Posts Tagged ‘review’
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 »
01/02/2018
January 2, 2017
Crumby, Crumbly, Caramba!
This is something that’s been in our freezer since around Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, ALDI only seems to stock their fruit pies for the year-end holidays. So you may need to wait for this to show up again. When it does make its appearance again, this is a good one.
The “crust” is what makes this pie. There are plenty of crumbs that cook up just perfectly in the oven. This crust is nothing like the usual freezer pie crust that tends to be somewhat industrial. Even the bottom of this crust is crispy and crumbly, tending to break into pieces as it’s extracted from the pie pan.
The filling is good, with small pieces of apple mixed in with a sweet thick apple syrup. I would’ve preferred more and larger pieces of apple and less of the syrup, but as noted above, this pie is all about the crust.
Calories 320 per slice, 9 slices per pie
Price – lost receipt, probably around $5
Tags:aldi, belmont, calories, dessert, dutch crumb apple pie, food, pie, price, review, reviews
Posted in ALDI, Recipes, food, cooking and related items | 5 Comments »
12/23/2017
December 23, 2017
With the year-end holidays comes sleeping in and slow morning wakeups with a little spiked coffee. At least that’s the tradition around this house. The spike in the coffee usually takes the form of some Irish cream.
Here’s a new variation of the holiday tradition first reviewed here, O’Donnells Original Irish cream, What could go wrong by adding some caramel flavor to the Irish cream? Absolutely nothing. For me, this is even better than the original. The caramel flavor is not overpowering. In fact it’s barely noticeable in the coffee. But for whatever reason it tends to smooth out the beverage even more. Very enjoyable. Price $8.99
ALDI customer contact URL – https://www.aldi.us/en/contact-us/
Tags:aldi, caramel cream, food, liquor, O'Donnells, price, review, reviews, wine
Posted in ALDI, Recipes, food, cooking and related items | 7 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 »
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 »
12/09/2017
December 9, 2017
ALDI has some surprisingly good chocolates. This is one of them. Without saying another word about these, they are really really good.
If you’re on a budget pick up one of these as a holiday present for your kid’s teacher. If you’re not on a budget, get two. They’re worth half a grade point on the kid’s next report card. Cheaper than a tutor!
Price $3.99 per box
Calories 190 per 3 piece serving (16 pieces in the box)
click on images to enlarge
ALDI customer contact URL – https://www.aldi.us/en/contact-us/
Tags:aldi, calories, candy, chocolate truffles, confection, food, moser roth chocolate, nutrition, price, review
Posted in ALDI, cooking and related items, food, Recipes, food, cooking and related items | 5 Comments »
12/09/2017
December 9, 2017
The box says, ‘with 11 vegetables’. How do they fit them all in a 4 inch diameter circle?
One good thing, you can actually see the little veggies in the circle. Being that the veggies are of a size that makes them visible, the burgers tend to fall apart if handled too much while cooking. Like many veggie burgers, the flavor of these is on the bland side. I saw the word chipotle through the glass freezer case, but somehow when I got home they had changed to just plain veggie burgers. I’ll look twice the next time.
Along with the bland flavor, these tend to dry out while cooking in the microwave. Both problems can be overcome with the use of condiments. For my purposes I topped with a spoonful or two of pickle relish which added a little flavor pop and also some needed moisture. Problems solved.
While comparable to other veggie burgers on the market in texture and taste, these are also labeled ‘certified vegan’. What’s also nice is they’re in the ALDI freezer case, meaning you won’t have to go elsewhere looking for a vegan veggie burger. Now the potential downside is, I don’t know if these are a special item which will soon disappear or whether they’ll be a regular item in the freezer case.
Calories 90 per burger – 4 servings per container (10 oz. total – 284g)
Price $2.49 per box
click on images to enlarge
ALDI customer contact URL – https://www.aldi.us/en/contact-us/
Tags:aldi, calories, earth grown, food, nutrition, price, review, vegan, vegetable burger, vegetarian, veggie burger
Posted in ALDI, Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Vegetarian | 10 Comments »
January 7, 2018
Ain't Found A Good Title Blog 