Trader Joe's Turkey Pot Pie Bites

First, let's address the serving size of these little morsels. The box identifies the serving size as three, meaning that the box contains four servings. This is a lying lie told by lying liars who lie. I ate all 12 for lunch, and still had room for a large salad and some baked beans on the side. I am not a large person. If you believe the box and bring this home expecting to feed your family of four, people are going to be hungry.

So how are they? Not bad--after all, I did eat 12 at once. But they're bland and uninteresting. The pastry shell is the best part, which shouldn't be true.


Will I buy it again? 

No. If I'm going to expend my small poultry-eating allowance on a pot pie, I'd much rather have this one. 

Trader Joe's It's A Wrap Turkey Club

Let me count the ways in which this was a fail.

1. The outer layer is allegedly a tomato-basil tortilla, which I thought sounded interesting, but it was so bland that I couldn't discern any tomato or basil in it.

2. The mayonnaise was excessive--well past the point at which it ceases to be a nice set of complementary flavors and begins to be primarily an unpleasant sliminess.

3. The spinach was kind of all crammed into a wad, instead of dispersed evenly.

4. One of the slices of turkey had a big line of gristle through it, too tough to be bitten through. I had to eat around it.

5. There's just way too much turkey here. I realize that some people will see that as a feature, not a bug. For me, though, I'm not entirely done with meat in toto, but I am done with anything that is primarily meat, meat, and more meat--like this is. One or two slices of turkey breast would be nice, wrapped with some cheese, lettuce, maybe sun-dried tomatoes, or...heck, I don't know what else, but surely there are lots of choices available to Trader Joe's food geniuses.

"What else could we put in this, Joe?"

"Hmmm. How about more turkey?"

"OK. Anything else?"

"More turkey."

"Uh, OK. Now what?"

"More turkey."

I just think they can be more creative than that, and end up with a better product.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Natural Turkey Summer Sausage

This is the 12th new TJ's product in a row we've featured (if you don't count the insertion of the post about dried bananas as a prelude to the one about the new baby bananas). TJ's description of this item can be found here.

I used to eat summer sausage a lot when I was a teenager. Oscar Mayer brand, to be exact. That plus a slice of cheese made for one of my favorite easy sandwiches. But it's now been probably 30 years since I had any.

This, obviously, is more snack/cracker size than sandwich size. As for taste, it's not as peppery as I remember Oscar Mayer's being. In fact, I'd go so far as to say this is just too bland. It's probably that damn TJ's Blandification Committee at work again. It's not terrible by any means, but it's uninteresting.


Will I buy it again?

Though I've purchased a good number of TJ's products that have meat or poultry as one ingredient (soups, pot pies, and so on), I think this is the first time I've bought something there that is basically just meat. (Edit: On rereading, I realize that that's not quite true. The first time I went there when the store opened, I bought a pound of ground beef and a steak.) My shopping and eating habits have shifted so far from where they were seven years ago (when I started dating a vegetarian, and as a result started thinking a lot more about my diet) that it felt quite profoundly strange to put this in my basket, and even stranger to open and cut into it. Had it been the traditional pork-based summer sausage, I would have given it a pass, but I think poultry is less problematic than pork and beef in terms of health effects, environmental effects, and ethics, so I'm less stringent about cutting it out of my life than those items. Still, buying and eating a hunk of meat has become sufficiently uncomfortable for me that I wouldn't buy this again even if I loved it.

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.

Trader Joe's "Just Sauce" Turkey Bolognese

This is frozen pasta sauce, with turkey. Just in case that's not obvious from the package. (To tell you the truth, I wasn't entirely sure what I was buying when I tossed it into my basket.)

There's not much of it. The package says it contains three servings, but that's laughable. I poured it on some leftover quinoa, and ate the whole mess in one sitting. I am not a big guy, do not have an outsized appetite, and did not feel stuffed to the gills after the meal. So three servings? Please.

I'm afraid the Trader Joe's Blandification Committe took a whack at this product before it was released. Maybe two or three whacks, to be absolutely sure they had banished every last bit of flavor from it. It's the most boring, generic pasta sauce I've had in years.

It also commits the sin of misusing the turkey. Adding a protein source to pasta is one of the easiest places I've found to replace meat with a plant-derived substitute and not feel any meaningful loss. As I've said before, I'm not committing myself to vegetarianism, but where I can make such a substitute and not miss the meat, I'm eager to do so, for a variety of health, environmental, and ethical reasons.

The flip side of that is that when I do eat some meat in that context, I want it to have purpose--that is, to be clearly present, flavorful. To be meaty. Here, however, the bits of turkey have been so thoroughly blenderized into the sauce that they are not even identifiable. If you're going to have turkey in your pasta sauce, dammit, have it be in big, flavorful chunks. Let me know it's there. Let me savor it, since I don't do it often. This product is a complete fail on that count.

Will I buy it again? 

No way.