Archive for the ‘Trader Joe’s’ Category
02/09/2018
February 9, 2018
This is a nice cheese, a blend of parmesan and cheddar implied by the label. This cheese is mild with a gentle nutty sweet flavor. The texture is medium firm, and definitely not hard. The Syrah wine soak doesn’t add much to the flavor, but puts a pretty purple coating on the outside. The cheese slices nicely and is not crumbly. This is suitable for a cheese tray if you don’t mind some odd-shaped pieces as the cheese is sold as a wedge.
Now the interesting thing about using this on a cheese tray could be watching people try to decide if that purple coating on the outside is edible, or not. I’m not saying.
price $9.99 per pound calories, 120 per ounce (28g)
Tags:calories, cheese, food, nutrition, review, reviews, syrah, tj, tj's, toscano, trader joe's
Posted in Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 5 Comments »
01/26/2018
January 26, 2018
Have a handkerchief ready to catch the drool starting to form at the edge of the mouth about halfway through the cooking time as the earthy aromas start to waff out of the microwave. This is one grown-up Mac & Cheese.
Five different cheeses and truffle extract give this a very deep earthy wonderful flavor. All the preceding adhere to short spiral shaped macaroni. This is decidedly different from the kid’s $1 a box glow-in-the-dark stuff that cooks up on the stove.
At $3.49 a frozen box, this might seem a little pricey. And it is. But consider what it would cost to make this yourself. Just the Gouda, white Cheddar, Asiago, Parmesan and Romano alone would probably use up all that $3.49. One 290 calorie serving of this is also pretty filling and satisfying. A little goes a long way as a side to some lighter fare.
Price $3.49 per 12 ounce box
Calories 290 per serving (2 servings per box)
Tags:calories, food, nutrition, price, review, tj, tj's, trader joe's, truffle mac & cheese
Posted in food, Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 8 Comments »
01/26/2018
January 26, 2018
The package lists this as a medium dark roast. However the coffee looks and drinks more like a medium roast. This is one of Trader Joe’s better African coffees. There’s just a touch of bitterness in the coffee. The bitterness, as well as the body, can be easily adjusted by varying the size of the grind and/or brew time. For comparison, this is the opposite end of the coffee spectrum from a Starbucks-like coffee. But the problem may be the farm the coffee came from, the New Year’s Gift Estate. Will it only be available every New Year’s?
Price, $8.99, 12 ounce bag.
Tags:coffee, food, medium roast, price, review, tj, tj's, trader joe's, whole bean, Zimbabwe
Posted in coffee, food, Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 4 Comments »
01/20/2018
January 20, 2018
This is a medium-bodied, but still dry and earthy red wine. There are no negatives to this wine. It is an unpretentious red table wine. Pour it straight from the bottle and enjoy with food. Think red when selecting a food for pairing; red sauce, spicy red pepper, red meat. The lighter body makes this a good wine to help get the food down. There’s no dainty sipping at the dinner table.
I like this wine. However, it’s a different wine than most on the shelves today. The flavor profile or style is different from most of its neighbors. I’m going to call this old-school wine; earthy, dry and good.
Two things are of interest. One is the somewhat disjointed backstory on the bottle explaining how this wine got its name. There are mosquitos, birds, woods, a pond, a red goose, a zen master (?) and of course grape vines in the story. All this, I suppose, means the grapes are grown in harmony with nature. And the name? “Oca rossa” means red goose in Italian. Ocarossa is the red goose that lives in the pond.
The second noteworthy item is the cork. This is corkscrew-less cork. Just grab the top of the cork protruding from the bottle, twist and pull the cork until out. Everyone needs one of these for their cork collection.
Price $5.99.
Tags:italy, Ocarossa, price, red wine, review, reviews, table wine, tj, tj's, trader joe's
Posted in Trader Joe's, Wine | 3 Comments »
01/12/2018
January 12, 2018
For a 4-year-old cheese, this cheese is surprisingly soft, but still firm. There is little crumbling when cut. There are no obvious crystals visible in the cheese. However once in the mouth some very fine crystals can be detected crunching between the teeth. Crystals form as the cheese ages.
This is a very tasty cheddar with a nice and noticeable amount of natural sharpness. The sharpness lingers on the back of the tongue long after the cheese has left the mouth. A little cheese goes a long way. Unlike some other cheddars, the word sharp on the label has real meaning. Some people may find this too sharp. Without doing a side by side comparison, this is the best cheddar at TJ I’ve reviewed so far.
Calories 120 per ounce, price $8.99 per pound
Tags:black diamond mature reserve cheddar, calories, cheese, extra-sharp-cheddar, food, nutrition, price, review, reviews, trader joe's
Posted in food, Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | Leave a Comment »
01/12/2018
January 12, 2018
So light you’ll eat the whole bag and never notice it. That is until you step on the scale.
These are mildly sweet, gently flavored cinnamon and apple, multi-grain snacks. Like all snacks they’re easy to like and even easier to eat. The grains used are; corn flour, rice flour, and potato fiber (I know, not a grain). They’re labelled gluten-free.
The really interesting thing about these is the shape. They are small hollow tubes. How do they do it?
Price $2.49 per 6 oz. bag
Calories 140 per ounce (28g)
Tags:apple cinnamon snack, calories, food, nutrition, price, review, reviews, snack, tj, tj's, trader joe's
Posted in Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 2 Comments »
01/07/2018
January 7, 2018
Recently reviewed here was a Trader Joe’s Parmesan cheese. That was found to be okay, but nothing very special. Today, reviewed is a Parmigiano Reggiano Stravecchio cheese imported from Italy by Trader Joe’s. The first question is, what is stravecchio? Stravecchio simply means; old, mature or extra aging. This cheese is aged for 36 months, or 3 years, depending on how you count time.
In comparison to the previously reviewed TJ Parmesan cheese, this cheese is still hard, but easier to cut because it tends to crumble somewhat. As for flavor, there’s no comparison. This cheese is tons more flavorful and complex. There’s some nuttiness to the flavor but also hints of sweetness contained in an earthy base.
This is a very nice cheese to snack on. It would be difficult to use this for a cheese tray, as it does not cut well into nicely shaped cubes due to its crumbly nature. For cooking and sprinkling on salads, I still prefer the inexpensive everyday grated cheeses in the plastic containers. At $14.99 a pound, this is a cheese that really needs to be savored by itself, rather than diluted with other food. And when it is savored by itself, it’s a savoring experience.
Price $14.99 per pound Calories, 110 per ounce (28g)
Tags:calories, cheese, food, nutrition, parmigiano reggiano stravecchio, price, review, reviews, tj, tj's, trader joe's
Posted in Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 10 Comments »
01/07/2018
January 7, 2018
This is a very nice cheese with a very good flavor. The cheese is sharp, but I wouldn’t call it extra sharp as the label does. The cheese is nicely aged to a crumbly consistency. The cheese should be good for cooking as it melted nicely with a quick microwave test. Per the label, the cheese is produced by a farmer’s cooperative, which is nice to know in this age of mega-scale industrial food production. As a domestic cheese from the Northeast, it’s reasonably priced to boot.
Price $6.99 per pound Calories 110 per ounce (28g)
Tags:cabot, calories, cheddar, cheese, extra sharp cheddar cheese, food, nutrition, price, review, reviews, tj, tj's, trader joe's
Posted in Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 11 Comments »
01/02/2018
January 2, 2018
This is a fairly spicy chili leaving a lingering heat at back of the roof of the mouth. However with the heat are overtones of sweet. There’s a lot of tomato sauce in this chili, giving it a different flavor profile than most of the usual canned chili suspects on the supermarket shelves. Along with the meat are two types of beans in the chili. Jalapeno is listed on the label, which also helps explain part of the different flavor profile. If you’re open to a different flavor in your chili, you might like this. If you have a favorite brand of chili that you love, this may not be to your liking.
With recent low temperatures here at around -22 C (it always seems much colder using Celsius), this is a good winter warmer-upper. For the environmentally inclined, chili with beans may also be a potential untapped source of a recycled fossil fuel. And it may be the all-convincing proof that global warming really is man-made.
Price – $1.99 per 15 ounce can
Calories – 210 per serving (about 2 servings per can)
Tags:beans, beef chili, calories, food, humor, nutrition, price, review, tj, tj's, trader joe's
Posted in food, Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 4 Comments »
12/23/2017
December 23, 2017
Rolling barrels down the road is one of those things kids do. Rolling barrels down the road with coffee beans in them is not something kids do. That’s just because kids don’t have any coffee beans. Rolling coffee beans in a barrel seems to be the basic mechanism how this coffee was created. Coffee beans are gently rolled around in old empty barrels used for aging bourbon. Well, at least that’s what the package claims.
The coffee itself is fairly good. This is the first Mexico-grown coffee I’ve had, and it’s promising. Now, the flavor added to the coffee from rolling around in an old bourbon barrel is up for personal interpretation. It’s not a particularly bad flavor and it’s not a particularly good flavor. It’s an earthy flavor that’s noticeable, but not obtrusive. Perhaps a real shot of bourbon in the coffee would make it complete?
To follow up on the spiked coffee theme, I made due with what was on hand, adding some O’Donnells Caramel Cream to the coffee. Ummm, so good! The little extra flavor from the barrels, the coffee and the “cream” came together in a very smooth cup of holiday joy. Price, $9.99, 10 ounce can.
Tags:barrel aged, bourbon, coffee, food, mexico, price, review, tj, tj's, trader joe's, whole bean
Posted in coffee, food, Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 2 Comments »
February 9, 2018
Now the interesting thing about using this on a cheese tray could be watching people try to decide if that purple coating on the outside is edible, or not. I’m not saying.
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