Trader Joe's Artichoke Ravioli

I'm afraid this post is one of those that are more about my own weird history with food than the product itself. (But I warned you with my very first blog post that that was a large part of my motivation for doing this thing, so I feel no guilt.)

Until last week, I had never eaten artichoke. That's because I could just look at one and tell that it was inedible and awful and I could never like it.

But Nina cooked up some for part of a dinner she made me. I had a couple of slices of artichoke hearts. I didn't love them, but they were not as terrible as I imagined. I wasn't eager for more, but Nina asked me not to give up on them yet.

Fast forward to a few days later, when I'm in Trader Joe's buying a few things for the weekly dinner I make for Nina. While looking over the case of refrigerated, prepared foods to see if there was anything new, my eye caught the big artichoke on the package seen above. Well, if there is any way to get me to like something, mixing it with cheese and wrapping it in pasta is a damn good bet. So I abandoned what I had intended for the menu and got this instead.

Alas, TJ's may have found the one thing that is not improved by cheese and pasta. The cheese did not mask the artichoke flavor--but it did seem to clash with it quite severely. It was not a good combination. Even though I didn't love plain artichoke hearts on my first tasting, I'm pretty sure I would have preferred having them and cheese ravioli separately.


Will I buy it again? 

No. And it did not advance my appreciation of artichokes one little bit.

Nina's View

I regret that this was Bob's second encounter with an artichoke product, because it's just not that good. The filling has a sourish cheese in with the artichoke. They've used some of the more fibrous parts of the flesh, which makes the texture less than lovely. 

I have a vague recollection of having artichoke ravioli previously—I thought from TJ's—and enjoying them. If I did then, well, what can I say? I did not enjoy these.