Trader Joe's Edamame Hummus

I passed this by many times, kind of afraid of what it might be like. The slightly green color is not the most attractive thing ever.

But my worry was for naught. It doesn't have much of a distinctive soybean taste or aftertaste. The most different thing about it, compared to TJ's plain hummus, is that it seems to have more tang from lemon. Nina and I ate about 3/4 of a tub of it with chips as an appetizer before dinner.

Will I buy it again? 

Maybe. It was good. However, I'm fast becoming a hard-core fan of the line of exceptionally good hummus varieties made right here in Asheville by a small company called Roots. I'll still try other things sometimes to continue my exploration of the whole category, but most of my hummus purchases are likely to be non-TJ's.

Nina's View

I like this very, very much. It's wonderfully lemony and the pale green color is sort of nice once you make your peace with it. I will happily eat more of this.

Trader Joe's Chicken Pot Pie Ravioli

Two or three weeks ago I noticed the announcement of Chicken Pot Pie Ravioli in the What's New section of the Trader Joe's web site. It sounded like the sort of thing I would have to try as soon as possible, because a wacky mashup food idea like this could either be crazy good or an utter failure, and I wanted to know which.

I looked for them on several trips to the store--nothing. But finally they showed up yesterday. I bought a package and cooked it for my lunch today.

The answer?

Crazy good!

The insides really do taste like the filling of a good chicken pot pie--rich, creamy, loaded with the flavor of chicken broth. Though there are onions reportedly present, I'm happy to report that even my super-onion-suspicious tongue was unable to detect them.

There's not a lot of chicken meat, but I consider that an advantage, because these days my guilt level rises proportionate to the amount of meat or poultry content of food. Eating a package of these, I'd guess, was responsible for the demise of maybe one-tenth of a chicken. I can live with that (even if the chicken can't).

To get the most accurate read on the taste, I added a little butter, but nothing else. I'm not really sure how they would taste with a traditional pasta sauce added, as the label suggests. "Pot pie" and "marinara" are not easy flavor memories for my brain to meld together, absent actual experience. Maybe I'll try it next time.

Quibbles:

• Two of the raviolis popped open while boiling, spilling some of their contents, and I think others would have if I weren't extra-gentle in stirring them. TJ's food engineers need to make them seal better. 
• The serving and package sizes are all wrong. The package contained 12 pieces, and claimed that this was two servings. I ate the whole package for my lunch, along with a salad. Admittedly, it was about two more than I would have considered ideal, but I wasn't going to either throw away the last two or store them for another day. Either reduce the package size a bit and call it single-serving, or put about 20 in and keep the serving size at two. 

Will I buy it again? 

Enthusiastically.

Trader Joe's Organic Soft Multigrain Bread

I'm tempted to start postulating the existence of a Trader Joe's Sweetification Committee, which operates in conjunction with the Blandification Committee to be sure that as many TJ's products as possible carry their two signature characteristics. I'm less sensitive to and bothered by the ubiquitous sweetness than Nina is, but I do still notice it--especially where one does not ordinarily expect to encounter sweetness, such as in sandwich bread. It's not quite as bad here as it was in the Organic Soft Wheat Bread, but it's still much more noticeable than necessary. I really don't understand why they do this.

The other problem here is in the commitment to being multigrain. You've got wheat flour, rye, yellow corn, barley, oats, flax seed, and millet. I'm not sure which of these is to blame, but there's a fair number of hard bits--insufficiently ground grain or seed, I presume--that don't yield easily to chewing. They feel almost like bits of stone, which is not pleasant to encounter in one's bread.

Will I buy it again? 

No. As the old saying has it, life is too short to put up with overly sweet, tooth-cracking bread. (What? That's not an old saying? Hmpf. Well, it should be.)

A word about carrots

I've having guests for dinner tonight. One part of it is pretty much the same kind of salad I usually make when it's just Nina and me--two different Trader Joe's bagged salads combined. But I wanted to add a little something extra, so I bought a bag of TJ's Organic Carrots of Many Colors and sliced them up to toss in. Looking at them on the cutting board, I just had to share:

I mean, come on! When you have the option of buying something that pretty, why would you settle for plain old boring orange carrots in your green salad?

Trader Joe's Stone Ground Wheat Crackers

This is the latest installment in my ongoing "pick a random box of crackers at Trader Joe's" experiment.

This one turned out nicely. I like these a lot. They're not especially surprising or interesting, but they're flavorful wheat, attractive, and salted just right. They fracture nicely along the midline perforation if you want them half-size, or use them full size. Either way, they don't crumble to pieces when you bite into them. They are substantial enough for hummus-dipping or carrying a heavy load of whatever you want to serve on them. Best of all, there's a LOT of them in the box--more than you would think from outward appearances. Also: vegan, in case that matters to you.

Will I buy it again? 

These are not quite Top Ten material, but they're excellent, and they will be a top contender--right behind Some Enchanted Cracker--when I want a known cracker entity rather than another experiment in the unknown.

Trader Joe's French Liquid Soap, Orange Blossom Honey

For more years than I care to try to calculate, I've been a loyal user of Softsoap, and specifically their "Soothing Aloe Vera" variety. I'm a frequent hand-washer, so this soap's most important quality is that it's non-drying. Additionally, it doesn't have antimicrobial ingredients (completely unnecessary in soap), it's pleasant to the touch, and it has no heavy scents. I buy it in gallon jugs to refill the dispensers, which also makes it highly economical. Frankly, it's going to be hard for anything to displace my preference for this stuff. But I'm willing to try, for the sake of my devoted readers. That's just the kind of guy I am.

I love honey, so when I decided to give TJ's a chance to win me over with a liquid hand soap, and I discovered that they carry a bunch of different kinds, the "orange blossom honey" thing jumped out at me.

It's certainly true that this looks like a bottle full of honey. Moreover, when you squirt a little into your hand, it definitely smells like honey. But I want you to consider two things: First, it's hard to think of why anybody would want to wash his or her hands with honey. Second: There's no actual honey listed in the ingredients. No actual orange, either. So basically it's a mixture of oils and glycerin, with artificial honey and orange scents added. Which, granted, is pleasant enough at first, but I found it to grow tiresome quickly. It's also several times more expensive than Softsoap, with no large-sized refills available.

Will I buy it again? 

Because this is an actual product of France, and bears the "Trader Jacques" label, I think it's only fitting that I let my answer come from Marcel Marceau, with his famous gag from "Silent Movie":






Nina's View

It's pleasant, and doesn't seem to be too drying, which is nice in a handsoap. The fragrance is okay. But my go-to handsoap is Method's Sweet Water, which has a lovely light neutral scent, and which comes in bulk refill bags for my dispenser. Not giving THAT up.

I do, however, favor TJ's Lavender hand and body lotion, which I first encountered in my friend Sonali's house. Nice, nice stuff. It won't replace my staple Curél for after bath lotion, but it does grace the downstairs bathroom for the enjoyment of my guests.

Trader Joe's Dixie Peach

If you were to look back through all of the reviews we've done here with the category label "juice," you might notice a pattern: The ones that are in small bottles tend to be good, while the ones in big jugs tend to be mediocre to bad. The pattern continues here.

Your first impression from the label is that this is "Dixie Peach" and "100% juice," and thus must be pure peach juice--which would be super-yummy, right? But if you either have experience with the way that Trader Joe's does these things, or think carefully about the careful wording of the smaller print underneath, you would be forewarned. The key words there are "peach flavored." I will at least grant TJ's this much: such wording on the front is an improvement on finding the truth only by scrutinizing the tiny print on the back, where ingredients are listed.

My first impression was indeed that peach flavor dominates over the others. But there's no doubt that this is a "peach flavored" blend, rather than peach juice. It's nothing like, for example, really good apricot nectar.

As is the case with most of these big-bottle TJ's "juices," most of what's in it is reconstituted apple and grape juices from concentrates. In this blend, they have also thrown in some reconstituted pear and pineapple juices.

What about peach? Well, it's in there somewhere. Peach puree is the third listed ingredient, and peach juice concentrate comes in at number seven. The "natural flavors" probably includes something that chemically mimics something in peaches, too.

If you understand that this is "peach flavored" apple and grape juice, not peach juice, and you're willing to accept it on those terms, be my guest. If you're expecting real peach juice, you'll be disappointed. Having learned my lesson before, I knew what to expect--and on those terms, I found it acceptable. Nothing to write home about, but nothing objectionable, either.

Will I buy it again? 

Probably not.