Trader Joe's Greek Yogurt Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

It could be the psychoactive opiates talking, but these muffins are really darn good. Lemontastic. And Greek yogurtastic, too. Alternatively, yogurrific, if you like.

Greek yogurt is taking over everything: spinach dips, guacamoles, and well...yogurts. That Greek yogurt is so hot right now. And with good reason. It usually tastes pretty good, it's relatively low in fat, and not least of all, it's being promoted by Uncle Jesse. But if history has taught us anything, it's that eventually the Greek yogurt empire will collapse and be replaced with...Roman yogurt, or something like that. So let's all enjoy this golden Greek yogurt renaissance while we can.

First of all, the Greek yogurt makes these things moist and dense. Creamy, almost. The texture is pretty amazing. These muffins really feel more like cupcakes because of the Greek yogurt. There are tons of poppy seeds, too, which add even more complexity to the already-pleasant mouthfeel.

Taste-wise, my first and only complaint is that they could be slightly more lemony. I love me some lemon. But there's still a decent amount of lemoniness—ahem, lemonosity, if you will—at least enough for normal folks and non-lemonophiles. Plus, you can taste Greek yogurt. It's that slightly sour, tangy taste you've come to know and love. In a way, I think the Greek yogurt flavor tones down the lemon flavor somehow, even though they're both sour-ish kinds of flavors. But don't worry, there's plenty of sweet, sweet cane sugar in there, too, to balance out all that tartness.

Among Sonia, her associates, myself, and a couple TJ's employees, we have yet to meet anyone who doesn't like these. But I'm sure some dissenting opinions are out there. We welcome your comments, lemon-lovers and lemon-haters alike...Double fours from Sonia and me.

Bottom line: 8 out of 10.

Trader Joe's English Ale Cheddar Cheese with Mustard

Wait...what? How is the vernal equinox now upon us? 2016 just started!

On the plus side, that means it's almost April and with it comes baseball season.

On the other...that means the demise of Trader Joe's English Ale Cheddar Cheese with Mustard is on deck. So, ya better step up to the plate soon so take a swing at TJ's spotlight cheese of the month.

Enough of the cheesy baseball puns. This cheddar is downright delish. Made with a splash or two of Old Speckled Hen and a dash or three of mustard spices, this otherwise fairly mild, creamy cheddar packs a lot of earthy goodness into every bite. It's sophisticated enough that I wanted to eat each cube pinkie-out style, yet accessible to the point that my kids would devour the whole chunk "Summer of George" style if I'd let them. The cheddar paired well with our Irish bangers the other week, but made great snacking/lunch-munching aside some turkey or pretzels. And yes, it did make me consider drinking a beer, just perhaps not Old Speckled Hen because I'm not my mom.

Sold in various size chunks at $8.99 a pound. Get it while you can.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's English Ale Cheddar Cheese with Mustard: 8 out of 10 Golden Spoons

Trader Joe's Cookie Butter Puppy-Chow

Editor's note: Here's another guest post from my talented, witty, extremely attractive, and all around awesome wife. Yes, I outkicked my coverage. Anyways, here's a simple recipe using all TJ's ingredients for one heckuva great snack! Addictive. 

One of our favorite stories here is If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff. M likes to read it fairly often. If you aren't familiar, it's about giving a mouse a cookie and all the things that will happen if you do (he'll want some milk, a napkin, a hair cut...it goes on and on, until he asks for another cookie.) We'll, if you give a preschooler a snack, she'll ask for some milk to go with it. And if she asks for milk to go with it, she'll probably have to go to the bathroom while you're trying to get two kids through a grocery store at nap time. When she gets done with the bathroom, she will notice the papers lining the hallway and ask what they are. When she learns that they're recipes, she'll ask if she can make something. When you find something that she would actually have a chance of eating, you will have to go back through the grocery store to gather all the ingredients. Once you have all the ingredients, you will go home for lunch. After eating lunch, the preschooler will ask for a glass of milk, and chances are, she will want a snack to go with it...

...And that is how we ended up making Cookie Butter Buddies (or puppy-chow.) I don't know if your Trader Joe's has recipes hanging up by the restrooms, but ours has a ton, and there are a lot of good looking things to make! We picked this recipe because it was something fairly simple and kid friendly and approved.

 

• 1 cup TJ's Speculoos Cookie Butter
• 1/4 cup TJ's Unsalted Butter
• 1 package TJ's Mini Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
• 1 box Puffins Cereal (Original, Cinnamon or Peanut Butter)
• 1-2 cups TJ's Organic Powdered Sugar (seasonal)
• 1/2 cup TJ's Chocolate Sunflower Seed Drops

Mmm, doesn't that look good?

First, melt about 8 tablespoons of butter (I chose Kerrygold because I love it, and would pretty much eat it if it were socially acceptable to walk around eating sticks of butter), the cup of cookie butter, I didn't actually measure this though, I just scooped out about half a jar, and the box of Milk Chocolate Mini Peanut Butter Cups, together in the microwave, in about 30 second intervals, until melted all together. In a large bowl, dump out the box of Puffins (M chose peanut butter, but I bet the cinnamon would taste great!) and pour on the chocolate mixture. Stir to coat. This was probably M's favorite part..."Stir! Stir! Stir!" she happily chanted while mixing it all up, leaving me for the "expert touch."

Add in about 2 cups of powdered sugar. I started with one cup, and added from there, until your cereal is coated.

Wimbly's dinner...our our dessert?

Spread it onto baking sheets so that it can cool and harden a bit. It looked so much like dog food when I did this, that it was easy to see where it gets the name puppy-chow.

Once it's set you can put it back into a bowl or into a large ziplock bag, add more powdered sugar, and stir or shake to cover it all. Add in a handful of the chocolate covered sunflower seeds and you've got a cookiebuttery, crunchy, tasty, and very, very, sweet treat.

The consensus at our how was that it was pretty good, except from M, who wanted some random left over Christmas candy instead. We ended up sending a little over half into Russ's work and kept a bowl here, which we ended up taking it to church to share because it was still too much. All and all? It was a super simple, quick snack, very kid friendly, and could probably be adapted to be nut free (you could probably leave out the pb cups and use a different kind of Puffin and just use chocolate and cookie butter to make it nut free)

So, our first cooking with a TJ's recipe gets 8 Golden Spoons.

Oh yeah, if you eat this, you'll probably want a glass of milk to go with it...

Trader Joe's Gluten Free Crispy Crunchy Ginger Chunk Cookies

A long time ago, Sonia and I checked out the chocolate chip equivalent of these and were fairly impressed. The cookie base is pretty much the same animal here. It's crispy and crunchy, as the name would imply. I do prefer soft cookies, but as crispy cookies go, these are top-shelf. I'm sure it's much more difficult to make a gluten-free soft cookie, anyway.

Flavor-wise, there's a nice sweet butteriness to the cookie. If you're taking modest bites, not every bite has a chunk of ginger, but the ones that do have a lot of ginger. Sonia wishes it were more evenly distributed. I totally agree. I'd prefer ginger bits to ginger chunks—which, incidentally, have nothing to do with fat redheads. Also, never ever Google "fat redheads."

The zesty, spicy zing of the ginger isn't quite as potent as that of some other products we've seen in the past, such as the Ginger, Almond & Cashew Cereal, but it's still strong enough to get your attention. In this instance, though, we both think the ginger flavor blends pretty well with the rice flour base.

As the front of the packaging suggests, there is a supple "melt in your mouth" quality about these baked goodies that's very pleasant for the gluten-sensitive and non-gluten-sensitive alike. As far as scores go, it looks like another four stars from Sonia and another three and a half stars from me.

Bottom line: 7.5 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Irish Bangers

Despite my red hair, I'm not really all that Irish. A little, sure...but about as Irish as I get is drink some Murphy's and quote some Boondock Saints every once in a while. Or listen to some U2. I'm not the one who did a really good leprechaun imitation on the latest podcast episode anyway.

So, I'm not really sure how "bangers" is appropriate Irish verbiage meaning a sausage. And I'm not about to find out - after all, I'm typing this on my break at my work computer, and need to ensure I keep all Web searches HR friendly.

Regardless, there's that big Irish holiday coming up where we all decide to get our green on, and so apt enough, Trader Joe's Irish Bangers are back on the shelves for this season. They're really only around this time of year as an alternative to corned beef for Irish meat intake.

And it's too bad....because I really like these sausages. Pardon me, but these bangers are bangin'. Made simply from ground pork and spices and packed not too tightly, they're a perfectly delectable somewhat seasonal treat. Bangers and mash? Yes please! And that's exactly what we did last week one night for dinner, with enough left over for lunch the next day for me - happy Russ.

They're not exactly perfect, though. The pork flavor itself is fairly light, but at least in our last package, there was this - how I do say it - almost a sweetness to it not explained by the ingredient list. Red wine vinegar comes to mind for some reason, but that's not quite it. I don't think other times we've had the bangers I've noticed that, but I could be wrong. A little less of that, and a slight bit more pepper would have been great.  Also, probably just like ones your Irish nana used to homemake, there were a couple small hard pebbles of gristle in one or two of mine. I can accept or homemade, but for commercially produced...c'mon.

Our local TJ's was sampling the bangers over the weekend with some pickled sauerkraut and dijon mustard, though and man - that was a tasty combo. The pork was a perfect base and held its own in that triad of strong, hearty flavors.

 A pack of six runs only a few bucks and is well worth for firing up on the grill or broiling in the oven. My kiddos loved them and gobbled down without complaint, as did the wife and I. Get them while you can, and bonus points for no artificial green food coloring.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Irish Bangers: 8 out of 10 Golden Spoons.

Trader Joe's Semi-Dried Apricots

I like these better than actual apricots. As you might have guessed by the name of the product, these little guys are about halfway between dried apricots and fresh apricots. 

They're sliced very similarly to traditional dried apricots. However, these are also frozen. I think that's why I like them best of any apricot I've ever had. I really like that cold, icy texture. 

On a recent podcast episode, Russ indicated that he preferred fresh apricots. I'm sure there will be plenty of you that fall into that camp. There's no substitute for the original. But for those of you that like pre-packaged, frozen fruit or dried apricots, these will undoubtedly be a big hit.

Sonia raved about these things. She's going to give them four stars. Don't get me wrong, they're tasty, but I found the quality (at least in our bag) to be somewhat inconsistent. You can kind of tell from our picture there that some slices look pristine and perfectly ripe and others have spots or they're too dark. That slight inconsistency carries over into the taste/flavor category, also. Some slices were perfect, but others tasted a little too sour and weird. In general, though, I think they taste better than they look. I'll throw out three and a half stars here.

Click here to view the nutrition info.

Bottom line: 7.5 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Extraordinary Eggs

Ah, Spring is in the air. And the temperatures are rising here in the mid-Atlantic. 'Tis the season for chocolate eggs—and other symbols of vernality and fertility like flowers, bunnies, chicks, and jelly beans. And much like the subject of Russ's recent post, these are seasonally-appropriate egg-shaped candies with a chocolate base. Now I'm no Russell Stover (in fact, I'd be Nate Velasco had I lived in that hypothetical matriarchal society), but I'm sharp enough to have noticed some significant differences between the two confections which we shall explore in the ensuing paragraphs. Let's get started.

First, these extraordinary candies are actually shaped like real eggs. Plus, they come in what is effectively a golden egg carton—not a carton that holds golden eggs, but a golden carton that holds candy eggs. Second, for $5, you'd think they could include one actual golden egg—or at least plate the carton with gold leaf or something. Goodness gracious, we're on a budget here, TJ's.

Thirdly, there are four flavors in the pack. You may have heard us riffing on that old Forrest Gump quote about life being "like a box of chocolates" from time to time...but in this case, you do know what you're gonna get, because there's a handy cheat sheet on the back of the packaging that tells you which eggs have which fillings. Green = Almond Praline, Pink = Raspberry, Yellow = Crispy Cookies. Now so far, those are my three favoritest flavors, in the order that I like them. Sonia would reverse those three, with both of us holding raspberry as a very close second-favorite on the list. Plus, we both agree the Orange = Caramel flavor is by far the weakest, simply because, in my opinion, it is the least unique.

Each extraordinary egg has a candy shell, not unlike other hard-shelled candies. Inside that outer shell lies a layer of tasty milk chocolate. But the real fun begins when you get to the center of the eggs, where there's one of four respective fillings (see paragraph above). Both the almond praline and crispy cookies are fairly similar in texture, like something akin to cookie butter perhaps, but not as creamy. The raspberry flavor is like a high-quality raspberry jelly, but more like a powerberry than a raspberry stick. And the caramel flavor...has caramel inside. Imagine that.

There are a total of 16 eggs in the pack. When you consider the value per egg, it's definitely on the pricey side, but they are high-quality and they taste really good. For a once-a-year holiday treat, they're worth a purchase just for the presentation alone. I'm sure kids would love 'em. Sonia and I are both leaning toward four stars a piece.

Stay tuned for a titillating episode of Let's Talk TJ's! in which we discuss the exciting relationship between eggs and swimmers and the psychology behind the branding of Trader Joe's candies—unless, of course, Marvo listens to his better judgment and edits out that segment entirely.

Bottom line: 8 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Mini Café Twists

I'm trying to think of what these remind me of. They're not quite like shortbread cookies or Dunkin Stix or Donut Sticks, although they are highly dunkable. There's another product out there called "French Twists," and I'm pretty sure that's what TJ's was going for here. I've never had those...so that's probably why these don't feel familiar.

They're perfect with coffee or hot chocolate. Tea would work, too. When dunked, they manage to retain a decent amount of the warm liquid, yet they don't completely sog-ify right away. Somehow, they stay crispy even after a dunk or two—and yet you still get the nice warm wetness of the beverage along with it. 

These airy twists are moderately sweet, and they have a nice rigid texture. They're surprisingly low in calories (30 per stick) and contain no eggs, butter, or milk. With or without a beverage, they're pretty good at curbing the munchies, and at $2.29 for a tub, they're a pretty decent value, too.

Sonia recommends them wholeheartedly. Four and a half stars from her. I'll admit, they're much better than I thought they'd be, but I guess I'm not quite as enamored with the flavor. I think they're worthy of three and a half.

Bottom line: 8 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Sweet Plantain Chips

My apologies for my review on the dark chocolate pistachio toffee earlier this week, for two reasons: 1) I am clearly in the minority in regards to my opinion about the product and 2) In retrospect, after Nathan's reviews on both the Baby Bananas and the Apple + Coconut bars, it's apparent that this is simply fruit snacks week here. Let's not derail that train, please, and go full steam ahead with one of the newer taste sensations out there, Trader Joe's Sweet Plantain Chips!

Particularly astute readers, undoubtedly like yourself, may be thinking right now..."Didn't TJ's already have plantain chips?" Short answer: Affirmative. But they are not sweet. Instead, the ones that have been around for quite some time are a saltier, savorier cousin of these noobs. Those are kinda like potato chips, except made from plantains (duh). These sweet guys, though similar in crunch and texture, are something else altogether.

If for some reason you're not really sure what a plantain is like, every time you read it, think "starchier banana" and you'll be on the right path.

I'm trying not to get hooked on them. Trying very, very hard. Plantains always have had a soft place in my heart after a trip I went on down to Peru back in 2003, where I ate fried plantains for breakfast every morning. And these chips are just about the sweetest variation I've found yet...and it's all natural! Nothing added! Except a little oil to fry them up in, of course. But, there's this whole write up on the back, where the plantains used for these crunchers were allowed to sweeten and ripen to twice the sugar level (apparently measured in something called "brix," I never heard of it either) of normal plantains. How much of that is marketing and how much is accurate, well, I don't know - but dang. Very, very sweet, in a very ripe sense of the way, almost like these fruits were just abound freezerbound for plantain bread before they got swooped in on, sliced, fried, and bagged. Sneaky.

The end result are these oblong crispity-crunchety chippies that are arguably healthier than most potato chips, with an almost-not-quite-kettle crunch. They're perfect for kids, too - my 3.5 year old and almost 16 month old both love them, as well as some of the kids Sandy babysits a couple days a week. Also, they're very budget friendly at only a $1.79 for a fairly large bag.

No real complaints from me, although perhaps a slight smattering of cinnamon would help cut through the sweetness and tamper it down a smidge. But man...good chips. Sandy's not as huge a fan as I am - she's eaten a couple and shrugged. This just might turn into one of those "more for me" kinda scenarios, and believe me, no complaints.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Sweet Plantain Chips: 7.5 out of 10 Golden Spoons

Trader Joe's Apple + Coconut Fruit Bar

The last product I reviewed contained exactly one ingredient. This product contains exactly two. All fruits. That's some good eatin'. If only I stuck to such a diet all the time... 

A while back, we looked at the Apple + Banana and Apple + Mango Fruit Bars and found them to be fairly successful. This is apparently a new flavor—or perhaps one that somehow slipped through the cracks before. Either way, it's new to us, and we felt compelled to try it. For those of you not familiar with these bars, they're basically just pieces of two different fruits smashed together into a bar shape. Not very complicated, yet decidedly different from other fruit bars, fruit snacks, or dried fruit pieces you'll commonly find in supermarkets.

This flavor is most definitely my favorite so far. I was wondering how the unique texture of coconut would affect the bar and also how they'd incorporate the coconut pieces into it. Would they be coconut chips? Strips? Slivers? Slices? 

I think the best way to describe the coconut in this case is "bits." They're teensy tiny little coconut bits. But so too is the apple component of the bar this time. Apple bits. The fruits are all but pureed here. But they're seamlessly blended together to make one scrumptious, natural snack bar. It's moist, but not wet. And the flavor is absolutely stellar. It's nutty, sweet, and tastes like something way more indulgent than just coconut and apple. This simple product is much more than the sum of its parts. Four stars from Sonia. Four and a half from me.

Bottom line: 8.5 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Dried Baby Bananas

Zombie fingers. That's how the TJ's employee described these to Sonia when she bought them. And he's not wrong, as you can clearly see from the picture below.

Each banana is about the size of my pinky finger—on average, anyway. They're sweet, chewy, and they taste surprisingly like actual bananas. They have the sweetness and flavor of a dark, overripe specimen—you know, the banana that's been sitting on the counter too long—but without the nasty mush that comes with it. 

Texture-wise, they're very similar to other dried fruits, not crunchy like banana chips. They're fairly firm, and for lack of a better term, I'd say they're slightly "leathery," although not in a bad way.

There's one ingredient: dried bananas. Amazing. I'm not sure if "baby bananas" are just young bananas or if they're a different strain of miniature banana altogether, but they're extraordinarily snackable in my opinion. I also can't tell if they just leave the peel on the banana or if they take it off. I would think they'd have to take it off, but then again, perhaps baby banana skins aren't particularly tough like grown-up banana peels. Furthermore, the drying process may counteract any toughness that one might encounter.

Health-wise, they're pretty much like big bananas. Any sugars present are completely natural. Plus, there's protein and lots of fiber and potassium. I've often felt like just a little bit of banana, but didn't want to commit to a whole big piece of fruit. My prayers have been answered. They come in a handy, resealable bag, too, so there's no pressure to eat the whole package. The convenience factor on these little, natural treats is very, very high.

If you're into the taste of super-ripe bananas and like the texture of dried apricots, figs, or prunes, then these will be right up your alley. Perfect snack for a long hike or camping trip. Double fours on this one.

Bottom line: 8 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Simply Nutty Bars

My goodness...there's like a zillion different granola/ energy /Kind /fruit/ whatever bars out there these days. They're literally freakin' everywhere. At the local non-TJ's grocery store, there's an aisle and a half full of them, all different varieties.

Anyone else remember the good ol' days when there was just the variety pack from Quaker Oats, and not much else? How innocent and quaint.

I guess portable snackage is on the rise with our busy lifestyles. Like a lot of you, I'm sure, I got kids and fairly regular 10 hour work days to make ends meet. Food intake is sometimes completely dependent on what's convenient, but since I want what I eat to be healthy (or at least healthy-ish), as do a lot of folks, but everyone has their different ideas...well, that explains the market maybe.

Adding to the noise is good ol' TJ's with the new line of Trader Joe's Simply Nutty Bars. There's three varieties, of which I've sampled the two pictured, the Dark Chocolate, Nuts and Sea Salt bar as well as the Dark Chocolate, Walnut, Peanut, Fig & Date Bar. Not shown, and not tried, because it sounded the least interesting of them all, is the Dark Chocolate, Peanut and Almond Bar which comes in a orangey box. It's different from the sea salted bar mostly because it lacks walnuts and sea salt from what I can tell, so probably a little plainer.

I'd relate these bars mostly closely to the Kind variety, not just for ingredient similarity but also overall flavor and feel. Crunchy isn't the right word, at least not in the sense of those Nature Valley shrapnel-in-wait planks, but neither is crispy, nor soft, nor anything else. There's elements of all of that present from the toasted nuts, the little white crispy bally things which I never really know what exactly they are (pea protein pearls? Who knows?), and in case of the fig and date bar, from those respective ingredients.

Out of these two, I'd say I probably enjoy the dark chocolate, walnut, peanut, fig and date one more, and it's not just for the always appreciated ampersand. They're not figgy or date-y like Larabars (which I really enjoy, for the record), but instead they get reduced down to a paste that kinda fills the gaps between the nuts while adding a flavor depth, if that makes sense. The sea salt bar is pretty good in its own right, but it sticks mostly to a classic nut and chocolate mix with a trace of salt added. There's just something more to the figs and dates one.

Oh, and chocolate. Oh yes. There's a pretty good drizzling on the topside of each bar, with the backs completely dipped. And, as is custom with pretty miuch anything TJ's with dark chocolate, it's fairly high quality and tasty too - not exactly Belgian, but not Hershey's either. I'd reckon it's in the 60% dark range or so, and there's enough in there to give me the midafternoon chocolate boost I need, with enough nuts and protein to keep me from getting too hangry, that make skipping my cubicle neighbors' candy dishes so much easier.

Sandy and I both like what we've tried. We're suckers for this kinda stuff, and at $4.99 for a five pack, TJ's seems to be selling them at more than fair market price. At some point we'll probably try out the Dark Chocolate, Peanut and Almond Bar, but if you have, please comment away and let us know if we've missed something special (or not) there. We approve.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Simply Nutty Bars: 8 out of 10 Golden Spoons (both varieties)

Trader Joe's Tomato Tiropita Triangles

Rather than give you a spiel about what tiropita is and fake like I know what I'm talking about (as I've done many times in the past), I'll just link to Wikipedia for you here. But I will go ahead and simply mention that just as spanakopita means "spinach pie," tiropita or tyropita means "cheese pie." How creative.

When you first bite into these pastries, you'll notice the buttery, flaky crust, but the filling really zings the tongue with a super Greek-ish cheese flavor. At first, I thought it was all feta, but the first cheese mentioned in the ingredients is "mizithra." It's made with cow, sheep, and goat's milk so that none of the farm animals feel left out. What? No pig's milk?

The taste of the tangy cheeses overpowers most of the tomato flavor, IMHO. But if you pay attention, there's definitely a touch of sun-dried tomato up in the mix. They go together pretty well. I was thinking they should have called these "Mizithra Tiropita Triangles," because the cheese flavor is so dominant, but then again, mizithra is a type of cheese and tiropita means "cheese pie," so it would not only be redundant, but you'd lose that nice alliteration in the title of the product. And technically, since these are three-dimensional objects, shouldn't they be called "prisms" or "polyhedrons"? I guess not, since the sides of the prisms aren't perfect planes. So basically, just forget about this whole paragraph.

Sonia? She liked these even more than I did, and she also made the initial assumption that the primary cheese flavor was feta. She claims she could taste olives. And there are definitely some olives and olive oil in there, but my taste buds weren't keen enough to pick them out without looking at the ingredients...or, you know, the front of the packaging where it explicitly states there are Kalamata olives in the product. She also enjoyed the flaky crust but thought it was a bit too oily. In all honesty, that might have been my fault since I used a little oil in the pan when I baked them. I was a bad boy and did not follow the instructions exactly.

But they still came out good enough for Sonia to give them a four. I'll say...three and a half.

Bottom line: 7.5 out of 10.

Trader Giotto's Due Canestrelli and Trader Giotto's Baci di Dama Cookies

That checkout area is tricksy. And now it's kinda fancy, too. Gourmet-sounding, foreign-inspired chookies? Yes, please. 

I call chocolate chip cookies or any other kind of cookies with considerable chocolate components "chookies" because I'm super in-touch with my inner five-year-old. But the grown-up in me enjoyed the sophisticated European-ness of these treats and the fact that they weren't overly sweet. Did I just rip off a Frosted Mini Wheats commercial? 

The Due Canestrelli is vaguely reminiscent of other chocolate wafers I've had, but thinner, stiffer, and a little more bitter. They're highly-snackable, satisfying, and unique.

The Baci di Dama Cookies might look like miniaturized macarons, but they're more like a shortbread-based cookie with a thin layer of dark chocolate filling. They're not unlike those crispy Milano-esque cookies we looked at last year. Although, I guess these are filled with Italian chocolate rather than Belgian chocolate?? If there's a difference between the two, I can't really detect it.

Each of the cookie packs is 99 cents and doesn't disappoint in the flavor department. Sonia scores both with four and a half stars, and I'll give 'em both fours. Cheap, fast, convenient, and small enough that you can eat the whole pack and not feel completely disgusted with yourself.

Bottom line: 8.5 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Sweet Onion & Bacon Vinaigrette

Sonia and I both like onions, but unlike our Pittsburghian counterparts, we're not huge bacon fans. Just do a search on this blog for the term "bacon," and pretty much all the results are posts by Russ. I know, I know. Unless you're vegan, vegetarian, kosher Jewish, or dead, what kind of unAmerican commie jerks don't like to eat lots and lots bacon? Us, that's who.

 

But we loved this salad dressing. Because it's mostly onions. The bacon flavor is very faint, by our reckoning. It's definitely there, but just barely.

 

Visually, using this dressing is like pouring a bunch of caramelized onions onto your salad. It's surprisingly thick and absolutely full of onion bits. There's actually more solid than liquid in the bottle here, and the dressing literally piles up on your lettuce unless you scatter the product around your salad bowl evenly. Taste-wise, it's not sweet like caramelized onions, but the texture is very similar.

 

Shockingly, this dressing is pretty subtle overall. It does taste like onions and vinaigrette dressing, but neither one is overpowering. It has neither the full earthy sting of raw onions, nor the sweet acidic zip of other kinds of vinaigrette. I actually wish it were a tad more pungent.

 

Sonia thinks it's just about perfect the way it is. We both agree it's amazingly unique and adds a lot to our salads. Four and a half from Sonia. Four from me.

 

Bottom line: 8.5 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Fair Trade Organic Bolivian Blend

Listen: I'm not a coffee snoot by any stretch. I mean, I can taste the difference between gas station and coffee shop coffee, between Starbucks and a respectable cup*, and I won't touch the stuff from vending machines at my job...but when I read descriptions on coffee cans, 90% of the time, I can't easily discern the "earthy" or "fruity" or whatever descriptor words get tossed on there. Light vs medium vs dark roast - sure. Much beyond that, dicey at best.

 That is, until I met Trader Joe's Fair Trade Organic Bolivian Blend.

Says right on the front: "sweet caramel flavor." Now, I drink my coffee black, nothing added...and there's absolutely something to this coffee that makes it taste like someone slipped in a small flavor shot. Without any enhancement, it's noticeable enough for a schlub like me. Darn good beans, these are. Most days, a cup or two is exactly what I need to earn the right to go home to the wife and kiddos.

I've been drinking my way thru a cannister at work over the past few weeks, and I'm impressed. If I were to pay something $2 or $3 for a decent-sized cup of it, I'd be happy....and this was pretty inexpensive, probably right around $8 or $9 for the almost-pound. Tremendous deal, especially for it being organic and fair trade. I might have myself a new regular here.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Fair Trade Organic Bolivian Blend: 8.5 out of 10 Golden Spoons
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* Not all Starbucks coffee is bad - some of their fancier ones are just fine. But a cup of their regular stuff? Tastes like the burned charred remains of some ancient coffee bean burial rite. Will do in a pinch, but far from my first choice.

Trader Joe's Organic Granny's Apple Granola Cereal

When I hear the words "granny" and "apple" in the same phrase, I naturally think of Granny Smith apples—especially when I see that lovely shade of light green. And although the ingredients don't specify what type of apples are used in this product (just says "organic dried apples") I'm pretty sure they're not Granny Smith. But that's not a bad thing in this case. I'm thinking Granny Smiths would have been too sour. The apples we find here are nice and sweet, and they mix very well with the organic oats sweetened with organic milled cane sugar. I was actually pretty pleased with the amount of apple bits throughout the cereal. There were walnuts, too, but those were fairly sparse in our box.

Apparently Sonia wishes there were more pieces of apple. Her comment: "I wish it had little pieces of apple in it." My reply: "It does." Her next comment: "Hmm funny I don't remember eating them. But then again I am a little weird." Oh, Sonia. In her defense, though, they do blend in pretty well with the rolled oats and other granola ingredients—visually, as well as flavor-wise. Strangely, she still liked it enough to give it four out of five stars.

It's a solid, hearty, granola-based cereal. Just think of any other granola cereal you've had from Trader Joe's or anywhere else for that matter, and throw in some dried apple bits, and that's pretty much what you have here in terms of taste and texture. Considering it's completely organic and naturally-flavored, I can't go lower than four stars either. Like Russ's last post, this product has been a mainstay on that TJ's cereal shelf for at least four or five years now—but we just tried it for the first time this past week and we're here to tell you that it's worth a purchase. It just might wind up on your grocery list week after week.

Bottom line: 8 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Organic Fair Trade Espresso Dark Chocolate Baton

Two of these happy little bars ensnared Sonia at the checkout counter on her last TJ's run. She enthusiastically devoured hers before she even got it home. She suggested that I try mine immediately. She even mentioned it on our last podcast episode and gave me an ultimatum to eat my bar by the following day.

But my bar sat on the counter for the better part of a week. That's not a testament to my willpower, believe me. That's a testament to the fact that dark chocolate and espresso doesn't really excite me that much. I finally tried one of the detachable sections and thought, "Yeah I can totally see how Sonia is into this." The remainder of the bar lay dormant on the counter for the next few days. I offered it to Sonia and she politely declined and said she might eat it later. That probably IS a testament to her willpower in that, apparently, she has some.

I ate about a section per day for the next three or four days. I don't remember how many sections the bar had exactly...somewhere between four and six I'm pretty sure. But I found that for me, it hit the spot most when I was getting into my post-lunch afternoon coma and needed a little shot of caffeine and sugar. If you're into chocolate-covered espresso beans, you'll surely enjoy this firm, crispy candy bar. There's plenty of dark chocolate flavor and there are tiny, crunchy espresso bean bits all through it. Sonia gives it four and a half stars and I'm torn between three and three and a half. I'll go with the higher score since the product is only 99 cents and I'm sure most of our readers will appreciate it much more than I did.

Bottom line: 8 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Convivial Cookie Collection

Someone in TJ's marketing department was paying attention during vocab. The word "convivial" just means friendly, agreeable, or enjoyable. I've only heard it used once or twice in my whole life during casual conversation, but hey, it adds to the alliteration in the title of the product. And alliteration is clearly convivial to the cochlea, don't you concur?

Leave it to Trader Joe's to combine trains, friendliness, and random cookies from Germany with very European-sounding names in a way that doesn't make any sense...and yet still there's this inexplicable impression that they know what they're doing. It worked on us, right? And we've no major complaints about this product, either. When they say 24 cookies in the box, it's not a trick in this case—unlike their five-ounce tuna cans and bags of "about" 40 churros.

Each type of cookie is pretty good, although there were definitely some I liked better than others. I liked the crispy cylindrical cookies the best. It might have been my overactive imagination, but they had an almost citrusy, lemony essence about them. A close second for me were the Kit Kat-esque wafers covered in dark chocolate. I might have liked them even more if they were covered in white chocolate, but the dark kind worked just fine in this case. I'd also say the same about those butter cookies with choco-fied edges. Those were my third favorite. In fact, if you look at the picture, Trader Joe's conveniently laid out the cookies from left to right in the order that I like them.

Overall, Sonia liked the cookies even more than I did. Plus, she was a huge fan of the nonsensical train-themed packaging and clever quips spoken by the cookies, like when the circular coconut cookie says, "I'm always around" on the back of the box. Her favorite cookie is the one with the knight from a chess set on it. Sure, the knight is made of white chocolate, but there's barely enough to taste it at all, especially considering it's surrounded on all sides by dark chocolate. She liked that there were seven different cookies to choose from, and that when you tired of one kind, there were still others to try. She gives this product four stars.

I can't get super excited about the packaging in this case, and I'm not really the biggest dark chocolate-covered cookie guy in the world, but I must admit that for $3, these are high-quality selections of confections. Three and a half from me.

Bottom line: 7.5 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Oakwood Cold Smoked English Cheddar Cheese

So....how do you smoke a block of cheese so it doesn't melt? I mean, where's there's smoke, there's fire, right? I had no idea until Googling it, so if you're interested, here ya go.

We've had a somewhat spotty history with Trader Joe's Spotlight Cheeses of the Month. See Exhibit A and Exhibit B. But Trader Joe's Oakwood Cold Smoked English Cheddar Cheese is a winner. Unlike other English cheddars from TJ's I've had, this isn't of the cold and clammy variety. No, it's more of the traditional waxy/creamy hybrid of most other cheddars, and it's strong, too. It's not the sharpness itself that really sticks out - I'd say it's midrange at most - but the smoke. And it's definitely oak too...my dad smokes meats quite a bit, experimenting with different wood chips, so I can discern between oak and maple and cherry and whatnot. Very oaky, very smoky. It's almost a little too uniform, though, making me question a little if this cheese were truly smoked or just add smoke flavoring added - I'm giving TJ's the benefit of the doubt and saying the first.

Regardless, this is an excellent cheddar, and a good deal at $7.99 a pound. Pair with a pour of bourbon, some slices of pastrami or roast beef, make a killer mac 'n cheese - lotsa possibilities here. Go at it! Bonus points for the Flanders-esque "Oakely Doakely" on the label as well.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Oakwood Cold Smoked English Cheddar Cheese: 8.5 out of 10 Golden Spoons.