Trader Joe's Orange Cardamom Muffins

These were just so-so. A little too dry. Orange flavor was present, but muted rather than prominent. After eating two, I couldn't detect anything that I thought might be the cardamom. But I had never tasted cardamom in isolation, so I didn't really know what to expect. So I sampled some from Nina's spice rack. Even with that experience freshly in mind, I was unable to taste any cardamom in the last two muffins.


Will I buy it again? 



via GIPHY

Trader Joe's Seltzer Water Flavored With Blood Orange And Orange Juice

Neither Nina nor I liked this on first tasting. But I had two cans left, so I drank them a few days apart. I ended up liking it a bit more than my original impression--but not enough to want any more of it. I have to work hard to identify specifically blood orange, rather than plain orange, but I do think it's in there. Overall, though, I think it's just too carbonated and not flavorful enough.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Gluten Free Cranberry Orange Cake

The texture of this is not bad for a gluten-free cake--surprisingly normal, in fact.

The flavor is strong on the orange, not so much on the cranberry portion. I didn't like the big dollops of icing on top. Let's stick to the traditional even layer, please.


Will I buy it again? 

No, it didn't excite me that much. But if you're going to have holiday guests who eat gluten-free, it's not a bad choice.

Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Orange Sticks

One of the earliest members of my Top Ten list was TJ's Chocolate Orange Sticks. Like so many great TJ's products, they just vanished one day, never to return. No warning, no explanation. They're ghosted, as the kids like to say these days.

So I was surprised when this new version showed up. They're the same basic idea--an orange jelly coated in dark chocolate--but a different size and shape.

They're not as perfect as my memory has the departed original, but they're still pretty damn good.


Will I buy it again? 

Many, many times, I expect.

Trader Joe's Sparkling Mandarin Orange Spring Water

This is the second of four flavors in Trader Joe's new line of sparkling waters. I reviewed the raspberry-lime version here.

I did not like this one as much. This is probably attributable to nothing other than my general preference of raspberry over orange. Nina said she liked this one better. De gustibus, etc.

It has the same heavy carbonation as the raspberry. I found it had less of the false sensation of sweetness.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Chocolate Cara Cara Caramels

I get the feeling that somebody, somewhere, decided to make a candy combining caramel and a particular variety of orange as soon as they realized the name could be "Cara Cara Caramels." Kind of surprisingly, the combination works as well in terms of taste as it does in the name. Tasty, bite-sized morsels of goodness with an intriguing, well-calibrated blend of three dominant flavors.


Will I buy it again? 

Probably not, unless maybe as a gift to a chocolate lover. It was interesting and delightful to try once, but didn't endear me enough to keep going back for more.

Trader Joe's Cara Cara Navel Oranges

I picked this up because I was intrigued by the teaser on the bag: "I'm an orange, but I'm pink."

And they kinda are, on the inside. Not as pink as pink grapefruit, not as dark red as blood oranges, but definitely pinker than standard oranges.

Incidentally, "Cara Cara" is a variety name, not a Trader Joe's thing. See Wikipedia, here.

I've had four of these now. In terms of flavor, one was outstanding. One was quite poor. Two were pretty average. All were admirably juicy.


Will I buy it again? 

No. It was an interesting experiment, but other than the novelty of the color, I'm not seeing any compelling reason to choose these over more typical varieties.

Trader Joe's Mandarin Oranges

I used to eat canned Mandarin oranges a lot when I was young--usually Three Diamond brand, I think. These from Trader Joe's seem identical to my memory of those. Maybe the syrup is a little less sweet, or maybe that's just my imagination working, as prompted by the "light syrup" on the label.


Will I buy it again? 

I doubt it. It had been at least 20 years since I had bought any canned Mandarin oranges before this. They're OK, but when I get a yen for something snacky, it's never this. But if I did suddenly develop such an urge, or needed Mandarin oranges for a recipe, these would do as well as any others.

Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Orange

Nina bought this. I'm glad she did. I had passed it by several times, thinking it probably wouldn't be very good. I was wrong. It's excellent. They balanced the dark chocolate and orange flavors just right. And the thing really does break apart cleanly, as promised--which I wouldn't have believed without seeing it for myself.


Will I buy it again? 

I'd be happy to get one in my stocking every Christmas.

Velamints Blood Orange Sugar Free Mints

This is Day Six of New Products Week. 


The word "mints" here is apparently used to designate small, hard candies, not necessarily candies with mint in them. At least I could detect none. The flavor seems to be all blood orange. It's really good--distinct and readily identifiable.

I'm not sure these will do much for bad breath, but just for something to suck on to get a little simulacrum of blood orange (not that that's something you ever realized you needed), these are perfect.


Will I buy it again? 

Yes.

Nina's View

I really like these. They are delicious. I looked for them last time at TJ's and couldn't find them and was disappointed.

Trader Joe's 100% Pure Florida Orange Juice Not From Concentrate With Calcium And Vitamin D

I kind of randomly picked this carton from the bewildering array of cartons of orange juice at Trader Joe's. I wasn't even sure whether it was one I had had before, until I got home and checked the blog archives.

This is now the sixth variety of TJ's orange juice I've had (seventh if you include the frozen concentrate). And it's the worst. It's utterly lifeless, plus having a weird additional chemical flavor. The overall impression is that it was created by a mad scientist's earnest attempt to synthesize orange juice after all the world's orange trees have succumbed to some sort of awful blight.


Will I buy it again? 

No. Get this one instead.

Trader Joe's Mandarins

A friend emailed me a while back, encouraging me to try Trader Joe's mandarins in a bag: "One of the best things they sell.... I haven't had a dry, disappointing one yet -- unlike the little oranges you get at, say, Cub."

So I bought a bag.

It's true that none were inedible, but my sample of one bag wasn't the joy I had hoped it would be. There was quite a bit of variation in the degree of sweetness and juiciness. A few were really good, most just kind of average, none much below average. All were easy to peel, which is in itself a minor miracle. I found only two seeds in the whole bagful--both, by odd coincidence, in the very last piece of fruit.


Will I buy it again? 

No. Not so much because they were bad, but because a whole bag really pushes the limit of how many time I'll want to snack on the same kind of fruit in the amount of time I have before they go bad.

But there's a quality issue in addition to the quantity issue: TJ's "stems and leaves" California mandarins were of higher average quality and more consistent, and have the added advantage (for me) of coming in smaller numbers. Of course, these differences may just be artifacts of having had such a small sample of each, so perhaps more experience would change my perspective.

Trader Joe's California Stem & Leaf Mandarins

These are good Mandarin oranges. They're easy to peel, sweet, and juicy. I didn't encounter a bad one in the bunch. I'm not sure why the stems and leaves are left on, nor why this feature is deemed important enough to emphasize in the name of the product. But I don't care much, as long as the fruit is good--and it is.


Will I buy it again? 

Yes.

Trader Joe's Seville Orange Marmalade

Every time I had some of this stuff, it seemed bitter. I couldn't figure out how you could take oranges, add sugar and thickeners, and end up with something bitter. Finally, as I sat down to write this review, I read the back of the jar: "Seville oranges, also known as bitter oranges, are the back-bone [sic] of a proper orange marmalade." So apparently it's intentional. I had never heard of Seville oranges before, so I didn't understand that the name meant I was signing up for bitterness.

Do not like.


Will I buy it again? 

No. In fact, after having eaten about 1/3 of the jar, the rest is going back for a refund.

For those keeping track, I've now returned something like 20 items. I've purchased something like 700 different products from Trader Joe's, so my return rate is on the order of 3%.

Villa Italia soda

No point in wasting time here: These are the best sodas I have ever had. They are both blow-you-away good. I can't decide which is #1 and which is #2. Whichever one I'm drinking at the moment is my favorite.

Both are going on my Top Ten list.

The only problem with them is that they are expensive, as soda goes: $2.99 for a 1-liter bottle. Which means that they can't be an every-day drink. But for an occasional treat, there's nothing better.


Will I buy it again? 

Silly question.

Nina's View

What Bob said. Very good. 

Trader Joe's Chicken-Less Mandarin Orange Morsels

I like these nuggets. I like them a lot. After the fabulous soy chorizo, I think they are my favorite of the TJ's lineup of fake-meat products.

Gardein makes a very similar product. Comparing its ingredients list to that of the TJ's, they are basically the same, though in slightly different order. I would not be surprised to learn that Gardein makes these for TJ's, with a recipe slightly tweaked to TJ's specifications.

I did not compare TJ's and Gardein side by side, but I did have them on consecutive days. I thought the TJ's were a little more tender, but the difference was small enough that it might have been some unintended variation in how I prepared them.

The big difference, however, is in the sauce. I had a strong and clear preference for TJ's orange sauce. This may simply be, as Nina teased me, that it's sweeter. If so, I'll take the rap. If a little sugar can get me to eat this instead of an actual chicken, I think the world's a teeny tiny bit better place for the trade-off.


Will I buy it again? 

Definitely.

Trader Joe's Orange Peach Mango 100% Juice

I kind of knew from the outset that I would be disappointed in this juice, that it wouldn't be the wonderfulness that a blend of orange, peach, and mango juices by rights ought to be. But I bought it anyway. And was duly disappointed.

It's yet another in Trader Joe's infinite lineup of luscious-sounding but nearly interchangeable juice blends, which are primarily grape and apple juice with varying amounts of minor ingredients added to shift the flavor profile a little this way or that way. With all of them, you get a general, gestalt sense of fruitiness rather than distinctly identifiable components.

Trader Joe's, would it really be prohibitively difficult and/or expensive to take some orange juice, some peach juice, some mango juice, and put them in a carton without adulterating the blend with grape juice, apple juice, and pineapple juice? It would be so wonderful to drink that, whereas this is just sad.

Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Organic Orange Strawberry Banana Juice

Here's a quick quiz to help you figure out whether you're ready to make it as a purveyor of specialty grocery items.

You have decided to introduce a product called "Organic Orange Strawberry Banana Juice." What should its ingredients be? Choose as many as you think appropriate.

A. Orange.

B. Apple.

C. Grape.

D. Pineapple.

E. Strawberry.

F. Banana.

Did you select A, E, and F? Ha! You fool! You'll never make it in the business. At least you won't get a job as a product developer at Trader Joe's.

You see, at Trader Joe's, they understand that orange-strawberry-banana juice should actually contain more apple, grape, and pineapple juice than strawberry or banana. That's why the ingredients are listed, from most to least, in the order shown above. Why? Probably because apple, grape, and pineapple are cheaper than strawberry and banana, and as long as the resulting blend is vaguely fruity, the stupid American consumer will never notice the difference.

Well, this stupid American consumer did. There is no difficulty tasting orange and banana here, but I defy anybody to drink a glass of this--without knowing its name--and identify strawberry as a principal ingredient.

Worse, the ingredients that one does taste are generic, to the point of being uncertain whether they're real. Sure, there's something orangey here, but I was left furrowing my brow and wondering whether I was tasting actual orange juice or some unknown liquid that had been chemically enhanced to resemble orange juice. Same with the banana. They are about as far from tasting like fresh-squeezed fruit as they can get and still be identifiable as orange and banana.

The result is not undrinkably horrid. But stop for a minute, close your eyes, call to mind what a really good orange tastes like to eat.

Now a strawberry.

Now a banana.

Got it?

OK, now imagine those three being released on your taste buds all at once.

Do you have that sensory experience firmly in your imagination?

Great. Now take a swig of this TJ's blend, and see how it compares. I promise you, there is no emotional state possible from this experiment other than grave disappointment.

Will I buy it again? 

No. I would buy in a heartbeat a carton of actual high-quality juices from these three fruits. But that is so not what this stuff is.

Nina's View

Yet another TJ's juice blend FAIL. It certainly seems like a triumph of hope over experience that Bob keeps buying and bringing these concoctions home.

The worst thing about this juice, even worse than the incredible vanishing strawberry, is the nasty, almost chemical taste of the banana contribution.

I took three sips of this juice—each time but one saying to myself "Ick. It can't actually be this bad, can it? Let me try again." I then turned the remainder of my glass over to Bob. I see no reason to ever insult my tastebuds with this stuff again.

Trader Joe's French Liquid Soap, Orange Blossom Honey

For more years than I care to try to calculate, I've been a loyal user of Softsoap, and specifically their "Soothing Aloe Vera" variety. I'm a frequent hand-washer, so this soap's most important quality is that it's non-drying. Additionally, it doesn't have antimicrobial ingredients (completely unnecessary in soap), it's pleasant to the touch, and it has no heavy scents. I buy it in gallon jugs to refill the dispensers, which also makes it highly economical. Frankly, it's going to be hard for anything to displace my preference for this stuff. But I'm willing to try, for the sake of my devoted readers. That's just the kind of guy I am.

I love honey, so when I decided to give TJ's a chance to win me over with a liquid hand soap, and I discovered that they carry a bunch of different kinds, the "orange blossom honey" thing jumped out at me.

It's certainly true that this looks like a bottle full of honey. Moreover, when you squirt a little into your hand, it definitely smells like honey. But I want you to consider two things: First, it's hard to think of why anybody would want to wash his or her hands with honey. Second: There's no actual honey listed in the ingredients. No actual orange, either. So basically it's a mixture of oils and glycerin, with artificial honey and orange scents added. Which, granted, is pleasant enough at first, but I found it to grow tiresome quickly. It's also several times more expensive than Softsoap, with no large-sized refills available.

Will I buy it again? 

Because this is an actual product of France, and bears the "Trader Jacques" label, I think it's only fitting that I let my answer come from Marcel Marceau, with his famous gag from "Silent Movie":






Nina's View

It's pleasant, and doesn't seem to be too drying, which is nice in a handsoap. The fragrance is okay. But my go-to handsoap is Method's Sweet Water, which has a lovely light neutral scent, and which comes in bulk refill bags for my dispenser. Not giving THAT up.

I do, however, favor TJ's Lavender hand and body lotion, which I first encountered in my friend Sonali's house. Nice, nice stuff. It won't replace my staple Curél for after bath lotion, but it does grace the downstairs bathroom for the enjoyment of my guests.

Trader Joe's Organic Orange Juice, No Pulp, Not From Concentrate

If I counted correctly the last time I was at the store, Trader Joe's carries eight kinds of orange juice in the refrigerated section, plus the frozen concentrate. The varieties are kind of bewildering: you have to pick from fresh-squeezed/not from concentrate/from concentrate; organic or not; no pulp/regular pulp/extra pulp; and with/without added calcium. I don't seriously propose to try and report on every one of those variants. Heck, I wasn't even planning to do any of them, until Nina got sick and requested OJ as part of a care package I was going to deliver to her.

But having tried a couple, I wanted to go for their top-of-the-line with the fresh-squeezed. Then when that was kind of disappointing, I wondered if anything else was worth trying. This one caught my eye. I'm not usually one to care about organic versus non-organic, at least as far as things like juice are concerned. But I held out a glimmer of hope that maybe it would be better than the others.

And it is! Or at least it's clearly better--in the sense of being both sweeter and more genuinely orangey--than the ones I had tried prior to the fresh-squeezed. It's close to what I remember of the fresh-squeezed, but it's been a week since I had that, and my sensory memory isn't refined enough to do a reliable comparison of similar items spaced that far in time.

However, it also costs quite a bit more than any except the fresh-squeezed: 64 ounces is $3.99, compared to $3.29 for the most comparable non-organic variety TJ's sells. On the other hand, it's a lot less than the $5.49 you'd have to shell out for the same amount of their fresh-squeezed. So maybe it's a reasonable compromise. Or if you're willing to go cheap, $1.99 will get you 64 ounces of the stuff they have reconstituted from concentrate for you. Your call.

Was it better because it's organic? I doubt it. I think it's more likely that it's just batch-to-batch variation. I suspect that I got unlucky with the fresh-squeezed sample, and lucky with this one.

Will I buy it again? 

I well might. It's very tasty, extremely convenient (compared to mixing up the frozen concentrate), and no more expensive per ounce than the mediocre frozen concentrates that I've been using all my life.

Nina's View

I rarely buy orange juice these days. But if I were going to buy orange juice, I would buy this.