Archive for the ‘Trader Joe’s’ Category
12/23/2017
December 23, 2017
Here’s another lighter roast coffee from Trader Joe’s. A nice aroma permeates the air when the bag is first opened. The beans have a medium brown color indicative of a medium roast. While brewing in the coffee press, the coffee looks flat. There are few oils and carbon dioxide bubbles on top of the brew.
This is a smoother cup of coffee than the other TJ lighter roasts reviewed here. However there’s still some roughness around the finish. This is a fairly good tasting coffee and drinkable black. Although, considering this is the holidays, I’ve been adding a little Irish cream lately, which as always makes coffee better. While a better and less bitter lighter roast from Trader Joe’s, this wouldn’t be my choice as an everyday drinker. If you’re a Starbucks drinker, a couple of weeks with this would be a good pallet cleanse.
One reason to not buy this coffee is the bag. The bag has one of those small resealable narrow slits on the wide side of the bag near the top making it difficult to reach in to get the beans. Think of the mouth of a stingray. Price, $8.99, 12 ounce bag.
Tags:coffee, food, medium roast, price, review, tj, tj's, trader joe's, whole bean, zambia
Posted in coffee, food, Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 5 Comments »
12/20/2017
December 20, 2017
Make no mistake about it, this is a hard cheese. Grating it can be a grating experience.
For me, this is a cheese better eaten by itself than used in recipes. As noted above, the cheese is hard and will give both your knife and jaw a workout. The cheese has a nice, but mild, parmesan flavor to it. A glass of wine is a nice accompaniment.
Surprisingly, as a grated cheese, I actually prefer the pre-grated sprinkle on stuff. Not only is the pre-grated cheese easier to use, but it has more flavor pop than this cheese. The cheese was used as a topping to flavor pastas and salads for this review.
Now, if you’re trying to impress your significant other with a home cooked meal as Billy Joel’s Italian Restaurant plays in the background, grating this at the table is the way to go. And as above, an extra bottle of red is a nice accompaniment.
price $5.99 per pound calories, 110 per ounce (28g)
Tags:cheese, food, parmesan cheese, review, reviews, tj, tj's, trader joe's
Posted in Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 4 Comments »
12/20/2017
December 20, 2017
Don’t open this in the presence of law enforcement. There’s enough powered sugar loosely coating this cake to make your kitchen look like a coke lab.
The cake part is a little dry and tasteless. The raisins are sweet and moist. The marzipan and small pieces of candied fruit are even sweeter. When you get enough fillings with the cake in one bite, it all comes together in the mouth. While this cake is not bad, unless you really like this kind of cake it might be better to save your calories for something else.
Price $3.49
Calories 340 per 1/6 slice of cake
Tags:cake, calories, food, germany, holiday, marzipan stollen, nutrition, price, review, reviews, tj, tj's, trader joe's
Posted in Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 2 Comments »
12/02/2017
December 2, 2017
Well this is another experiment in spending an extra couple of dollars for an older red wine. The general principle being tested here is that red wines improve with age. With most of the inexpensive red wines on the shelves being sold at around the two to three year mark, does another couple of years aging make an inexpensive wine better?
At five years this wine is decidedly better than most of those other two to three year olds. The wine has had time to blend itself together into more of a whole. The wine is generally smoother than a younger wine, with less rough edges. What does that mean? Consider a new t-shirt, put it on straight out of the package and it feels stiff and rough. Wear it for a while and put that t-shirt through a couple of washes and it gets softer and cozier.
This wine is relatively cozy. There are less of those little sharp edges. There are still a few, so maybe another two or so years in the bottle will make the wine cozier still.
Just because age tends to make the wine cozier, doesn’t mean the basic characteristics of the wine have changed. After all, a blue t-shirt is still going to be blue after a few cycles. This is a strong wine, very much like a strong Cab, even though the grapes are 100% Tempranillo. In fact rather than a nice mellow blue, this is more of an in-your-face red, a red that doesn’t fade in the wash. So buyer beware, there’s lots of character in this wine. If you’d like to see how the various styles of Rioja wine compare, check out this. If you like a strong California Cab this may well be the best $10 “California Cab” you’ll ever buy. In general, the wine gets a little above average reviews on the web, 3.5 out of 5, with a few nods to the relative value of the wine (quality/price). Price of $9.99
Tags:mindiarte, price, red wine, reserva, review, reviews, rioja, Spain, tempranillo, tj, tj's, trader joe's, wine
Posted in Trader Joe's, Wine | Leave a Comment »
12/02/2017
December 2, 2017
The corn is there. The dog is almost there. This dog will hunt.
I’m always on the lookout for a veggie meat substitute. More specifically, I’m always looking for a good veggie meat substitute. The best I’ve found so far is Trader Joe’s Soy Chorizo. These veggie corn dogs aren’t quite up to that standard. But still, they’re pretty good. What’s better than that is, they’re pretty good veggie “junk” food.
The texture of the dog is just about right. Even the color is about right. The taste is more of a neutral taste than a real hot dog. The fatty moisture from a real hot dog is obviously missing. However as long as it’s not overcooked, the dog remains fairly moist. Watch the time in the microwave, just a little too much time (even just 10 or 15 seconds) dries out both the dog and the corn.
Overall, just like a real corn dog, the corn bread makes up around half of the taste and texture. The veggie dog in the center adds some flavor and texture, but more importantly does not take much away in the form of negatives.
These are slightly smaller than a standard corn dog and missing the animal fat, so the calories are lower. Unfortunately, the sodium content is relatively high just like a real corn dog. They’re labelled as meatless and veggie, but not vegetarian. So check the ingredient label to make sure this conforms to your personal vegetarian standards.
Price $2.99 (4 veggie corn dogs, 10 ounces )
Calories 160 per veggie corn dog
Tags:calories, corn dogs, food, nutrition, price, review, snacks, tj, tj's, trader joe's, vegetarian, veggie
Posted in food, Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's, Vegetarian | 4 Comments »
11/29/2017
November 29, 2017
Crispy is the key word on the bag. Pay attention.
Homemade might be another word for the bag. What’s meant by that is; not your homemade, nor grandma’s homemade, but my homemade. Cookies and my oven don’t get along. I blame it on the oven, of course. Any kind of cookie I’ve ever attempted came out thin and so crispy that they bordered on just this side of burnt. That’s the feeling I got with these oatmeal raisin cookies from our favorite Trader.
The cookies were so thin that the pretty much hard and dried out raisins tended to pop out of the cookie on their own leaving small holes in the cookie. Look in the bottom of the bag for the raisins. The cookies were crunchy, as most things toasted beyond tan tend to be. Now of course, even in their current condition, I ate them up, because any oatmeal raisin cookie is better than none. But if you prefer the softer thicker chewier kind of oatmeal raisin cookies, like I do, pass these up.
Price $3.99 (7 ounce bag)
Calories 130 per ounce (2 cookies)
Tags:calories, cookies, crispy, food, nutrition, oatmeal raisin, price, review, tj, tj's, trader joe's
Posted in food, Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | Leave a Comment »
11/17/2017
November 17, 2017
Unexpected? You bet it was unexpected. After months of searching for this on the top shelf where all the other Cheddars live, I found this in with the Bries, Camemberts and who knows what else.
TJ says there’s a touch of Parmesan in the taste which makes this Cheddar unexpected. By my taste buds, I didn’t detect any Parmesan. And also by my taste buds, this doesn’t really taste like other Cheddars. But the taste of this cheese is very nice, having a touch of tanginess mixed with a touch of sweetness. The texture is similar to other TJ cheese blends, firm but tends to crumble when cutting. That’s not a negative, just an observation. In the mouth, there are a few bits of what seem like cheese crystals characteristic of an aged cheese. Whatever the blend of cheeses here, or whatever the process that went into making this, this is a nice cheese, perfect for enjoying by itself or even better with a glass of wine.
Price $3.99 per 7 ounce package
Calories 120 per ounce
Tags:calories, cheese, food, nutrition, price, review, reviews, tj, tj's, trader joe's, unexpected cheddar
Posted in food, Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 6 Comments »
11/05/2017
November 5, 2017
The first bad sign was the tear-off tab failing while trying to open the bag. I had to resort to a Kelly clamp to fix that. The second bad sign was the aroma of slightly burnt coffee beans coming from the bag. It should be difficult to burn a light-medium roast. The third bad sign was the aroma of almost tea coming from the cup. Or maybe it was bouillon? The fourth bad sign was the weak bitter coffee coming from the cup.
Well I’ve had worse and despite the four bad signs, the coffee is still drinkable. For those who prefer less body in a coffee, this one’s for you. This coffee reminds me of the recently reviewed Nicaraguan Coffee. Trader Joe does a really good job with their medium-dark roasts, so far the lighter roasts have generally been not as good.
And Boquete? Boquete is a small city in Panama in the western coffee growing region.
Price $8.99 (12 oz bag)
Tags:boquete, coffee, food, panama, price, review, tj, tj's, trader joe's, whole bean
Posted in coffee, Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 2 Comments »
11/05/2017
November 5, 2017
Almost burnt pumpkin pie crust, that’s what these taste like. You know, no matter what we do, some part of that pumpkin pie crust is going to be burnt. Now I’m not talking about the stuff we buy from the store. That never seems to have burnt edges. I’m talking about the stuff that comes out of our oven. Whether it be a store-bought frozen pie cooked at home or a from-scratch homemade pie, once it gets in our oven there’s some part of that crust that’s going to be burnt. Wrap the edges with foil or stick a pin in a voodoo doll, some part of that crust is going to get burned. The oven makers must program that into their ovens. There’s no avoiding it.
These chips don’t taste like the absolutely burnt portions of crust, but like the almost burnt pieces next to the very burnt stuff. More specifically, it’s the parts of the crust where the filling overflows onto the edges. You know what those are. In fact, those pieces of crust are actually the pieces I break off and eat first. They sort of build anticipation for the rest of the pie with the pumpkin filling covered with whipped cream. Hmm, sounds like I know what I’m having for dessert tonight.
But enough about pumpkin pie. The first ingredient on the label of these chips is corn. So these are mostly corn tortilla chips with pumpkin puree used to add some pumpkin flavor. The back of the bag suggests these will hold up to any salsa. I have no reason to doubt that since they are very stiff chips. But it’s the taste of most salsas I question. It seems to me that what’s needed is a pumpkin pie dip/salsa to make these complete.
Price $1.99 – 7 ounce bag Calories 140/ounce (28g) (about 8 chips)
click images to enlarge
Tags:calories, chips, food, nutrition, price, pumpkin, review, snacks, tortilla chips, trader joe
Posted in Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | Leave a Comment »
11/05/2017
November 5, 2017
There’s plenty of chicken meat. But read carefully, this is dark leg meat. While perfectly tender, the dark chicken meat has a stronger flavor than chicken breast.
At only 150 calories per serving, this is surprisingly filling. At 3.5 servings per bag or 525 calories per bag, if you split the entire bag with another person that’s only 265 calories. For those few calories there are 31 grams of protein, which is a big chunk of the daily requirement for protein. Combine this with some steamed frozen vegetables and even a little butter or olive oil on the veggies and we’re looking at a filling meal at around 400 calories total. That’s not bad.
The teriyaki sauce is thin, sweetish, and soy sauce based. The sauce is hardly what is commonly called a BBQ sauce here. But the sauce imparts enough flavor to the chicken. The sauce will not cover the flavor of the leg meat. I didn’t find that to be a problem, so the preceding sentence was just a note for you. There are two packets of frozen sauce in the bag. I suppose you could only cook half the chicken in the bag using just one of the sauce packets, leaving the rest of the frozen chicken and the other sauce packet for another day. Cooking is no more than heating in the microwave. Coming out of the bag, the chicken looks like various shaped dark rocks. Some of those rocks are so big you may wonder if they came from turkey legs instead of chicken legs. These must be some big chickens.
Price $4.99 Calories 150 per serving (3.5 servings per bag)
Click on images to enlarge
Tags:bbq chicken teriyaki, calories, food, frozen entree, nutrition, price, review, reviews, tj, tj's, trader joe's
Posted in Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | Leave a Comment »
December 23, 2017
Ain't Found A Good Title Blog 