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Trader Joe’s – Reduced Guilt Spinach & Cheese Shells – Food Review

05/28/2018

I still feel guilty. That’s the same way I felt after reviewing the last reduced guilt pasta I tried. While this is okay, there are better alternatives in the TJ freezer case.

The sauce has a mild tomato flavor, but is otherwise bland. The shells are stuffed with 50/50 spinach/ricotta mixture . The mixture produces a nice flavor. The shells themselves feel mushy and overcooked. There’s a low sauce to shell ratio, meaning it would have been nicer to have some additional sauce. The sauce becomes rather thick because the sprinkled on cheese mixes in with the sauce.

The cooking directions seem strange. After a minute in the microwave you’re asked to remove the container and stir around the inside edges. In retrospect, I assume this was to prevent what happened. The sauce/cheese mixture in the corners overcooked bigly. This created some nicely burnt to really burnt bits of cheese and sauce in the corners. The nicely burnt pieces were enjoyable, depending on personal preference. The really burnt bits were not so enjoyable. One other item of note, a knife was needed to cut through the shells.

Overall this has; a nice filling, badly cooked shells, not enough of a bland sauce and a sauce that mixes too readily with the cheese sprinkled on top. And, you’ll probably feel just as guilty after trying these.

Calories 270 Price $2.69

Tags:box lunch, calories, food, frozen box lunches, italian, nutrition, price, review, reviews, spinach cheese shells, tj, tj's, trader joe's
Posted in Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 6 Comments »

Trader Joe’s – Asparagus Risotto – Food Review

08/11/2017

August 11, 2017

On first opening the package you’ll notice two strange things, broken up sheets of frozen sauce and plain white rice. More about these later.

When prepared according to the package directions, this risotto obtains a nice light yellow/green color from the creamy sauce. The sauce has a wonderful flavor and texture. The rice has a nice bite to it. It’s not overcooked. A fair amount of thin green asparagus is distributed throughout in the form of inch long pieces. These pieces also lend a touch of green asparagus flavor to the sauce.

Obviously this was not prepared in the traditional manner. The rice is parcooked separately from the other ingredients. The sauce also appears to have been cooked separately, flash frozen in thin sheets and then broken up in pieces. The asparagus also is likely cooked or partially cooked separately. All three components, we could guess, are then combined in a frozen state in the bag and shipped off.

The package will make enough for two (maybe three) portions as a side dish. In this case, I ate the whole package as a main dish, thoroughly enjoying it all.

There may not be an army of nonnas standing over stoves, constantly stirring in broth to Arborio rice until the moment of perfection, making risotto in the traditional way. However what comes out of this package is almost as good. And by definition, it can never be as good as Nonna’s. Know what I mean?

Price $2.99

Calories 160 per serving (3 servings per package)

Tags:asparagus risotto, calories, food, frozen entree, italian, nutrition, price, review, reviews, tj, tj's, trader joe's
Posted in Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | Leave a Comment »

Trader Joe’s – Gnocchi Alla Sorrentina – Food Review

08/06/2017

Aug 6, 2017
This is pretty good stuff, but you might not think so as it cooks.

Straight from the freezer this is a mixture of the frozen gnocchi (small flour dumplings) and frozen flying-saucer-shaped chunks of sauce. Heating in the microwave is a two stage process. After heating for 4 minutes, the mixture needs a good stir. At this point you’ll wonder, what have I done wrong, as the sauce and gnocchi appear very watery. After stirring, put it back in the microwave for another 3 minutes and the magic happens. The second heating totally changes the appearance, by thickening up everything into a coherent whole. Pan heating instructions are also provided.

Throughout the cooking process the gnocchi retain their consistency. After heating they have a nice chewy texture in the mouth. The sauce thickens nicely thanks to the cheese in the sauce (that’s the magic). This allows the sauce to coat and cling to the gnocchi. The combination of the complex, but not over the top, sauce and chewy gnocchi works extremely well. A sprinkle of parmesan is always useful, but really not needed.

For us, the package yielded two modest servings working out to around 300 calories each. The package claims three servings. Even though our portions were only 300 calories, the gnocchi were very filling – and tasty.

Price $2.99 Calories 200 per serving (3 servings per carton)

Click on images to enlarge

Tags:calories, food, frozen entree, gnocchi alla sorrentina, italian, nutrition, price, review, reviews, tj, tj's, trader joe's
Posted in Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 11 Comments »

Trader Joe’s – Eggplant Parmigiana w/ Grilled Eggplant – Food Review

07/04/2017

July 4, 2017
This is not a great eggplant parmigiana, but a pretty good eggplant as an eggplant.

This is another one of the seemingly endless variations of Trader Joe’s “eggplant with tomato sauce and melted cheese” products. This one features eggplant which are “grilled”. Now I suspect the grilling was done on one of those industrial strength machines that moves a conveyor belt of eggplant slices through some kind of flame. But the pieces had grill marks on them, so who are we to quibble about the method.

While I usually have no patience for waiting on an oven to cook these kinds of entrees, this time I followed the oven directions. Instead of large slices of eggplant, these are actually smaller pieces of a slice. That makes it somewhat easier to eat without needing a knife to cut through the usual slices. The tomato sauce was not very flavorful. Much of the mozzarella seemed to have melted into the sauce instead of forming a nice cover for the eggplant. The result was a somewhat watery tomato/cheese sauce without much flavor intermixed with a few small islands of melted cheese. As a parmigiana, it was disappointing.

However as just eggplant, the eggplant was pretty good. The best bits and tastiest, were those with the skin on – more flavor and more chew. The pieces without skin we’re still tasty, but no as much. Being grilled, there was no breading on the eggplant as is often done with fried eggplant slices. Overall I liked this, but not because it was a good eggplant parmigiana, but because it was good eggplant.

Price ??? (lost receipt) Calories 270 per container (1 serving)

Tags:calories, eggplant parmigiana, food, frozen entree, italian, nutrition, price, review, reviews, tj, tj's, trader joe's
Posted in Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's | 5 Comments »

ALDI – Priano Four Cheese Alfredo Sauce – Food Review

05/08/2017

May 8, 2017

The second ingredient is cream. That’s a good sign as that’s what an Alfredo sauce is all about. From the jar the sauce is a little watery, as water is the first ingredient. However it thickens some when added to warm pasta. Even better is heating the sauce either before the pasta is added or after the pasta is added. To save a pot, and some cleaning, I added sauce straight from the jar to the cooked warm pasta and then nuked the plate in the microwave for about a minute. That thickened up the sauce and made it stick to the pasta nicely. There’s a suggestion on the jar which hints at the need for heating the sauce to thicken.

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Tags:aldi, alfredo sauce, calories, cheese, food, italian, nutrition, priano, price, review
Posted in ALDI, Recipes, food, cooking and related items | 9 Comments »

Trader Joe’s – Farmhouse English Cheddar with Italian Truffles – Food Review

03/16/2017

March 16, 2017

This is another one where it would be way too easy to eat the whole package in one sitting. A very little bit of a smokey peppery earthy taste mixed in with creamy, but not soft, English cheddar is the best description I could come up with. That description doesn’t do it taste justice. It may not be to everyone’s liking, but this is very good.

Of particular note are a couple of the lesser ingredients, anchovy and bamboo fiber. What’s This For? Well I sure don’t know, but whatever the reason the whole seems to work just fine.

At $9.99 per pound, this is in line with similar cheeses at Trader Joe’s. The calories, at 110 per ounce (28g), are also similar to other cheeses.