Trader Joe's Butternut Squash Parmigiana With An Amaretti Crunch

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


I had never noticed this item in the store, but a couple of weeks ago my friend Jessica Welman gave me a heads-up that I should try it, so I decided to include it in our Thanksgiving feast.

I'm glad I did. I'm kind of so-so on squash generally, but it turns out that if you add cheese and a sweet/nutty crunchy topping, it's great! I definitely liked it better than the butternut squash and spinach gratin that we had a week or so ago.

Once again, Trader Joe's cook times are on the low side. I gave it 5 minutes more in the oven than recommended, and it still wasn't hot and needed some last-minute microwaving before serving.

Will I buy it again? 

Yes. It's an excellent side dish to the fake-turkey roast reviewed yesterday.

Nina's View

There were a couple of mild annoyances with this dish. It had frozen in a sloshed position, so the cookie crumble topping was unevenly distributed. It needed extra heating (I'm not sure the TJ's timing is to blame here. Bob's oven was filled with stuff, and this was crammed up against other dishes. That means it probably didn't get the proper air circulation for heating through), but it had dried out in the oven, so it was a little chewer/tougher than it ought to be. The flavors were nice. 

Due to cheese content, I won't be buying this, but it was a nice side dish for our meal.

Trader Joe's Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast With Gravy

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


I saw this last year around the holidays and almost bought one, but I was put off by its size--it says it feeds eight. But when I decided to do Thanksgiving dinner for us this year, and to do it all with products from Trader Joe's, I knew this had to be the main course.

While looking online for other reviews in order to know what to expect, I ran across somebody mentioning this very similar product from Gardein. If you compare the size, ingredients, and general appearance of these two items, I think you'll agree that it's highly likely that Gardein is the manufacturer for TJ's. (They're not identical, but close enough that I strongly suspect TJ's asked Gardein to make a few tweaks to the original product to be sold under the TJ's label.) This was good news, because Nina and I have had several meat-substitute products from Gardein, and they are uniformly excellent.

This proved to be no exception. I don't think it will fool anybody into thinking it's turkey, but it's good. The protein is a combination of soy and gluten. It comes with vegan gravy, which I thought was the best part, enhancing both the roast and the mashed potatoes I made on the side.

Given TJ's known propensity to understate cooking times, I baked this for 50 minutes instead of the recommended 40-45. It came out just right that way.

It stuck to the roasting pan more than I anticipated. If I did it again, I would give the pan a spritz of Pam before cooking.

The stuffing allegedly contains cranberries, but I couldn't detect any.

All in all, a success.

Will I buy it again? 

Definitely.

Nina's View

I thought this was really quite good, if a tad bland. Were I preparing it, I would amp up the flavor profile a little with some herbs. But the texture is excellent and the gravy is very nice. This makes an entirely acceptable main course for a celebratory meal.

Roundup

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


Holiday feast costs 22% more at Whole Foods than at Trader Joe's 

Turning down Trader Joe's was good move for cookie maker 

Trader Joe's holiday survival guide 



Best tweets of the week:

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4.

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

Trader Joe's Wild Grapevine Wreath

I lucked out, and get to review this without buying it. The woman who lives in the apartment next to mine hung this one up, with the store label still on it! (I don't think she even knows that I do a Trader Joe's blog.)

It's certainly rustic, and has a sort of found-art beauty. It has no aroma, which you might see as an advantage if you're sensitive to smells, or a disadvantage if you want your holiday wreath to smell like pine.

For me, the thing just looks a little too Jesus-crown-of-thorns-y, even though there aren't any actual thorns, and it's at least twice as big around. I suppose you could dress it up with some brightening elements that would reduce or eliminate that issue.

But you know what bothers me the most? It's this: Trader Joe's has a guacamole named "Avocado's Number,"* carrots named "Trader Joe's and the Carrots of Many Colors," bran muffins named "Moral Fiber," and fruit bars named, "This Strawberry Walked into a Bar." Yet this same company completely failed in the product naming process here. Because this item absolutely should have been called "The Grapes of Wreath." Case closed.

Will I buy it again? 

No.


*If you don't get the joke, see here.

Trader Joe's Caramel And Dark Chocolate Popcorn Crunch With Almonds, Pecans, Walnuts And Cashews

Nina bought this and together we ate about half of the package after dinner last week. Once again, I'm really not the guy to be reviewing this, since I consider nuts something to be tolerated when necessary, but never enjoyed. (I know. I'm weird. Don't judge.)

Some of the popcorn is caramel-coated, though I don't think it's the same formula as the wonderful TJ's caramel popcorn. This part was OK.

Some of the popcorn is coated in dark chocolate. I didn't care for this much. I just don't think popcorn and chocolate go together well.

Some of what appear to be chocolate-coated pieces of popcorn turn out to be chocolate-coated nuts. This should be illegal.

Will I buy it again? 

No.

Nina's View

This was a purchasing FAIL on my part. I was beguiled by the festive packaging, highlighting caramel and chocolate, and didn't read the curly fine print. "Bob likes caramel popcorn and chocolate, I bet he'll like this!" says I to myself. ("And I'm sure I can choke down a few bits myself.")

Once I got it home I saw my error, but I served it up, caveats and all.

SUUUUUUUGGGGARRRRRRR.

Tasty sugar. And chocolate. And nuts. And salt.

I'll be finishing this up. My thighs are not amused.

Trader Joe's Turkey Pot Pie

Happy Thanksgiving!

I noticed this item in the refrigerated case in mid-October while looking for something else. I had never noticed or heard of it before. Maybe it's available only seasonally--I don't know. But since I only rarely buy products that contain turkey, I thought it would make a good blog post for Thanksgiving Day.

Now I kinda wish I were back to my days of ignorance of this item--because it's really, really good. Big chunks of turkey breast, flaky crust that browns beautifully in exactly the specified time, cornbread stuffing (the only kind worth eating), some veggies (onions present, but muted enough that they can be ignored). And, not noted in the product description on the cover, cranberries, which add a perfect amount of fruity tartness.

Officially this makes 2 1/2 servings. Unofficially, I ate half of it, and could have gobbled down the second half, in spite of having had some applesauce, broccoli, and potato chips with my lunch at the same time. But I realized that doing so would take me past full into the "uncomfortable waistband" zone, so I resisted the temptation, and saved the second half for the next day. Nevertheless, that's how successfully it left me wanting more.

Will I buy it again? 

Yes, dammit. TJ's has thrown another obstacle in my slow, meandering path toward true vegetarianism. If I'm lucky, I'll discover that this is available only in autumn, and I will have to resist temptation for only a small part of the year.


Update, January 7, 2016 

I had another one of these this week. It was quite different--and not nearly as good. Some of the difference is probably because I heated this one in the microwave instead of a regular oven; let me suggest that you not do that. But even accounting for that, the composition seemed different. Specifically, I found less cornbread and more onion. I suppose this is just some batch-to-batch variation, but I was not happy about it.

A Trader Joe's Thanksgiving

Nina has done Thanksgiving for us in both of the previous Novembers that I've been in Asheville. She didn't sound enthusiastic about cooking again this year, so I volunteered.

My plan was to have everything on the menu come from Trader Joe's, and, as an additional challenge, have them all be things that neither of us has tried before. After quite a bit of fiddling with the list, I settled on the items above.

Note 1: I didn't have any specific vegetable item in mind, but I knew that there were many in the frozen section that we hadn't tried before. The "Fire Roasted Vegetables" was the first one I saw that looked like it would work.

Note 2: I had planned to get either the Fresh Cranberry Sauce or the Cranberry-Orange Relish, but my store was out of both of them, dammit. I had to settle for the jar of rather ordinary-looking cranberry sauce, which probably won't be as good. Oh well.

I'll probably do nine consecutive days of posts about these products starting within the next couple of weeks. Maybe I'll call it "Thanksgiving Review Week."

Happy Thanksgiving!