It has been absolutely frigid here lately. I guess it's another "arctic blast." Fun. Have already done some snow shoveling with the beautiful wifey this year. It's always nice to duck in out of the cold, sit down by the fire, and warm up with a nice big bowl of ice cream, don't you think?
And not just any ice cream—it's Trader Joe's English Toffee Ice Cream. Finally, an English toffee product I can get behind. It's got a brown butter ice cream base, small toffee pieces covered in chocolate, almond bits, and a caramel-esque swirl. It's extremely buttery, sweet, rich, and indulgent.
Sonia and I are both happy it has a yummy toffee flavor without massive jawbreaking slabs of hard candy. It's mostly smooth, but the nuts and toffee pieces keep it interesting. It's got whispers of chocolate, but not much more than that.
We polished off the whole thing in a single day. It's one of the better holiday ice creams we've seen from Trader Joe's. English toffee is far from my go-to flavor, but it's seasonally-appropriate and this offering didn't disappoint.
$3.79 for the pint. Kosher. Would buy again next year. Eight out of ten stars from both Sonia and me for Trader Joe's English Toffee Ice Cream.
Numerous readers have noted that these Trader Joe's refrigerated pastas and raviolis are "too much for one person" yet not enough for two or more. I concur. Although, if you're serving them with sides, they're just about adequate for a couple.
The "servings per container" is officially 2.5 or 3 on most of these products. It's three in this case, although I really don't think it's realistic at all that three adults could share this one package for dinner without copious quantities of sides, toppings, and/or fillers. If we're talking light lunch, then pairing this entire package with a decent salad would probably suffice for two normal folks.
But odd serving sizes aside, this is a decent product. We like the festive red and green colors, courtesy of all-natural tomato and spinach powders. We like the generous amount of ricotta cheese, and we both like the seasonings and pesto flavors involved. We've got basil, parmesan, and even nutmeg in the mix.
We boiled the pasta for six minutes or so. Traderjoes.com recommends serving it with their Rosatella Sauce, but we were unable to obtain that on our last TJ's run. Alternatively, you can serve it with olive oil and grated cheese. We went with avocado oil and parmesan. Honestly, these would probably even do just fine with a traditional marinara pasta sauce.
We polished off the package in a single sitting, devouring the majority of it during the recording of our eight and a half minute video review. We decided that it must be a pasta optimized for Festivus, the fictional winter holiday made famous on Seinfeld. It's probably just the Italian way to say "festive," but I can't think of anything more appropriate for dinner on December 23rd than Trader Joe's Pasta Festiva.
$3.99 for the 9 oz package, found in the refrigerated section. Sonia would buy again and I wouldn't stop her. Eight out of ten stars from the beautiful wifey. I'll go with seven out of ten stars for Trader Joe's Pasta Festiva.
