Sunday, August 23, 2015
Trader Joe's Butter Lettuce
I've never bought butter lettuce before. I had seen these bags at Trader Joe's many times, but didn't know what I would do with it. On a recent trip, I decided to try making a simple salad by tossing this with TJ's red spinach. I liked the result a lot. This is far better than iceberg lettuce--both more tender and more flavorful--as the base of a salad, though obviously kind of boring all by itself.
Will I buy it again?
Yes. The spinach ended up being less than an optimal bag, but I'd like to try the combination again.
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Roundup
This is my weekly compilation of news and other links related to Trader Joe's.
A week's worth of dinner for under $25 at Trader Joe's
Trader Joe's: A business that welcomes children
54 Trader Joe's items you must try
Trader Joe's shiraz beats $27 bottle in blind taste test
Kindness of Trader Joe's employees
My first trip to Trader Joe's
Trader Joe's wine deals and reviews for summer, 2015
Salad recipe using all Trader Joe's ingredients
Program to help developmentally disabled adults become successful Trader Joe's employees
Here's this week's YouTube video from "Trader Joe":
Best tweets of the week:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Finally, here are this week's cute cat and cute dog with their Trader Joe's grocery bags:
A week's worth of dinner for under $25 at Trader Joe's
Trader Joe's: A business that welcomes children
54 Trader Joe's items you must try
Trader Joe's shiraz beats $27 bottle in blind taste test
Kindness of Trader Joe's employees
My first trip to Trader Joe's
Trader Joe's wine deals and reviews for summer, 2015
Salad recipe using all Trader Joe's ingredients
Program to help developmentally disabled adults become successful Trader Joe's employees
Here's this week's YouTube video from "Trader Joe":
Best tweets of the week:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Finally, here are this week's cute cat and cute dog with their Trader Joe's grocery bags:
Trader Joe's Salted Tortilla Chips
Yet another in Trader Joe's bewildering array of tortilla chips. I finished my bag of the one reviewed here Thursday and started on this one in the same sitting, so I could compare them directly. These are a little better: thicker and stronger--hence better for dipping into dense hummus--and with more corn flavor. But really, if I weren't trying them side by side, I wouldn't have noticed any difference.
TJ's could do with some serious thinning of its tortilla chip line. The proliferation of minor variants--white corn/yellow corn/blue corn, organic/regular, triangular/round/"longboard"--just wastes shelf space and confuses customers.
Will I buy it again?
Sure, though without any particular enthusiasm.
Friday, August 21, 2015
Dinner
When Nina was here for dinner Wednesday night, I did one of my occasional all-Trader-Joe's meals.
That's TJ's Chickenless Mandarin Orange Morsels on top of TJ's brown rice fusilli pasta, with a side of TJ's Soycutash. Salad is a blend of two of TJ's bagged salads (butter lettuce/radicchio and Organic Power to the Greens) with TJ's shredded carrots. The pink beverage is the Italian Blood Orange Soda sold but not branded by TJ's. Dessert was to be TJ's vanilla soy ice cream, but we were too full.
Many reviews to write now!
Trader Joe's Burrata, Prosciutto & Arugula Flatbread
Brand-new product. See Trader Joe's description here.
This is a nice pizza--sufficiently different from your average frozen pizza that it's worth a try. The flatbread makes for a thicker and chewier crust than is typical, and the cheese--burrata, which was a new word for me--is unusually creamy. What's most different, however, is using prosciutto instead of pepperoni or sausage or Canadian bacon.
That, however, also leads to the biggest annoyance. The prosciutto comes in a separate inner wrapping, and you have to separate the three super-thin layers, cut or tear them into pieces, and distribute them on the pizza yourself. (The package directions say to put the meat on after baking. The web site says either before or after works.) Kind of a pain, compared to standard frozen pizzas.
I have a gripe about the serving size, too. The label claims three servings here. I had the whole thing, with a salad, for a lunch, and didn't feel that I overate. I'm 5'7" and weigh 148 pounds--not exactly what you'd call a giant. Draw your own conclusions about feeding three people with this thing.
Will I buy it again?
No. It was good, and interesting once, but not something I want to make a staple. Part of that is the my growing unease with using adorable, intelligent piggies as food. But just as much was the overall different-ness of this compared to what decades of experience have led me to expect from frozen pizza. Writing this blog has given me many opportunities to discover that new-and-different sometimes means better than anticipated, with new favorites displacing lifetime habits. But this is not one of those revelatory moments.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Trader Joe's Restaurant Style White Corn Tortilla Chips
When I see tortilla chips labeled "restaurant style," I expect them to have a noticeable thin sheen of oil, as if they were lifted from the deep fryer mere minutes ago. Admittedly, only a few packaged chips actually deliver on this. This TJ's offering is not among them.
These are perfectly acceptable tortilla chips, but they are completely generic and ordinary, indistinguishable from a thousand other brands--and indistinguishable from several other from TJ's own bewildering lineup of tortilla chips.
Will I buy it again?
I probably will, not because I especially like them, but just because I know that sooner or later I will forget which varieties of tortilla chips from Trader Joe's I've liked more than others. But it will be OK if I do; these will serve their purpose, even if they're not the best available.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Trader Joe's Baby Swiss Cheese Chalet Brand
Apparently, in this context, "baby" is a euphemism for "flavorless." Eat a piece of this cheese by itself, and you can tell, with a bit of effort, that it's Swiss. Put it on anything, however, and the flavor is so mild that it just vanishes.
Will I buy it again?
No. I like Swiss cheese, and I want to taste it.
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