Trader Joe's Organic White Corn Tortilla Chips

Trader Joe's has so many different varieties of tortilla chips that I honestly can't keep them straight in my brain. I grabbed this one not sure if I had previously bought and reviewed it. Turns out that I haven't. But looking over my list of posts, it's not hard to understand my confusion. I have, after all, reviewed Trader Joe's Unsalted Organic White Corn Tortilla Chips, TJ's Salted Tortilla Chips, TJ's Restaurant Style White Corn Tortilla Chips, TJ's Reduced Guilt White Corn Tortilla Chips, TJ's Longboards Organic Tortilla Chips, and TJ's Organic Yellow Corn Tortilla Chip Rounds. And that's just the "normal" lineup of chips--meaning white or yellow corn tortilla chips. Then there are the blue corn ones, the multigrain ones, the ones with quinoa and amarinth, the ones with flax and/or soy added, the ones made from sweet potatoes or pumpkins, etc.

I say it again: TRADER JOE'S HAS TOO MANY KINDS OF TORTILLA CHIPS! NOBODY NEEDS SO MANY SIMILAR PRODUCTS!

Anyway.

I thought these had superior corn taste. They were considerably saltier than most TJ's tortilla chips, which is a good thing, though I realize this may be just batch-to-batch variation. They are also thinner than most. That gives them a delicate crunch, which is delightful to chew on, but a little fragile for scooping up dense hummus, which is what I mostly use them for.

They're a good choice overall--if you can manage to remember the exact combination of words to look for on the label.

Will I buy it again? 

Undoubtedly--and I will probably be just as confused the next time about whether I've had them before as I was this time.

Trader Joe's Organic Power To The Greens

Here's what Trader Joe's said about this product in an issue of the Fearless Flyer last year:

In a world, where some speak of super foods, and many whisper of wellness, only Trader Joe's has the power to change your life… one leaf at a time. Trader Joe's Organic Power to the Greens will make you better, stronger, faster, causing a rift in the time-space continuum that will give you eternal youth and the strength of a thousand men.* 

*Not really. We made that up. 

That's a lot to live up to. I have not yet noticed having gained the strength of a thousand men. Ten, maybe, but not a thousand.

However, this stuff does contribute to a nice salad. I didn't even try eating it alone, because the combination of spinach, kale, and chard, without dilution by more mild components like lettuce, I just knew would be like eating lawn clippings. I tossed it with a bag of TJ's butter lettuce and radicchio. Together they made a salad that was easy to eat, and had just enough of an edge of seriousness that it felt like I was being infused with at least a trickle of superpowers. It wasn't quite Popeye downing a can of spinach, but it was close enough--and I don't think I could do that anyway.

The bitterness from the kale and chard made the overall taste a little less easy to enjoy than when I mixed the same lettuce/radicchio base with TJ's baby spinach. But there was a lot more crunch and variety of textures and colors this way, and probably a better assortment of nutrients, too, though I didn't look into that.

Will I buy it again? 

Yes. I think this two-bag blend I concocted is an excellent salad. I think I might play with it further, adding this and that and the other thing, and see what happens.

Nina's View

The Catalina dressing is in the trash bin and Bob is tinkering with salad composition. My work here is done. \o/


Addendum 

In the months since the above was written, I have continued to buy a bag of this stuff almost every week. Combined with any one of a few different TJ's bags of lettuce, it is a salad combo that I nearly always have in my refrigerator. Highly recommended. 

Trader Joe's Turkey and Stuffing Seasoned Kettle Chips

This product is a fraud. A sham. A deception. It is lying to you.

If I had sampled these chips without being told the name on the bag, and then been asked to guess what food item(s) the seasoning was supposed to be imitating, "turkey and stuffing" would not have been among my first ten guesses. Nothing about them triggers my memory of turkey and stuffing.

The underlying chips are fine. But the seasoning is, well, just kind of weird. It doesn't even feel like it's trying to be anything in particular--as if the seasonings were just randomly chosen from the shelf and thrown in blindly. This is in stark contrast to the way that TJ's Ghost Pepper chips or South African chips have a sense of unity of intent to their seasoning blends. Heck, even the far less complex salt and vinegar chips and the salt and pepper ridge-cut chips succeed better at being a clear, distinct, purposeful thing. The "turkey and stuffing" seasoning, by contrast, is just puzzling to my tongue. From the title, I know what it's supposed to be, but it's not that--nor anything else, either.

I will, however, give credit to Trader Joe's for ambition. Trying to recreate turkey and stuffing in a potato chip is just ridiculously audacious, and I love them for it. It's the kind of product creativity that TJ's cranks out on an impressively regular basis, while other grocery stores add a 47th brand of chocolate ice cream to the freezer and call it a day.

TJ's swung for the fences with this one, like Casey at his third pitch: "And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow!" But Trader Joe's, like the sturdy batsman, has struck out.

Other opinions 

This is another item on which my e-friend and fellow TJ's blogger Susan (and her husband/co-blogger David) disagree completely. For a radically different perspective, see their review here.

EDIT: Now the nice (but slightly crazy) folks at the "What's Good at Trader Joe's" blog have weighed in, assigning this item a perfect score of 10/10. So for another radically different opinion from mine, see here.

Will I buy it again? 

No.


Nina's View 

I ate exactly ONE of these (after ascertaining that they did not, in fact, have any actually turkey content).

ONE potato chip. Out of a full bag. ONE.

That should tell you everything you need to know about this product.

Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Covered Marshmallows

When I spotted these in the TJ's candy aisle in late January, I was both perplexed and delighted. I thought they were the Dark Chocolate Minty Mallows, still on sale well after the season for them should have ended. Closer examination, however, revealed that they were not the same thing.

They're similar, however, and it seems obvious in retrospect that the seasonal version must be a variation on this original. I can discern only two differences between them. First, these are round, while the minty ones are squarish--which is puzzling, but of no consequence.

Second, of course, is the absence of the peppermint flavoring in the marshmallow center. And that turns out to make all the difference. Without the peppermint, these lose most of their appeal. They seem lifeless and dull. They're not horrible--not by a long shot. I'm happy to eat them. But they don't make all the synapses in my brain light up with joy the way the minty ones do.

Had I encountered these before the Minty Mallows, I might have liked them more. Sadly, though, they are made less appealing by knowledge of the existence of a better version of the same basic concept.

Will I buy it again? 

No. I'll wait for December and get the good ones.

Roundup

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


Trader Joe's promotes giving out vegetables for Halloween 

10 healthiest frozen foods you can buy at Trader Joe's 

10 best buys at Trader Joe's 

A shopping guide for pumpkin lovers

Trader Joe's 24 best pumpkin products ranked 

It's the season for pumpkin madness 

Differing consumer perceptions of Trader Joe's and Whole Foods 

Drinking cheap at Trader Joe's: A guide 

The pumpkinification of America: A rant and review 

Episode 11 of the "Let's Talk TJ's" podcast 

15 Trader Joe's grocery staples for busy people 

Four grocers that are grabbing budget-conscious consumers 

5 favorite pumpkin items from Trader Joe's 


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




Best tweets of the week:

1.

2.

3.

4.

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

Trader Joe's Halloween Mini Cupcakes

These are the same as Trader Joe's regular mini cupcakes (which I have had, and reviewed, but the post is forthcoming--stuck in the long queue), except with special holiday-themed decoration. They're surprisingly good for industrial cupcakes--sweet and moist and tasty, with a good balance of cupcake to frosting. I can eat a lot of them. But I suppose what's most important is just that you know to look for them very, very soon, because they're obviously not going to be around for much longer.

Will I buy it again? 

Sure--next year.

Trader Joe's Flash Pasteurized Apple Juice

I wish I had a better sensory memory. It fails me again and again. On several occasions while writing this blog, I have compared Product B to my memory of Product A, then later compared A and B side by side. Almost every time, these two processes reach different conclusions, because I just can't call to mind with vividness or specificity a recollection of what something tasted like when I ate it weeks or months before.

It happened again with this juice.

I went to Trader Joe's intending to buy the Honey Crisp Apple Cider that I liked last year. I had been reminded of it by this glowing, 5-star review at the "Trader Joe's 365" blog. But then I came across this "flash pasteurized" apple juice in the refrigerated case first, and the temptation to try something new beat out my desire to renew an old pleasure.

I drank a few ounces of it every morning for a few days and was really liking it. I was thinking that it was a serious contender to displace the HCAC as my all-time favorite apple juice. Quite obviously, this required a face-to-face showdown. So back to the store I went, and last night with my weekly dinner with Nina, I poured us side-by-side glasses of HCAC and flash-pasteurized.

I had imagined this battle as the contest between roughly equal titans, like Ali versus Frazier. Godzilla versus King Kong. But it turned out to be a completely unfair, one-sided fight, more like Godzilla versus Bambi.

The flash-pasteurized is excellent apple juice; let there be no mistake about that. It's a far cry better than the clear, boring, too-sweet apple juice that you usually get in a typical grocery store. (And even from TJ's.) As I said, when I was just drinking it in isolation, my impression was that it was among the best apple juices I've ever had--and it is.

But put it next to the HCAC, and it pales. The HCAC is just more rich and pure, like what you would get if you took the trouble to juice apples in your own kitchen. In fact, last night's taste test leads me to conclude that, even though I praised the HCAC in my original review, I didn't give it enough love. I am now going back and updating that post to reflect my new judgment that it deserves to be on my Top Ten list. I think it is to other apple juices what TJ's Gravenstein applesauce is to ordinary applesauce: so far superior that when they're available, you'd be a fool to choose anything else.

My next TJ's trip, I'm going to pick up about three jugs of the HCAC so that I can still be enjoying it occasionally during the long months it's out of season and unavailable.

For another perspective on the flash-pasteurized, see this seven-product comparison.

Will I buy it again? 

If it's available all year, when HCAC isn't, then yes. But I think (don't quote me on this) that it's available only in autumn, like the HCAC. If so, then no--I would never choose it.


Nina's View

So, I'm not a huge fan of Honey Crisp apples. And yet, the Honey Crisp Cider is a winner precisely because it tastes exactly like an apple (albeit not my favorite variety). Not like apple juice from a jar, but like an actual apple. This is enough to make it stand way ahead of any random blend. Short of using your own juicer, this is about as close as you're going to get to essence-of-apple.

I really wish they made a Gravenstein apple juice, because I much prefer the character of the Gravenstein. Ya listening, TJ???