Posts Tagged ‘reviews’
10/03/2017
October 03, 2017
There’s no doubt about it this is on the strong side of the wine continuum. It’s also a little harsh on the mouth and throat. The wine is mildly fruity with a bold taste. The harshness mellows out some as it sits in the glass allowing some decent earthy tannins to peek through.
The combination of this and a tomatoey lasagna did not work well. Paired with a second pasta dish, this did not work equally well. Finally, paired with a spicy bean curry, this balanced and stood up to the curry nicely.
For the price this is a decent wine if you like strong wines, don’t have a sensitive throat and are on a budget. In fact, it generally gets good reviews in other places on the web, with a few people even stocking up when it’s available. Price $6.99.
And, for the curious, David Frost is a South African professional golfer who as a kid used to pick grapes in the family vineyards to buy golf balls.
Tags:2015, david frost, price, red wine, review, reviews, shiraz blend, south africa, tj, tj's, trader joe's, wine
Posted in Trader Joe's, Wine | Leave a Comment »
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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09/06/2017
September 6, 2017
The last time I reviewed this wine was 2011. The wine hasn’t changed much since then, including the price! The 2012 vintage is still a very nice wine as was the 2007 vintage back then.
The mild tannins on the roof of mouth and back of throat are still speaking after all these years giving the wine a mild earthy feel in the mouth. As it was before, the wine is smooth but still with a slight edge to the taste. There’s just a hint of grape if caught at the right temperature. In my opinion, still no forest floor taste as one reviewer noted of the 2007 vintage. For most of us, that’s a good thing. And sticking with my original comment, this is probably a better food wine than a sipper. However when sipped among a group, it’s likely to lead to some interesting conversations.
Although the primary grape in this is Sangiovese, the taste is bolder than a typical Tuscan Sangiovese. It’s not as bold as a Cabernet Sauvignon, but still up there one notch on the scale. And this is likely more enjoyable than a Cabernet Sauvignon in the same price range. The bottle states 13.5% alcohol. Incanto may want to recheck their instruments. This wine has a substantially greater kick to it than most wines labeled 13.5%. Price $10.99
Tags:incanto, italy, price, review, reviews, sangiovese, tj, tj's, trader joe's, vino nobile di montepulciano, wine
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08/28/2017
August 28, 2017
The package says, “with just a hint of anise”, but for me that was the whole story. This is more like anise toast than almond biscotti. For anise toast, it was fairly good. There was a nice and proportionally strong anise flavor to the biscotti. The biscotti were firm, but still a little soft and not very crumbly. There were small pieces of nuts occasionally sprinkled throughout the biscotti. The package says almond and walnuts. But there was very little almond flavor to match the package label. So maybe the wrong biscotti got in the wrong box, or something like that?
Calories 90 per biscotti Price $2.89 per package of 8
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ALDI customer contact URL – https://www.aldi.us/en/contact-us/
Tags:aldi, almond biscotti, calories, food, nutrition, price, review, reviews, specially selected
Posted in ALDI, food, Recipes, food, cooking and related items | Leave a Comment »
08/28/2017
August 28, 2017
With a fair amount of heat, but missing most of the different flavors of Indian cuisine, this is just an “okay” chicken tikka masala.
The heat in this product starts out mild and builds up to a medium-hot heat on the back of the tongue. While the heat level is good for people liking heat, many of the traditional flavors of Indian food are missing. The sauce has a medium tomato flavor with plenty of small pieces of tomato. Along with the tomato are ample amounts of tender chicken pieces.
The rice is the biggest disappointment. The rice cooked up rubbery, maybe indicating some over cooking after 6 minutes in the microwave. However after 6 minutes the sauce and chicken were merely very warm. While the rice is labeled basmati, the flavor was different, but not better, than the basmati I’m used to. There was a very mild heat to the rice.
There are better frozen chicken tikka masala products out there. If you’re in a pinch, or don’t have access to other sources, this will do – but not more.
Calories 370 per container Price $2.99 per carton
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ALDI customer contact URL – https://www.aldi.us/en/contact-us/
Tags:aldi, calories, chicken tikka masala, food, journey to india, nutrition, price, review, reviews
Posted in ALDI, food, Recipes, food, cooking and related items | 3 Comments »
08/11/2017
August 11, 2017
I was especially excited to see this on the TJ selves. It’s a 2010 IGT wine from Tuscany. It’s not normal to see a 7-year-old wine at TJ, especially at this price. Just the added storage costs alone is reason to charge more for a wine that’s been around an extra few years.
While the Italian wine classification is not supposed to be a reflection of the quality of the wines, in my experience the better the classification, the better the wine. The IGT classification is a lower classification, more specifically one that is usually broader in scope as to the grapes and methods used to produce the wine.
Now in my limited and personal experience with Tuscan wines, the IGT wines are edgier and less refined than the higher classified (more restrictive) DOC and DOCG wines. I’m sure there are some exceptions to that experience. And those exceptions likely command a higher price than the wines I usually review.
My question in picking up this wine is, how does aging affect an IGT red wine? In theory a red wine improves with age up until a point where too much age negatively affects the wine. Most of us personally know how that too much age thing works with people. The rest of us will find out.
While I didn’t review this particular wine back when it was 2 or 3 years old, compared to similar IGT wines from the era that I have tried, this is a big step up. This wine has smoothed over the IGT rough edges leaving a very nice, really smooth, mellow, nothing bad, or even close to bad, fine Tuscan red wine. And an absolute bargain. I hope there’s still some left on the shelf. Price: $10.99
Tags:2010, casone toscana, igt, italy, price, review, reviews, tj, tj's, trader joe's, tuscany, wine
Posted in Trader Joe's, Wine | 3 Comments »
08/11/2017
August 11, 2017
A torso stabbed 7 times, a ferry from Denmark and a fierce blizzard arrive at the same time in a small Icelandic harbor village. The story that unfolds over 10 episodes is mesmerizing. If you’ve never binge watched a series, this could be your first. Oh, and if you’re ever stuck at home by bad weather feeling sorry for yourself, take a look at the weather in this village.
This is a story and substories that slowly unfold in front of us, all nicely tied together at the very end. Along the way are unanswered questions and clues, but never enough to predict how everything will end. All the action takes place in an unlikely sleepy fishing village where everyone knows everyone, but hidden secrets lurk beneath the surface. Some of the secrets are personal, but some are larger crimes such as fraud, human trafficking and murder.
Left to untangle this tightly wound web is an unlikely 3 person police force led by a police chief from the big city. That in itself is one of the substories. How does a big city detective end up in a small village? Isolated from outside police help by the blizzard, these 3 people learn to overcome their weaknesses and human frailties to solve the current puzzles as well as another puzzle from 7 years earlier.
Speaking of human frailties, there’s enough of these to go around in this small village. Most of them are the result of broken relationships and unlikely people sleeping with each other for unlikely reasons, even in somewhat unlikely ways. All of these treated with the utmost discretion (considering) with only fleeting and mild nudity.
If you liked the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trilogy (Millennium series), this is of similar style. I don’t know what it is about Norsemen and Norsewomen, but they seem to know how to tell a good story and program computers (no computer programming in this story). Maybe it’s the long winters?
The entire Trapped Series 1 is now showing free for Amazon Prime members. Individual episodes are also currently running on the cable channel Viceland (check your local schedules). The series runs with English subtitles in the US.
Tags:amazon prime, iceland, review, reviews, trapped, tv series, viceland
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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 »
October 03, 2017
Ain't Found A Good Title Blog 