Trader Joe's Cornbread Mix

This is the eighth of ten consecutive days of reviews of the things Nina and I tried at our all-Trader-Joe's Thanksgiving meal. 


I very much liked Trader Joe's Pumpkin Cornbread Mix, and since this is basically the same, sans pumpkin, I anticipated liking it, too. And I did.

I overcooked it a bit. The other two things that needed time in the oven for our Thanksgiving dinner both required 400 degrees. This specified 350. But I don't have two ovens, and time constraints precluded doing them sequentially. So I baked the cornbread at 400, with the other items, guessing at how much I should shorten the time to compensate. It wasn't perfect.

I liked the result anyway. Great flavor, good texture (a little dry, though I'm blaming myself for that). And super-easy to make.

Will I buy it again? 

Yes. I get a hankering for cornbread only once or twice a year, but when the urge hits, this will be my first choice for a mix.

Nina's View

I'm always skeptical of mixes. Cornbread is one of the things that are actually pretty easy to make from scratch, and so I cast an extra-dubious eye on this product.

I found the flavor of this cornbread rather flat and uninteresting. It had no fresh sweetness to it, no depth of corniness. Perhaps if it had not been quite so dry I would have liked it better, but I'm guessing probably not. 

Imma pass on this one in future.

Roundup

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


A story of kindness at Trader Joe's

Vote for your favorite Trader Joe's products 

Silver Lake Trader Joe's parking lot attendant injured in bicycle accident 

Federal judge dismisses lawsuit claim over Trader Joe's "soymilk" label

Pepperidge Farms sues Trader Joe's for trademark infringement 

"Let's Talk TJ's" podcast 

How Trader Joe's sells affordable goods 


Best tweets of the week:

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And finally, here's this week's cute cat in a Trader Joe's grocery bag:

Trader Joe's Pumpkin Ice Cream Super Premium

This is the seventh of ten consecutive days of reviews of the things Nina and I tried at our all-Trader-Joe's Thanksgiving meal. 


This is pretty good ice cream, though little about it suggests "pumpkin" to me. "Pumpkin spice," sure, but not "pumpkin." That is, the nutmeg/cinnamon/clove combination comes through much more strongly than actual pumpkin. However, as soon as I set aside my pre-formed ideas of what pumpkin ice cream would taste like, I found that I could enjoy it. It's soft, rich, creamy, and quite tasty. We had it on the side of slices of apple pie, and that turned out to be an excellent pairing of flavor profiles.

Will I buy it again? 

Probably not. It's enjoyable, but nowhere near the top of my range of preferred ice cream flavors. There's also a volume problem; Nina visits me for dinner once a week, but eating most of any ice cream I buy will still fall to me alone, and a quart seems like a lot to get through (and a lot of premium butterfat clogging my arteries). I prefer pint-sized cartons.

Nina's View

Meh. Pumpkin spice, with a vague back-of-the-tongue hint of pumpkin. It went well with the apple pie, but I can imagine no other reason to seek this out.

Trader Joe's Fire Roasted Vegetables With Balsamic Butter Sauce

This is the sixth of ten consecutive days of reviews of the things Nina and I tried at our all-Trader-Joe's Thanksgiving meal. 



This was the biggest fail of my Thanksgiving meal.

First fail: I picked it without adequate scrutiny of its contents. A glance at the picture on the front made me think it was mostly carrots and green beans and potatoes. It's actually mostly peppers and mushrooms, both of which I'll put up with but don't really like. It also contains a lot of pearl onions, and I think by now we all know how I feel about onions.

Second fail: I was trying to assemble a meal entirely of Trader Joe's products that neither Nina nor I had had before. But it turns out she had had this on her own previously--without telling me. She's sneaky like that. She seems to think that just because she's an adult and has her own house and income, she can buy and eat groceries all by herself without providing her boyfriend with an itemized list of what she's getting. Have all women become this uppity???

Third fail: I cooked them on the stove with the full recommended amount of oil, without stopping to think that that amount is for preparing the entire bag, while I was cooking only about one-third of the bag. The result was way, way too much oil, which I then had to strain off. Even after doing so, the veggies were left too oily.

Fourth fail: I just didn't like the taste of even the few components that I normally like. Caveat: I think the accumulation of the previous fails seriously predisposed me to a dim view of the product, so that I didn't give it a fair trial.

Bottom line: Ick.

Will I buy it again? 

Ick.

Nina's View

Clearly I am utter failure as a girlfriend. It's true that I did not mention I'd had these vegetables before. I have and I like them. My beloved's summation notwithstanding, they are not ick. They are yum.

They're at their best when served over something that can soak up the rather nice balsamic sauce. I enjoyed the flavor they added to the rather undistinguished mashed potatoes [review forthcoming]. Rice would also suit nicely. Or a thick slab of some nice artisanal bread.

It must be noted that Bob was SO sure he wouldn't like this that he prepared a minuscule quantity of this stuff, of which I ate by far the majority. I think if he were served many such items blindfolded, without the opportunity to be prejudiced in advance by the identification of things he knows he doesn't like, he would actually enjoy this mix.

Trader Joe's Apple Pie

This is the fifth of ten consecutive days of reviews of the things Nina and I tried at our all-Trader-Joe's Thanksgiving meal. 


I had serious misgivings about buying this, given our unpleasant experience with the Trader Joe's cherry pie. But Thanksgiving dinner isn't complete without pie, so an all-Trader Joe's Thanksgiving means a Trader Joe's pie.

Fortunately, this is nothing like the cherry pie. (Except, y'know, that they're both pies.) As the most noticeable difference, look at how thick it is in that second photo above! I've never seen so much apple crammed into a pie before--either commercial or homemade.

Second, it tastes good. Now, that requires a little caveat; it depends entirely on expectations. Had I made this myself, I'd be proud just for not having screwed it up in some major way. If my mother had made it, I'd say she was off her game. If it had come from a small, neighborhood bakery, where everything is made by hand, I'd be disappointed and pick a different source for my next one. But for a mass-produced commercial product, it's surprisingly good.

Will I buy it again? 

Probably not--even though it's about as good as you can expect from such a product. But I have two fine bakeries within a mile of my house, so when I want a really nice pie, that's where I'm going to turn instead of any grocery-store item. Put another way, this was a reasonably successful experiment, but I don't think it's the way one should buy pies.

Nina's View

I pretty much concur with Bob's assessment. This item would, however, be greatly improved by ten minutes in a nice hot oven. That would relieve the crust of its pasty, flabby quality and put a little bit of a tan on it and impart some flakiness.

Trader Joe's Cranberry Sauce

This is the fourth of ten consecutive days of reviews of the things Nina and I tried at our all-Trader-Joe's Thanksgiving meal. 


I had planned to buy either Trader Joe's fresh cranberry sauce or their cranberry-orange relish--both refrigerated products--as I have seen both of them praised by their fans many times. But when I got to the store Wednesday morning, the day before Thanksgiving, they were sold out of both! ARGH! The all-Trader-Joe's meal plan was in jeopardy! But a helpful employee apologized for the situation, and helpfully suggested that I try this instead, which he referred to as their "shelf-stabilized" cranberry sauce. I took it.

There's nothing in it except cranberries, sugar, water, and pectin--which led me to expect it to be like the famous canned cranberry sauce that comes out in a solid, gelatinous whole, with the indentations of the can still molded into it. Now, there's nothing wrong with that stuff; both Nina and I are among the millions who like it. But it's more like cranberry Jello than anything substantial, like, y'know, actual food.

This, surprisingly, was not like that. It has real cranberries in it, which makes a big difference in both taste and texture. You spoon it rather than slice it. It's an excellent accompaniment to the turkey-less roast we had.

Will I buy it again? 

Eventually, sure. But I buy cranberry sauce only about once a year, and I'm determined to try TJ's more-famous fresh products, so it will probably be a good long while before I revisit this one.

Nina's View

I LIKE cranberry sauce—jelly, really—out of the can (Ocean Spray FTW). It is the One True Accompaniment to a Thanksgiving meal.

This stuff has a nice flavor, but I don't enjoy the deflated tough cranberry skins in the mix. I've never liked those. Ever. This product did not change my mind on that question.

I am willing to try the various fresh relishes because those have a completely different texture and raison d'etre. I will not return to this cranberry sauce.

Trader Joe's Sparkling Apple Cider

This is the third of ten consecutive days of reviews of the things Nina and I tried at our all-Trader-Joe's Thanksgiving meal. 


I usually have one or two bottles of a sparkling juice (apple or grape) per year. I most often have purchased either Martinelli's or Welch's. I wasn't even aware that Trader Joe's carried such a product until about two weeks ago when my daily Google News alert about TJ's brought me this Washington Post comparison test. The TJ's product scored second highest, and was the cheapest of the lot. Naturally, it immediately took a place on my Thanksgiving dinner menu.

Without comparing them side by side, I can't be sure whether it's a little better or a little worse than the two brands I usually buy. But it's close enough that I didn't care. Any of them will do, I think, as a non-alcoholic, festive-feeling substitute for champagne. Nina and I polished off the bottle in one sitting.

Will I buy it again? 

Yes. Maybe for New Year's, I'll get the other two and try them all together. Or maybe instead I'll try the other sparkling juices in the TJ's line (pomegranate, cranberry) that I noticed while looking for this one.

Nina's View

Bubbly apple juice. Perfectly acceptable, entirely unremarkable. On the other hand, I separately bought and drank this stuff: Henry Hotspur's Hard Pressed for Cider. It is delicious and just a wee bit alcoholic.