Posts Tagged ‘calories’
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)
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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 »
10/29/2017
October 29, 2017
Herring, the adolescent sardine, what’s not to like? If you’ve ever avoided herring because, well it’s herring, this may change your mind. This herring comes packed in a not spicy curry sauce. The curry is a little sweet, and a little pineappley. The curry disguises very well whatever preconceived notion of taste you may have of herring. The herring itself comes as fillets with a nice firm texture. And no, the herring does not taste fishy. The herring also does not taste or look like any of that pickled stuff people bring out for New Year’s. If you were worrying about that, forget about it. On top of that it’s nutritious with: low carbs, relatively high protein and a more fun way to get some omega-3 than one of those gelatin oil filled capsules. This is an ALDI Oktoberfest perennial offering, so you won’t be seeing it on the shelves until either next September for Oktoberfest or possibly next May for Maifest.
Calories 100 per serving (4 servings per can)
Price $1.69 per can
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ALDI customer contact URL – https://www.aldi.us/en/contact-us/

Tags:aldi, calories, deutsche kuche, food, nutrition, pineapple curry herring, price, review, reviews, snacks
Posted in ALDI, food, Recipes, food, cooking and related items | 6 Comments »
10/29/2017
October 29, 2017
This is more of a note than a review. I use anchovies on homemade pizza. I should expand that to include anchovies in other things. Now that cooler weather is here, at least north of the equator, it’s oven season in our house.
I don’t believe Cento is unique to Trader Joe’s. So you’ll possibly find these elsewhere. But at Trader Joe’s they cost $1.49. That’s not bad since a larger supermarket usually prices anchovies around $2 per can. And they seem to be a staple at Trader Joe’s. You’ll most likely have to look for them on the bottom shelf where other canned fish are kept. That’s where I find them at my Trader Joe’s.
The anchovies themselves seem to be a little less salty than other brands I’ve tried. But that doesn’t hold them back from adding that anchovy pop to a pizza. Good stuff at a good price.
Calories 25 per 16 gram (about 2 servings per can) price $1.49 per can
Tags:calories, cento anchoives, food, nutrition, price, review, reviews, trader joe's
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10/29/2017
October 29, 2017
For a not-cheese, this is not bad. It has a neutral taste and a thicker texture than a real mozzarella. While the product name stresses the soy content, it also contains milk protein and milk as parmesan cheese according to the label. The label does not specify what kind of enzymes were used for the parmesan. While mozzarella is a mild cheese, it still has a better taste and texture than this alternative.
On heating in the microwave, the aroma of parmesan is liberally released. It smells good. However the melted “cheese” does not retain the taste of parmesan. This cheese also does not melt as nicely as mozzarella in the microwave. It becomes somewhat puffy and hardens. There’s none of that stringy mozzarella texture. The cheese was not tested in stove top or oven recipes. When diced up for some salad, it added some texture to the salad, but not much in the way of flavor.
With milk as one of the ingredients and an unknown source for the parmesan enzymes (some enzymes are animal based), what’s the purpose of the cheese? For people who might be allergic to milk, it contains some milk components. For those looking for a vegetarian cheese, it’s not labeled as vegetarian. The cheese is labeled as 99% lactose free. So I guess for people who are extremely lactose intolerant, this may be an alternative. However many milk-based cheeses are naturally relatively low in lactose. So for those who can tolerate some lactose, a milk-based cheese may work for you also. Regardless, only you know what kinds of food you need to avoid or what foods work well for you. And of course, only you know what foods you like!
Calories 70 per ounce, price $1.99 (8 ounce package)
Tags:calories, cheese, food, mozzarella, nutrition, price, review, reviews, soy-based cheese, trader joe's
Posted in food, Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 2 Comments »
10/25/2017
October 25, 2017
Well this is somewhat misleading. But it will be eaten nonetheless.
I’m a sucker for cheesecake. The picture on the box looked really good. The title was enticing. How could anyone resist the words chocolate truffle and cheesecake combined in one place? The price was more than right. And the everyday cheesecake at ALDI is pretty wonderful. So this would be one step beyond wonderful. Right? Not exactly. But, like the mushrooms that share the same name, this sort of grows on you.
Rather than a cheesecake this is more like a chocolate mousse (with horns) sitting on a thickish chocolate graham cracker “crust”. “With horns” in this context means thick and beefy mousse. If I didn’t have the box to read, I wouldn’t know this was a cheesecake, even one of those light fluffy cheesecakes. The chocolate flavor is neither sweet milk chocolate nor dark semi-sweet chocolate. It’s somewhere in the middle with an earthy tinge to it (like a real truffle?). The graham cracker crust is crunchy in the mouth. That provides an interesting textural contrast with the soft “cheesecake” topping it. Even though it doesn’t taste exceptionally sweet, I’m sure there’s a bunch of sugar in it.
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Tags:aldi, belmont, calories, chocolate truffle cheesecake, food, nutrition, price, review, reviews
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10/25/2017

October 25, 2017
This is not a very sweet tasting bar, but that’s part of the appeal. There’s a nice undercurrent of sour cherries and dark chocolate. Oats are oats. The oats in this bar are a little tough and tasteless, as they are in most of these types of bars. But the cherry and chocolate let this bar stand out above the rest. If you’re ever in the Black Forest or even the Eifel Forest take a few of these alone.
I suspect these were part of ALDI’s Oktoberfest. So they may not be around again until next Oktoberfest or next spring for Maifest.
Calories 130 per bar
Price $2.69 per box (8 bars in a box)
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ALDI customer contact URL – https://www.aldi.us/en/contact-us/
Tags:aldi, black forest cake, calories, dark chocolate cherry, deutsche kuche, food, granola bar, nutrition, price, review, reviews, snacks, trail mix
Posted in ALDI, food, Recipes, food, cooking and related items | 2 Comments »
10/16/2017

October 16, 2017
A cheddar with hints of an aged Gouda? This is a fine tasting, slightly crumbly, but still creamy in the mouth, cheese. While the length of aging of this cheese is not specified on the label, it’s just on the verge of developing those cheese crystals like an aged Gouda. This is a “mature” tasting cheddar, meaning it’s not a mild cheddar. But it’s also not a sharp cheddar. It’s an extremely nice and enjoyable cheese.
Collier’s refers to Welsh miners, called Colliers (think “coal ers”). The miners used to take this cheese down in the mines for lunch. And for an interesting movie, based on real events in 1984, explaining how these same miners found common cause with a seemingly unlikely group, try Pride (2014) while you snack on the cheese.
Price $7.99 per pound Calories 120 per ounce (28g)
Tags:calories, cheddar, cheese, Colliers Welsh, food, price, review, reviews, tj, tj's, trader joe's
Posted in Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 3 Comments »
10/03/2017
October 3, 2017
Oats, nuts, fruit loosely held together by a mildly sweet syrup. This is not a hard granola bar. In fact it will bend and start to break apart just getting it out of the package. There’s just enough syrupy binder to hold everything together. As a result, this is not a very sweet bar. If you’re looking to avoid something so sweet that your teeth start to hurt, you may like this. The other benefit is your fingers don’t feel like they’re covered with super glue. The mixture of ingredients in the bar should also help slowly feed energy to your body as the bar is digested. That will help to avoid an immediate sugar high. The fruit and nuts in the bar are more enjoyable than the oats in the bar. That’s to be expected. The chocolate was mostly hiding in my bars.
On the trail, the 140 calories in the bar should be good for about 1.5 to 2 miles down a relatively flat trail at a moderate pace. Off the trail, as a snack, that’s how far you’ll need to walk to burn off the calories. Did I just ruin your day?
Calories 140 per bar
Price $1.79 per box (6 bars in a box)
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ALDI customer contact URL – https://www.aldi.us/en/contact-us/
Tags:aldi, calories, dark chocolate cherry, food, granola bar, millville, nutrition, price, review, reviews, snacks, trail mix
Posted in ALDI, food, Recipes, food, cooking and related items | 1 Comment »
09/23/2017
September 23, 2017
I didn’t know cheese ate grass? This is a grass-fed sharp cheddar cheese from New Zealand.
While the package says aged 6-12 months, I suspect my package was aged at the low-end of this range. The cheddar was not very sharp at all. The cheese was dense and semi-soft with no crumbling while being cut. There was a mild cheddar flavor and sharpness to the cheese.
At $6 per pound this is a good cheese, but nothing special. The price is right for using this as you would any other mild cheddar that fills the refrigerator cases in most supermarkets. But the good news is, once it’s wrapped for sale, it no longer needs to be fed grass!
Price $5.99 per pound Calories 120 per ounce.
Tags:calories, cheese, food, new zealand, nutrition, price, review, reviews, sharp cheddar, tj, tj's, trader joe's
Posted in food, Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 2 Comments »
09/06/2017
September 6, 2017
Looking for love in all the wrong places. Yep, just like the song says, that’s what I was doing. But wait, no, no, no, not that kind of love. And, . . . not that kind of love either. I was looking for the love of a sharp cheddar. Don’t anyone urban dictionary that. And if you do, don’t tell me what it means. Please don’t.
This cheese is a mixture of English aged cheddar and sriracha sauce. And that aging of at least 8 months, according to the label, is one of the factors that helps produce sharpness in a cheddar. But the sriracha is the thing that puts this over the top. Here the addition of sriracha is more than a marketing gimmick. The sriracha is actually noticeable and good. Mixing in the sriracha sauce gives the cheese a looser, more crumbly, texture. There’s a nice contrast between the noticeable, but still not extreme, hotness of the sriracha and the smooth creamy feel of the cheese as it warms in the mouth. As those two factors meld together, the sriracha starts to take over producing a sharp finish as it all exits the mouth and starts down the throat. It’s a different kind of sharpness than a 100% cheddar. Still, it’s a nice flavor and experience.
This is the third or fourth cheddar mixture I’ve tried at Trader Joe’s. All of them, including this one, have been winners.
Price $8.99 per pound Calories 100 per ounce
Tags:calories, cheese, food, price, review, reviews, sharp cheddar, sriracha english cheddar, tj, tj's, trader joe's
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