too sweet.

The flavor, while pleasant, isn't particularly memorable. Of all the goodies we've sampled this year, this is about the only one that didn't disappear in short order after opening the package. Even the Holiday Vegetable Hash, after discovering a few ways to prepare it that we really enjoyed, is long gone from our fridge. Sonia and I aren't exactly fighting one another for the remaining gingerbread squares.

While it's not a terrible product by any means, this one just isn't among our favorites. About five bucks for six bars. Probably wouldn't buy again. Three out of five stars a piece from Sonia and me for Trader Joe's Iced Gingerbread Squares.

Bottom line: 6 out of 10.

Friday, November 24, 2023

Howling Gourds Pumpkin Ale


Are pumpkin products still legit after Thanksgiving? I mean, pumpkin pie sure is, at least until Christmas, right? So pumpkin season rolls on in my humble opinion. Mid-September through Christmas seems appropriate.

On one hand we have hoppy IPA beer and on the other hand we have sweeter stuff like pumpkin cider. I'll do either/or depending on my mood, but something like pumpkin ale often falls between the cracks and fails to meet the needs of either my arrogant hipster wannabe persona or that of my inner giggly college girl. I mean, who actually craves a pumpkin ale?

I just grabbed one off the mix-a-six shelf at Trader Joe's some weeks ago and haven't had the opportunity or desire to drink it yet, so what better time than now while I'm stuffed to the gills with heavy Thanksgiving fare and the first of the Christmas season's fattening goodies? Here are my thoughts...

It pours an amber-ish color with an off-white head. It's sweeter than I thought it would be. Pumpkin spices are evident, though not overwhelming. It's almost more of a cider than an ale, but it's not as appley as drinks like The Gourd Tree Pumpkin Cider.

Despite the sweetness and pumpkin spice aura, the beer finishes surprisingly clean. Alcohol-wise, it doesn't taste as strong as most 7% ABV beers, but it'd be a rare occasion I'd go out of my way to find and procure an ale this "girly."

The price is nice at $1.34 for the individual can. Brewed by Josephsbrau. I guess I might throw another one in my mix-a-six next year if it's around again. Sonia sat this one out. I'm torn between 3 and 3.5 stars, so I'll do one of each.

Bottom line: 6.5 out of 10.

Monday, November 6, 2023

Trader Joe's Onion Confit Swirls


I guess if I were a real foodie, I'd know what the word "confit" meant without having to look it up. I've heard the phrase "duck confit," but that's about the only context in which I've ever actually noticed the word before. And to be honest, I have no idea what duck confit is.


I'm quite familiar with and fond of onions, however, so I thought I'd give this product a whirl. I looked at the packaging and saw a sort of dark brown swirl on these crackers. My brain immediately made the connection to caramelized onions since that's the first place my mind goes when I think of onions in a dark brown format.

And...yeah...no. That's not what these are. Apparently confit is anything cooked for a very long time at a low-ish temperature in grease or oil. Even if I had been aware of the meaning of the word "confit," I still don't think I would have imagined the taste of these swirls even semi-accurately. I would have imagined something, you know, greasy and oniony.

These crackers are dry as can be, if but maybe a tad oily...and they don't really taste like onions, sadly. Onion powder is the third ingredient after wheat flour and butter, and I guess there's a whisper of oniony essence, but not much more. I thought they'd be similar to those crispy onion chips, which were freaking amazing, but with maybe a bit more breadiness to them.

I don't know how I'd eat these things other than tossing them into savory soup of some kind. Honestly, I don't know if I'd ever reach for these puppies over classic croutons or even saltine crackers. They just need more onion flavor to be worth it. And they're extremely tiny. I wouldn't have minded if they were, you know, bite-sized...instead of half-bite-sized.

$2.49 for the 2.5 serving box. We will polish off the box within the week with the help of some tasty bisque or stew, but we probably would not buy again. Three and a half stars from Sonia. Three from me for Trader Joe's Onion Confit Swirls.



Bottom line: 6.5 out of 10.

Thursday, October 26, 2023

Trader Joe's Shrimp & Garlic Flatbread


I love shrimp. It's a blessing and a curse for Trader Joe's shrimp dishes because I get my hopes up so high each time I try a new one that it's difficult for some products to live up to my expectations. Throw the word "garlic" in the title and I start salivating like Pavlov's dog.

One thing I didn't notice when purchasing this product: it has mushrooms. I have a mild allergy to mushrooms and I really don't like them at all. It's not like I'll die if I eat them, though. I just get mild heart palpitations and increased pulse for a few minutes. Yes, my allergies are weird. I'd get into all that, but let's save that disturbing discussion for another review and dive right into this appetizer.


The flatbread comes in what appears to be a vacuum-sealed garbage bag that's black on one side and see-through on the other. Interesting. Haven't seen packaging quite like that before.

The heating instructions read "DO NOT MICROWAVE" bolded in all caps. Yikes. Okay, I mean I wasn't going to in this case, but I'll be a good boy and follow the instructions exactly this time. Just stop yelling at me. 375° for 20 minutes and we're ready to chow down.


Certain bites contained more cheese than others. The cheesiest sections delivered a generous blast of parmesan while other bites were simply toasty bread and garlic bechamel sauce. I'm certainly not complaining about the sauce, but by itself, it wasn't particularly memorable and only faintly garlicky.

There were only ten shrimp specimens on our entire flatbread. For six bucks, that's not super generous. The small quantity that was there, however, was quite tasty. They weren't rubbery or chewy at all—good quality, cooked to perfection. The mushrooms, though noticeable, were not abundant enough to bother me at all.


In the end, the flavor of this flatbread just wasn't special enough to win over either Sonia or me completely. The shrimp, though enjoyable, were not plenteous enough to save the dish entirely. Probably wouldn't buy again.

Three stars from me. Three and a half stars from the beautiful wifey for Trader Joe's Shrimp & Garlic Flatbread.



Bottom line: 6.5 out of 10.

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Trader Joe's Vegan Italian Bolognese Ravioli


For those of you unfamiliar, bolognese sauce originates from Bologna, Italy and is traditionally made with beef or sometimes pork, and it's rich and hearty and commonly served on pasta. Some versions contain red wine, while most contain herbs and spices like rosemary, fennel, and/or oregano.

Here we have Trader Joe's Vegan Italian Bolognese Ravioli. Seems pretty straightforward: little round ravioli pasta pieces filled with that vegan bolognese sauce that we reviewed a few years ago? We liked that sauce okay, so filling ravioli with it will probably make a passable meal. Let's just dive right in.


The ravioli is very dainty here. Like each piece is simply two paper thin layers of pasta with a spoonful of a relatively thin tomato and lentil-based sauce inside. It has a pleasant, though not particularly pungent, array of spices. Tomato is far and away the dominant flavor.

Sonia wishes there were more of the sauce within each pasta round. I don't disagree, but I'd rather have a thicker, more robust sauce. It doesn't need to have meat, but even the lentils and tomatoes are crushed into oblivion and feel nearly liquefied. There's very little to chew on in this dish.


We actually wound up finishing the package by dumping Trader Joe's Calabrian Chili Spicy Pasta Sauce on the remainder. That stuff completely drown out the comparatively subtle flavors of the bolognese sauce and made the pasta much more flavorful. Everything's more exciting with that sauce on it.

There's nothing unpleasant about this pasta product, but it could be improved with greater quantities of the bolognese sauce and/or making it thicker, and even bulkier pasta on the ravioli would help.

$3.99 for the package, which Sonia and I easily finished in a single sitting. Three out of five stars from yours truly. Three and a half stars from the beautiful wifey for Trader Joe's Vegan Italian Bolognese Ravioli.



Bottom line: 6.5 out of 10.

Monday, September 18, 2023

Trader Joe's Apple Cinnamon Buns


Ah, the very first NEW fall product of the season. You can just taste the anticipation in the air with a knife. Er, wait. That's not right. I'm sure there's some idiom that sums up what's going on here, but can't think of it right now because I'm too hungry.

Apple. Cinnamon. Buns. Any one of those three elements is enough to make my mouth water. All three together? Shoot. How could Trader Joe's possibly go wrong?

Well, first off, there are no heating instructions on the box, which I thought was weird. I mean, sure, there are plenty of baked goods you can just snatch right out of the packaging and go to town on. These seemed possible candidates for such a situation, and the lack of preparatory directions reinforced that assumption.


However, the buns were decidedly unimpressive at room temperature. Sonia described them as "hard," whereas I simply saw them as "stale." We consumed them a full three days before the best by date, in case you were wondering.

So we mused whether we'd nuke them for a spell or air fry them. We opted for the former at least partially out of impatience, but also because 12 or 15 seconds in a microwave posed less of a risk of drying out the product than any number of minutes in an air fryer.

After heating, the product was markedly improved on several fronts: the texture was wetter, softer, fresher, and even the cinnamon flavor seemed to pop a little more than it did prior to the pastry's ride in the radiation robot. I slathered my share with butter which gave it a bit more of a comfort food vibe than the product provided just on its own.


Still, there's not nearly enough apple in the buns to make them magical or memorable. There's a shallow, paltry pool of minced apples in a sugary sauce right on top in the middle of the buns, but that's about it. For these to get our enthusiastic seal of approval, that apple filling would need to at least quadruple or quintuple in quantity.

As is, we're looking at about three and a half stars from Sonia and three from me which, honestly, I think is being a little generous. Heated, with some added butter, these buns make a passable dessert treat, but they're a far cry from legends like the Rustic Apple Tarte in terms of appliciousness and overall purchase-worthiness.

$4.49 for two buns. Probably wouldn't buy Trader Joe's Apple Cinnamon Buns Crumb Topped Danish Pastries with Apple Filling & Cinnamon again.



Bottom line: 6.5 out of 10.

Wednesday, September 13, 2023

Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Watermelon Sticks


Wait a minute. This isn't a fall food. Watermelon is more summery than autumnal. True. We're still doing non-fall food reviews on this blog right now for a number of reasons: (1) many if not most of the fall items at Trader Joe's right now are re-releases and have already been reviewed on this blog. Go ahead. Use the "Search This Blog" bar up top to look up the products you're curious about. (2) It's not fall yet. September 23 is the first day of fall. (3) It's still too warm for autumn products, though it's markedly cooler than it was just last week. In short: patience, young grasshopper. All in good time.


Does anybody remember the chocolate raspberry sticks? Are they still around? Well, these are basically the same thing, but watermelon flavored. I guess I got fooled by the packaging. These watermelon dealies come in a bag while the raspberry version came in a plastic tub. I must say I think the watermelon flavor works better than raspberry for some reason, but even this product doesn't really do it for me in the end.

They're just a gelatinous fruit-flavored center surrounded by a thin layer of dark chocolate on all sides. I guess they're pretty good for a blood sugar picker-upper type situation. The watermelon flavor is more in the direction of like a watermelon lollipop rather than, like, actual watermelon or watermelon puree. It's very candy-esque—not very authentic to my taste buds.


The candies need to stay cool. And I mean, if the temperature is above 72° at all, both the chocolate and the filling will start getting soft and melty. Keep napkins on standby or only consume in cool weather.

$3.49 for the resealable bag. Probably wouldn't buy again, but I can see how some folks dig 'em. Three stars from me. Three and a half stars from Sonia for Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Watermelon Sticks.

Bottom line: 6.5 out of 10.

Monday, September 11, 2023

Trader Joe's Organic Sparkling Lemon + Strawberry Apple Cider Vinegar Beverage


This is the third installment of our Trader Joe's canned organic sparkling apple cider vinegar beverage series. Most of you remember the recently-reviewed Elderberry + Pomegranate version. And some may even remember our review of the Ginger + Lemon flavor from 2021.

I was surprised how much I liked the taste of ginger and lemon and was quite impressed at how efficiently they masked the intense sourness of apple cider vinegar. I was slightly less impressed with the elderberry iteration of the drink since it wanted to be sweeter and failed to be so. I'm even more disappointed with this flavor since strawberry is sweeter still even than elderberries or pomegranates and clashes with the tart pungency of vinegar more desperately than its deep purple predecessor.

It's like someone took a delicious, refreshing summer-themed beverage and poured salad dressing into it as a prank. I'd almost say this product is less sweet than that strawberry vinaigrette we looked at last week. It utterly frustrates my taste buds.

Sonia has given four and a half stars to each of this beverage's forerunners, and she'll have to go a half star lower this time because, like me, she's not quite as fond of this flavor. This is definitely my least favorite flavor, so I'll throw out my lowest score yet for these ACV beverages.

Once again, about two bucks for the can. Plenty of health benefits from drinking ACV in any form. Organic. Kosher. Bubbly. But still, I can't go higher than two and a half stars. The beautiful wifey will bestow this beverage with four stars.

Bottom line: 6.5 out of 10.

Tuesday, September 5, 2023

Trader Joe's Strawberry Basil Vinaigrette


Vinaigrette. Is it like the female version of "vinegar"? I mean, we have Smurfette, who's the original female Smurf. Then we might have a kitchenette or a launderette, which are basically like petite versions of the originals. And of course the suffragettes were all females looking for the right to vote and stuff.

Should a self-respecting man be eating vinaigrette at all? If he wants a little something on his greens, wouldn't it be a lot more manly to just dump a bunch of household cleaning vinegar on his salad? The answers to these questions and more...are definitely not is this review. But they are worth pondering.


So I asked Google's new AI chatbot named Bard what it had to say about the matter. He gave me four paragraphs as a response, the last and most pertinent of which read: "If you are looking for a manly way to dress a salad, I recommend using a vinaigrette made with good quality olive oil, vinegar, and herbs. This will give your salad a delicious and healthy flavor without any of the risks associated with using cleaning vinegar."

Thanks, Bard. You always know what's up. Although, in this particular product, we have canola oil instead of good quality olive oil. Some folks think that's a bad thing. Apparently, canola oil causes inflammation, and that's something I'm trying to avoid.

Also, there are a total of 4g of sugar, all of which are "added sugar." You'd think there'd be some natural fructose from the strawberry puree, but I guess the amount is negligible. Must all come from the cane sugar.


And this dressing is definitely sweet. It's at least teetering on the verge of too sweet. It's quite strawberry forward, and there's definitely a spicy, earthy basil essence underneath. The vinegar flavor doesn't come through very much at all. The dressing isn't particularly tangy or tart to my taste buds.

$3.99 for the 8 serving bottle. I wouldn't buy this one again. I just don't do sweet summer berry salads enough to make it worth it, and I feel like I've had better berry balsamics and berry vinaigrettes than this one. As usual, Sonia will be a little more positive and lenient. She likes the sweetness level and strawberry flavor.

Two and a half out of five stars from me. Three and a half stars from Sonia for Trader Joe's Strawberry Basil Vinaigrette.



Bottom line: 6 out of 10.

Friday, September 1, 2023

Trader Joe's English Toffee


The thing about toffee is that I don't like dentists.

I feel like every time I eat it that I'm tempting fate to snap off one of my teeth, or at least a section of a tooth, and then I'll be forced to either do some extraordinarily painful homespun remedy involving clove oil, pliers, and an ungodly amount of ibuprofen or go to one of those overpriced professional purveyors of pain.

No offense if you happen to be a dentist reading this. Nothing personal. Unless you're that horrible lady that removed my last wisdom tooth. Then you should definitely be offended.


Toffee. It's like hard candy that you're supposed to chew. There's a reason we don't chomp down on Jolly Ranchers or Werther's Originals or Dum Dums. Toffee is basically the same thing, but if you slap some chocolate and almonds on it, suddenly it's okay to bite into rocks made of sugar.

I'm exaggerating slightly of course. I mean, I'd simply suck on this candy like I do other hard candies, but the nuts make it kinda impractical to do that. It's not quite as a hard as a lollipop or whatever, but it's darn close. And it's sticky. Each bite leaves more and more crushed up toffee fused to the surface of your teeth.


I guess it's unfair to punish this toffee for, you know, being toffee. Compared to other toffee, it's quite good. There's a nice balance of caramel flavor, chocolate, and nuts, and it's buttery and sweet just like I'd expect it to be. I guess I just really want there to be a softer version of toffee—like a chewy, creamy toffee covered in chocolate and almonds. That would be great.

But this here is traditional English toffee. Fair enough. If you've got teeth of steel, you'll love it. $3.49 for the 8 oz tub. Three stars from me. Three and a half stars from Sonia for Trader Joe's English Toffee with Milk Chocolate.



Bottom line: 6.5 out of 10.

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Trader Joe's Cauliflower Crisps Snack


Some days I don't have any silly intro story or clever segue into the actual review, so I just reminisce about products from the past and link to them at the beginning of the post. That's what we'll do today. We won't remember every single product with cauliflower that we've seen over the years, but we'll look at the times when cauliflower has become a substitute for some other food staple. Ahh...let's look at:

That time cauliflower became rice.

That time cauliflower became mashed potatoes.

That time cauliflower became pizza crust.

That time cauliflower became latkes.

That time cauliflower became tortillas.

That time cauliflower became gnocchi.

That time cauliflower became jalapeño dip.

That time cauliflower became risotto.

That time cauliflower became cookie butter.

Okay, well, that last one might not have been a thing. But you get the picture. They can turn cauliflower into anything. So crispy little crackers should be a walk in the park for the versatile cauliflower, right?


In my book, not so much. These snacky circles are too dense, too rigid. If they were thinner, they'd be much easier to bite and chew. As is, they're like little cookies—more three-dimensional than I'd have imagined them to be. I thought they'd be delicate like rice crackers, but they're much more solid than that.

They taste a little like cauliflower. They're much more earthy and bitter than typical rice crackers. I think I'd be fine with the product if they used all the same ingredients and simply lost the cauliflower. I mean, brown rice flour is the second ingredient, and I never met a rice crisp I didn't like.


Sonia enjoys them. She thinks they have a very unique flavor, and I don't disagree. She's just a little more fond of that unusual flavor than I am. I'd try redeeming them with random toppings and dips, but I'm afraid it would just ruin my enjoyment of said toppings.

We paid $2.99 for the 2.5 serving bag. I wouldn't buy them again if it were just me. Sonia might I guess. Three and a half stars from the beautiful wifey. Two and a half stars from me for Trader Joe's Cauliflower Crisps Snack.



Bottom line: 6 out of 10.

Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Drizzled Plantain Chips

Nate's Notes: This review was originally posted 2/5/21 but Sonia and I decided for no particular reason that it needed a video companion, embedded below. Thanks for reading/watching.
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When looking forward to something with great amounts of anticipation, there are varying degrees of severity of the phrase "not impressed" once you get to experience said something, right?

On one hand, the latest season of Letterkenny? Never watched it or never even heard of it? Change that this weekend, start at season 1, and go. I'd recommend skipping the third episode (named, uh, "Fartbook') as it's a bit hit or miss with newbies. Season 9 of the series debuted on Christmas after a few months of delays...my lovely bride and I binged the whole season in one night...and were left kinda disappointed. It just didn't have the same feel or cleared the same hurdles that previous seasons lifted the bar so high for. Still ok...but not that great. I hope in time appreciation will grow for it, but now, just a simple "not impressed" will do. 

The other extreme may be most of 2020. Maybe the appreciation will grow in time...lots of time...but yeah. That's a pretty emphatic NOT IMPRESSED. 

So where do Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Drizzled Plantain Chips fall on this spectrum?

Yup, we looked forward to them with great anticipation. Plantains are good and dark chocolate is great, right? Those are still undeniable truths. Yet here, in this iteration, there's a bit of something lacking. Much like previous plantain chips, there's the soft, starchy, styrofoam comfort feel to the actual chips themselves. It's an experience we know well and it works. Except...maybe not for sweet-tilting indulgent treats? It kinda feels and tastes, well, not wrong but not right either. That's not it's fault, it's a plantain and by now inanimate.

As usual, no real issues with the dark chocolate. It's on point and delivers once again, as expected. 

Maybe it's because we somehow expected or craved something more akin to a chocolate covered potato chip that we're left a little not impressed here. Or heck, like our recently rediscovered love of plantain crisps? Yes please!  Like...we knew it wasn't gonna be but wanted it anyways. I will say the overall taste is good, and has some promises, and perhaps like the latest season of Letterkenny appreciation will grow in time, but right now, neither my lovely bride nor I are really all that impressed. 

Maybe we're wrong - it happens, a lot - and we let poor expectation management override sound judgement.

Bags cost a few bucks each - maybe three - and it'll take a few days to finish the spare we have. Our kids like them and their diminutive size (the chips, not the kids) make them a reasonably good snack treat. I was handing them out like literal candy to them the other day. So I'll bump them a grade for that at least. Doing right for kids goes a long way in my book. Still not impressed, though. 

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Drizzled Plantain Chips: 5 out of 10 Golden Spoons.


Though we may have been slightly more lenient with our scoring, Sonia and I more or less came to the same conclusion: Bottom line: 6.5 out of 10.

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