Trader Joe's Organic Brown Rice & Quinoa Spaghetti Pasta

We're up to Day 5 of Gluten-Free Week on the blog: 



I thought this looked interesting when I saw it in the store, though not interesting enough that I cooked it up right away. It actually sat in my cupboard for several months before I got around to it.

I didn't think it was great, but it was perfectly acceptable. When eaten with pasta sauce, I was not consciously aware that it was significantly different from ordinary pasta. Maybe a little stickier and gloppier.

Most of the gluten-free substitutes for wheat-based products that I have tried have been pretty bad, such that if I were forced for health reasons to change to them, I would feel severely put upon. Not so with this one. I would deem it only a small diminishment in my enjoyment of spaghetti.

Will I buy it again? 

I doubt it. But if you have a problem with gluten, by all means give it a try.

Nina's View

When Bob told me that this was on the menu, I'm afraid my first reaction was "Oh dear." This was my polite way of saying what the inside of my head was screaming, which was "AW HELL NAWS!!!!!"

To be fair, it wasn't as bad as I expected. If you are truly gluten-sensitive or have celiac disease, I think this is worth trying. For the majority of us lucky enough to have no problem digesting gluten or wheat, there's no reason to inflict this on ourselves. I found the texture and taste pretty leaden. I think you need to pick your sauce for this carefully, as it will definitely clash with some flavors. I have no interest in experimenting to find which ones work best.

Trader Joe's Gluten Free Ginger Snaps

Day 4 of Gluten-Free Week on the blog: 


My motivation for trying these was partly for the same reasons I explained yesterday with respect to the gluten-free bread. But it was also partly that a long time ago I noticed that Trader Joe's sells a bewildering number of different ginger cookies, and I decided that sooner or later I would try them all.

I'm glad I got this one scratched off the list now, because it's impossible that any of the other ginger cookies could be worse than these. These are repulsive. There's hardly any ginger to them at all--it comes just as an aftertaste. But to get to that aftertaste, you first have to power through the main taste, which is like unflavored starch.

That might not have come as a surprise if I had checked the list of ingredients before eating: tapioca starch, potato starch, corn flour, corn starch, rice flour, chickpea flour, xanthan gum, and so on. Does that sound like what you want in a cookie?

At first I couldn't believe they were really this bad. I had just finished a tub of the wonderful Triple Ginger Snaps, so I thought perhaps these were suffering by comparison, and I was judging them too harshly. So I waited several days, then tried them again. And just to be sure, I repeated that process once more. No improvement. They really are as inedible as my first impression had indicated.

The texture is as bad as the taste. They're so brittle that they're all broken. I ate maybe a third of the bag all told, and I don't think I found a single one intact. What's left of them shatters into shards and crumbs at the first bite.

The only thing I can say favorable about them is that they're not quite as horrendous as the worst-ever Trader Joe's cookies, which are the Peanutters. I think the gluten-free ginger snaps would have to be made with bat guano to be worse than those. Nevertheless, they're bad enough to earn a spot of dubious distinction on my Bottom Ten list.

Will I buy it again? 

Not if they were the last cookies on Earth.

Trader Joe's Gluten Free White Sandwich Bread

We're doing an entire week of review of Trader Joe's gluten-free products, and we're up to Day 3: 



I don't need gluten-free products for any medical reason, nor do I think they're somehow generally more healthful than their regular counterparts. Heck, some of my favorite meat substitutes are made from seitan, which is basically just wheat gluten.

So why did I buy this bread? Just on impulse. I was curious to see if it would be a major loss if, for some reason, I had to switch to gluten-free products. (My mother had celiac disease, so that possibility comes to mind occasionally.)

And ya know what? It's not half bad. If I had been served this bread without knowing what was different about it, I don't think I would have guessed "gluten-free." It wasn't quite as good as typical white bread, and a far sight from the best of them. But toasted with either butter or jam, and in sandwiches, I was easily able to forget that it was "special" bread.

The strangest thing about it is the size of the slices. They're only about 2/3 of the width and length of standard sandwich bread slices. I don't know why they did this, unless it's some intrinsic limitation of the recipe. For toast this was not much of a problem, as I could just use three instead of my usual two. Sandwiches, however, were disappointingly small.

Will I buy it again? 

No, not unless I have a houseguest who needs gluten-free stuff. But I'm not sorry I tried it.

Trader Joe's Gluten Free Rice Pasta & Cheddar

This is Day 2 of Gluten-Free Week. 


If you served this to me without telling me what it was, I would think it a was a pretty normal, average, unremarkable box of mac and cheese, although it seemed much saltier than my memory of TJ's other boxed mac and cheese products. Strangely, the pasta is a little chewier than usual, whereas my limited experience with rice pasta suggests that it's usually softer and more fragile.

This is a rare instance in which if one were forced to live without gluten, this item could be substituted for things like Kraft's ubiquitous boxes with no meaningful loss. It's not nearly as good as Trader Joe's best of the genre, the Organic Shells and White Cheddar. But it's good enough--especially if you add some tuna and/or peas.

Will I buy it again? 

Me me? No. But suddenly-developed-gluten-intolerance me? Definitely.

Trader Joe's Soft-Baked Snickerdoodles

Good readers, it's time for another theme week on the blog. This time we're tackling Trader Joe's gluten-free products. Enjoy! 


Here's a good "explainer" article on the whole subject of gluten and gluten-free diets.

Trader Joe's has here tried to recreate a favorite childhood treat without using any "bad" ingredients. As the box proclaims, "They're free of wheat, milk, peanuts, tree nuts, eggs and soy. That's a tough nut to crack in the world of cookies." Well, yeah. It's kind of a head-scratcher how you make cookies without flour and eggs--and without butter, which for some reason the TJ's copywriter didn't include in the list of stuff they're proud to have omitted. They do boast that the cookies are gluten-free, but only in small print down there on the lower right-hand corner of the front of the box.

They've used sorghum flour instead of wheat flour, brown sugar instead of white sugar, and pear juice concentrate and grape juice concentrate for sweetness to reduce the amount of sugar needed.

The result? They're weird. They're off. They are nothing like any snickerdoodle cookie I've ever had. I think we all have a pretty clear idea of what a snickerdoodle is supposed to be, and these don't fit the mold.

I reject them.

Will I buy it again? 

No. Trader Joe's, let me know when you get some real snickerdoodles. Those I'll buy.

Roundup

This is my weekly compilation of news and other links related to Trader Joe's.


The best and worst products at Trader Joe's 

Food from China? Whole Foods versus Trader Joe's 

Vegan USA--10 savory grocery finds at Trader Joe's

16 facts about Trader Joe's 

"Let's Talk TJ's" podcast, #5 

5 best and worst buys at Trader Joe's 

Recent Trader Joe's favorites 

How to improve Trader Joe's pizza dough 

Review of chocolate-bacon-ganache bar 

And another 

9 amazing new foods you need to try at Trader Joe's 


I just discovered another Trader Joe's blog--and not just an active one, but another DAILY TJ's product review blog! She is doing a different TJ's review daily for the whole year of 2015. I like her fun, casual style. Give it a look-see: http://traderjoes365.blogspot.com/



Best tweets of the week:

1.

2.

3.

4.

Here's this week's YouTube video from "Trader Joe":






Finally, here are this week's pictures of cute cats in Trader Joe's grocery bags:

Trader Joe's Garden Patch Blend Of Vegetable Juices

In the Asheville Trader Joe's, a handmade sign by the bottles of Garden Patch juice says, "Just like V8!" I suspect the corporate overlords would disapprove of that sign, for both legal and competitive reasons. It's also not accurate. There's definitely a similarity, and I suspect the manufacturers were going for a V8 imitation, but didn't quite hit it.

That's a good thing, actually. I prefer this to V8. It seems to fall about halfway between plain tomato juice and V8. Since I strongly prefer the former to the latter, the fact that Garden Patch is less like V8 is a feature, not a bug. You definitely get a sort of generic vegetable flavor in addition to the tomato, and slightly more chunkiness than tomato juice--plus some zest. (The Trader Joe's Blandification Committee didn't do much to this product, apparently.) But I still prefer regular ol' tomato juice to Garden Patch.

Will I buy it again? 

It's not bad, but the main thing it made me realize is that it's been too long since I had tomato juice. Ima get me some of that instead.

Nina's View

I, on the other, very much like V8. And thus, I find this juice disappointingly falls short of the V8 signature distinctness of many individual vegetable flavors. My main beef with V8 is that it's just a bit too salty. This juice, on the other hand, could use a bit *more* salt.

It's not bad, just not my favorite.