Trader Joe's Queso Fresco

Most of you who've been reading this blog or watching our YouTube channel for a while now have gathered that Sonia is a decent cook. She's very fond of throwing together interesting and eclectic concoctions and recipes she finds on the internet, and of course she knows a few Mexican dishes that have been handed down generation to generation by the Oaxacan women in her family. Although I'm still waiting on a batch of homemade caramel flan, I've enjoyed many of her southern Mexican meals, not the least of which is "her signature dish," salsa de queso.

It involves heating plain tomato sauce, El Pato hot tomato sauce, and onions in a sauce pan. Then you add cubes of queso fresco or ranchero cheese, let it simmer for a while, and then serve it with black beans and rice. Although optional, we usually eat ours with corn tortillas. You can make little vegetarian tacos with the cheese, sauce, and beans. It's surprisingly tasty and filling.

So when we saw that Trader Joe's was selling their own queso fresco, we decided to do a video review as well as share Sonia's family recipe for salsa de queso. Please note: there are other dishes from different regions of Mexico called "salsa de queso" that are quite different from this one. This is just the version that the beautiful wifey and her family have enjoyed for many years. Of course, just two generations back, all the ingredients were made from scratch, while more modern variations simply employ canned sauces, pre-made tortillas, etc.

We found Trader Joe's Queso Fresco to be quite similar to Cacique brand ranchero cheese, Sonia's old standby for salsa de queso. If anything, Trader Joe's offering remains a tad more solid and squeaky after heating, and the flavor might be just a shade more mild. It paired beautifully with the tomato sauces and onions and made the same great spicy cheesy tacos that we've come to know and love. If you're fresh out of tortillas, the cheese, sauce, and beans are perfectly edible when served as a rice bowl.

$3.79 for the 8 oz cheese wheel, found in the refrigerated section. Just for comparison, you can pick up the 10 oz Cacique ranchero at Walmart or Target for a little less money. I'd say the quality, texture, and flavor of the two products are very similar. For that reason, Sonia and I will both give Trader Joe's Queso Fresco Mexican Style Crumbling Cheese eight out of ten stars. We can't wait to hear my mother-in-law's opinion of this cheese. We'll report back once we hear from her.

Bottom line: 8 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Vanilla Cold Foam Creamer

With Trader Joe's Vanilla Cold Foam, $4.49 gets you 85 servings of yummy, convenient vanilla creamer. You read that right. Not eight and a half servings. Eighty-five servings. One tablespoon each.

It's like cold, creamy candy in a can. It's got a nice sweet, milky vanilla flavor, and the foam is nice and thick. It's a little syrupy and quite sugary. I mean, in theory, you're using it to sweeten and cream up your black coffee or something along those lines. One little tablespoon of this stuff is going to do your java wonders.

We had it with Trader Joe's Vanilla Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate. This cold foam provided the majority of the vanilla flavor by my reckoning. Sonia was a much bigger fan of that cold brew than I was. But we can both agree on this stuff. It's very tasty.

The ingredients are pretty good, too, using actual skim milk, cane sugar, and cream. I mean there are stabilizers and propellants in there, but the foam itself isn't made of unpronounceable chemicals. Only ten calories per serving!

Honestly, the value proposition here is kind of absurd when you stop and think about it. A little can like this doesn't look like much sitting in the fridge, but it lasts forever unless you're absolutely drowning every cup of coffee you make in foam. And unlike some store-bought creamers that disappear beneath the flavor of the coffee, this stuff actually announces itself. You taste the vanilla, you feel the creamy texture, and it gives homemade iced coffee a legit coffee shop vibe with almost zero effort.

The beautiful wifey will go with eight and a half out of ten stars for Trader Joe's Vanilla Cold Foam Creamer. I'll go with eight out of ten on this one. We'd both buy this product again. Kosher. Keep refrigerated.

Bottom line: 8.25 out of 10.