Trader Joe's Guacamole Kit

This year for Lent, I promise you something. Unlike years past, when I've given up meat or sweets, I will not be endlessly writing about it on here, bugging the living crud out of 90% of you who just want to know my opinion of some fake meat or whatever. If you're really all that  interested in what I'm doing, you can check out my sporadically updated side gig.

This will be my one mention of things here: In addition to some other things, I've made the decision to include at least one raw vegan meal every day into my diet for the next few weeks. Perfect time of the year for that, eh? I'm hoping this just won't mean a salad or baggie of carrot sticks and an apple, although I'll be doing more than enough of that since my super-happy fruit of the earth meals will usually be my lunch during the week at work. Just works better that way for Sandy and I. And I mention that only because that decision to do raw vegan chow is what propelled me to buy Trader Joe's Guacamole Kit. I realize that guacamole is a pretty easy entry into the raw vegan world. It's about as adventurous as I wanted to get until I get "crazy" enough to try some of the tasty-lookin' recipes like this.

Anyways, does this guac kit rock it? Tough to say. Taking a look at it, $3.99 for this isn't exactly a killer deal. Let's compare to buying each part separately. There's two avocados (about a buck each for the good ones - we'll get back to that), a lime and about few garlic cloves (let's say 50 cents for the two), two jalapeños (cheap!), a tomato (let's round up and say 70 cents), and a teeny little onion that I mistook for a rounded garlic bulb at first glance. So that's not quite $4 worth of goods they're selling for $4. It's not a ripoff (there's always a price to pay for convenience) but it's not a steal either.

As for the stars of the carton, the avocados....yeeeeah. I'm not familiar enough with avocado carbon dating to know if mine were a little too old or not quite ripe yet. Regardless, I expect when I buy produce from somewhere, they'd be fine for consumption three days later. These were, but were tough, tough enough that I had to whip out our noisy-as-all-heck food processor (think heavy duty construction zone mixed with a congested snoring Gilbert Gottfried) at almost midnight to chunk them down instead of following through my original plan of fork-mashing them. Thank God I didn't wake up Sandy (granted, she regularly sleeps thru the alarm blaring six inches from her head every morning) or get any complaints from the neighbors. Even after about five minutes in there, there were still a sizable chunk or two that I'll just decide to man up and eat anyways. These avocados were very much unlike the ones TJ's sells separately, which whenever I've bought them have been soft and perfect, and I think a little bit bigger, too.

Everything else was great. The jalapeños were as fresh as the ones I've grown in our garden each summer, and no complaints about anything else. When I finally had a chance to take my taster for a test drive on my self-made guac, it was pretty decent overall. Nice, good kick to it, mostly because I didn't bother de-seeding the peppers, with plenty of lime as well. If I were thinking, I would've left all the tomato and onion and diced goodies out of the food processors, as I like the chunkier varieties, but this was okay enough for my first crack at making guacamole. I didn't measure exactly how much guac this made, but two cups seems to be a fair estimate. It'll be more than enough to dip some veggies in for lunch for the next few days.

I kinda assume the point of the guacamole kit is to try and entice folks who wouldn't be so inclined otherwise to make their own guac. I'm willing to take another crack at it, but next time I do, I honestly won't be buying this particular product again. The price isn't compelling and the quality is too much of a mixed bag. Regardless, I'm not overly dissatisfied, nor am I particularly satisfied. For Golden Spoon time, let's just play this completely down the middle.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Guacamole Kit: 5 out of 10 Golden Spoons.

Trader Joe's Kale Chips

There's quite a buzz about these on the interwebs. And no wonder! They're really weird! These aren't the first snacky-veggies TJ's has offered us, but they might be the best. Check out past posts: Inner Peas, Veggie Sticks and Seaweed Snacks.

These things are packaged like they're some kind of comic book superheroes. I suppose they're super-snacks. And...they're not "chips," at least not in any traditional sense of the word. But I guess "Leafy Green Kale Chunks" just doesn't have the sexy rockstar appeal of "chips." But I mean, they're sort of dry-ish leaves of kale. It's like somebody left out a salad—dressing and all, in a dehydrator somewhere, forgot about it, then re-discovered it a couple days later and decided to eat it anyway. Maybe that's where the superhero theme comes in. This snack was left to dry out and die via nuclear radiation, but instead of dying, it just became an ultra-powered, transcendent mega-meal.

I don't know. But man, the dehydrated salad idea simply doesn't convey how good these are. The nacho flavored dressing is like a really high-quality southwest salad dressing...but dry. And I swear I feel energized when I eat these. They have all kinds of vitamins and minerals. They are super-scrump-dilly. And just so...peculiar!

Let me put it this way: when the extraterrestrial overlords show up and try to incorporate parts of their culture into ours, I wouldn't be surprised if they have us snacking on this stuff. Let's just hope that with their advanced technologies and vast eons of wisdom and experience that they can find a way to bring the cost down. Like way down. Like the $4 a bag price tag on these things is totally their biggest weakness, their kryptonite, if you will. I'd eat these every day if they cost a buck a bag. They make me happy.

4.5 stars from me. Woulda had 5 if they were a tad less expensive. Sonia gives 'em 4.


Bottom line: 8.5 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Speculoos Cookies

So there we were, Sandy and I, mulling over all the frozen seafood options for Lent, when I just so happened to look over my shoulder at precisely the proper angle just as the crowds parted and harp chords played. It's as if it were meant to be. There it was, in big, bold, beautiful letters, with stylish packaging, just sitting on the shelf, waiting there, made for me and me only. I can only wish the lighting were a tad less fluorescent and a little more dramatic. Regardless, there it was, that delicious word, speculoos. There was no question that Trader Joe's Speculoos Cookies were an automatic purchase.

Sandy and I are on an unfortunate cookie losing streak when it comes to comes to our favorite grocery store. It finally pushed us to the brink where we gave in and finally bought that crazy cookie butter all you kids are always, endlessly raving about. That's lived up to its billing (cookie butter + Nutella = ohmanohmanohmanohman!!!!). If these cookies were to somehow fail, I'd probably never buy cookies ever again.

Well....we're not going to have to worry about that. Oh goodness. In my life I have somehow failed to enjoy the treasures that Biscoff cookies. I guess I've never flown Delta. Sandy has, though, and she ensures me these are pretty much exactly the same. I can only vouch that they taste just like the famed and renown cookie butter, except in crispy wafer form. If you know the cinnamony, gingerbready goodness of which I speak, then you know exactly what these taste like. Let there be no trace of disappointment. For that brief moment of peace and tranquility, hazelnut latte in the mug and these cookies in hand, it was as if Sandy and I were no longer in our teeny little house in the middle of Pittsburgh listening to Baby M snoring on the monitor with a load of laundry needing to be changed in the basement, but instead were transported to a European cafe on a cobblestone street, just the two of us with no other cares in the world. Okay, that's a bit of an overstatement, but not by too much.

At first, the only ever-so-slight adjustment I'd say that I'd like if the texture were a tad more shortbread-like. But then I dunked mine in the hazelnut latte Sandy whipped up. Nope. Perfect. The crispiness was perfect and held up to the latte bath. There's nothing bad to say.

Sandy's perfectly happy with them. When I asked for her opinion, she automatically said something to the effect of "Five. No question. Five." Whatever she actually said kinda got lost in our collective satisfied Mmms. I'm trying to come up with something, anything that can keep me from giving these a five as well. I can't. Too darn good. Well done, Trader Joe's, well done.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Speculoos Cookies: 10 out of 10 Golden Spoons