Trader Joe's Maryland Style Crab Cakes

Sonia and I recently visited Baltimore's Inner Harbor to see the National Aquarium. After a day of walking around the bay, watching fish and other sea creatures, we had worked up quite an appetite. Appropriately, we decided on seafood.

Now, Marylanders know their crab cakes. They're so into crab there, they eat potato chips with crab seasoning all over them. And although Sonia suffers from allergies to many seafoods such as clams, oysters, and scallops, she decided to be brave and taste her first crab cake. This was actually her very first taste of real crab or lobster. Ever. She had been avoiding them, thinking them to be in the same class of animals as the aforementioned mollusks. Since I paid some attention in 9th grade biology, I was able to explain that crabs and lobsters are actually crustaceans, and that her allergy may not apply. (Fortunately, it didn't).

We ordered one individual appetizer crab cake from Phillips Seafood. It cost about $7.50! (That was at Happy Hour. They normally cost $15 a piece). It was pretty small. I could have easily downed 3 or 4 of them by myself, but that was all beside the point. We wanted a true gourmet crab cake from people who should know what they're supposed to taste like. And indeed it was very yummy. Absolutely the best crab cake I've ever had.

The following weekend, Russ and Sandy had dinner at our place for our first ever "blog summit" meeting and some good hangin' out. One of our many entree items wound up being Trader Joe's Crab Cakes. They were frozen, came two in a pack and cost something like $4. Trader Joe had his work cut out for him again. How would his crab cakes hold up with the taste of Phillips Seafood's still so fresh in our minds?

Sonia and I were both impressed. The differences in quality, texture and taste from the Phillips crab cakes were negligible. The only thing I could put my finger on was that Trader Joe's variety seemed flatter and slightly less like a pastry. If anything, I'd say TJ's had more crab meat. Also, the Phillips crab cake had a delicious cup of fine tartar sauce backing it up, whereas we had nothing but a little hot sauce with TJ's brand. But they were just fine as they were. Having had only two crab cakes in her entire lifetime, one of which she ate just yards from the shore of the Chesapeake Bay (basically the crab cake capital of the world) and that cost nearly a dollar per bite, Sonia decided Trader Joe's was a very close second, and she scored it a solid 4. I absolutely agree. I could certainly tell a small difference between the two brands, but I've had dozens of crab cakes in my lifetime from various grocers and restaurants, and I too must declare that Trader Joe's was the second best one I've ever had, falling just after the one from Phillips. My score, a 4 out of 5.

Russ and Sandy concurred with our assessment and also thoroughly enjoyed the crab cakes at dinner. Russ described them as "light and flakey, but juicy," and noted that Sandy would "give them an all around 'mmmmmm.'" 4 out of 5 Golden Spoons from each member of the Shelly clan.

That gives us a unanimous 4 out of 5 score. Not too shabby, Trader Joe.

Our collective bottom line: 8 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Tuna Salad Wrap

I'm crazy about tuna.

Probably because of the high levels of mercury in it.

OK, well I just read some report that said only 5% of tested tuna cans have unsafe levels of mercury in them. Phew. That's a relief. Only 5%. But wait, that's 1 in 20. So, if over the span of your long life, you've had more than 20 cans of tuna...which I think is the case for many of us...certainly is for me...well, you do the math...the odds aren't really in your favor.

Anyway, I do like tuna, mercury-laden or not. And once you get past the mercury risk, there's the whole "dolphin safe" issue. Come to think of it, I didn't really do my homework and make sure TJ's was dolphin-safe. Of course, there are some groups that still claim there aren't any truly dolphin-safe companies in the U.S. and that the whole Department of Commerce Dolphin Safe logo is just a big conspiracy. But then, I'm sure there are some conspiracy theorists who would claim that the government is deliberately trying to kill off the dolphins in order to wipe them out for fear that in several million years they will evolve opposable thumbs, rise up and destroy humanity in revenge for all of their ancestors that died meaningless deaths upon our carelessly-cast tuna nets. That's actually not that far-fetched, really...bah, must be the mercury talking again...

Ahem, moving along...we shall now discuss the semi-deliciousness of the aforementioned Trader Joe's Tuna Salad Wrap. It's moist and tasty. The tuna salad is a good mix of mayo and vegetable bits and seasonings. Sonia actually much preferred this wrap over the Chicken Caesar Wrap we reviewed a week or two ago, but as she pointed out, the tuna wrap still could use a little more kick in the flavor department. I could see how maybe dropping a few banana peppers in the wrap would help it a bit, just like they do with my tuna sandwich at Subway...mmm, now I'm craving Subway.

I guess that if, whilst reviewing a particular food product, one begins craving a completely different company's product, that the former product has not been very memorable or totally satisfactory. I guess I do prefer Subway's tuna sandwich—or even the TJ's Chicken Caesar Wrap, but only by a little. All things considered, the tuna wrap is a nice, fresh snack, but don't expect anything life-changing. This is a "not bad" food all the way. 3.5 out of 5 stars from me. Sonia agrees.

Bottom line: 7 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Shrimp Stir Fry

So there's been much ado in the news over the past week or so about the old food pyramid being scrapped in favor of the new plate-shaped graphic to try and help us nutritionally illiterate Americans decide what's healthy and not to eat. One of the critiques which I actually heard of the old pyramid was, since fats and sugars and junk food were depicted as being the top of the structure, they were being portrayed as the crown jewels of the American diet, so the pyramid had an unintended effect of inadvertently encouraging unhealthy eating. As if, generally speaking, society needed that. I mean, just do a Google image search of the burger chain Hardee's, or think of the last fast food meal you grabbed. One of my neighbor's husband found what really should have been the new plate diagram, but unfortunately I couldn't find it to link to it. Instead of "fruit" and "grain" and so on on the diagram, it simply said "Don't eat processed crap." There's a lot to that simple statement, but in summary it's not coincidence that obesity and related health condition rates have skyrocketed in the past few decades with the growing popularity and easy availability of prepacked meals and products made from all sorts of cheap nefarious production methods.

It's one of the big reasons that Sandy and I have decided to go on a little experiment with our meals the next couple of weeks. We're going to try to avoid more processed products and make dinners from scratch, and try to stick to healthier sized portions and make healthier choices. We're certainly not experts on the matter but trying to give it the old college heave-ho. A couple nights, though, we're busy enough with stuff that we realize we won't necessarily have the time or energy to cook a full meal, so when making something from a box or bag, we're going to try and make healthier decisions.

Because of this approach we're toeing, I picked up TJ's Shrimp Stir Fry on my last trek to the local shop. Sandy was off babysitting, so I felt a little pressure as I was embarking on this new mission of healthy eating while flying solo. I stuck mostly to the list she scribbled down for me, but for a premade dinner, she just wrote down, "premade dinner." No guidance, and I was going to have to wing it. Lo and behold, a bag of frozen shrimp and vegetables that takes less than 10 minutes to make on a stovetop. Shrimp and vegetables = healthy, low fat, low calories. Check. Quick and easy = check. And since there's nothing but raw frozen shrimp and a variety of veggies, from what I can tell there's a comparative small amount of processing involved - maybe some preservatives, but nothing like any high fructose corn syrup randomly injected in. Oh wait, not even any preservatives, and there's a "gourmet pepper seasoning" packet tossed in too. It definitely seemed to match all the right criteria, so it made for a logical pick-up.

Sandy and I just had it tonight (somewhat ironically, after making an after work trek to the local food co-op and farmer's market for some goodies for other meals), and well, let's say I was higher on it before munching through it than afterwards. I'll start with the positives. The shrimp itself was good - pretty good in fact. It wasn't salty or mushy like what I've had with other frozen brands. Indeed, it was firm and fresh enough tasting, and TJ's tossed in something like 15 of them, so they weren't skimpy on it, either. And it was a pretty good selection of mixed veggies in the bag, too - red peppers, sugar snap peas, broccoli, water chestnuts. Along with some rice I made on the side, Sandy and I had plenty enough for dinner, and enough left over for me to take some rice and veggies to work for lunch. Despite all that, and despite its overall healthiness, it just lacked something, like a good light sauce or seasoning to tie it all together. That gourmet pepper packet? It consists mainly of black pepper and garlic powder, and for whatever reason I was hoping for something more Iron Chef than "first two things I saw on the spice rack" inspired, and there wasn't enough to have it permeate the dish anyways. I don't know if some soy sauce would be the proper response to this. Sandy ended up sprinkling on some crushed red pepper flakes, but for the integrity of this review I trudged through without any further dressing up. I appreciated the fact that a lot of the natural flavor of the shrimp and veggies came through, but I just couldn't shake the notion that something was missing, and neither could Sandy. Also, I know that just by putting in slightly more effort than opening a bag to dump into a skillet, I could have easily made something just as good if not even better, and certainly more tailored to our taste buds.

I think I know why Trader Joe's decided to keep his name on it and not Trader Ming or Trader Joe-San. Ming has brought us too many good things that it'd be a shame for this to sully his reputation, while that Joe-San character has more of a legacy of disappointment which is best not to perpetuate. Big Joe himself has enough of a solid rep that this won't sway it too much one way or the other. For a quick, easy, healthy bag meal, I guess it's not too bad, but it could be better. A lot better, actually. As it comes, it's just too bland for us, but with minor adjustments, I'm sure it could be a tastier dish. Really, just a light sauce or more seasoning, and it could be a bigger winner...But not today. Both Sandy and I give it a 3 and a shrug.

Bottom line: 6 out of 10

Trader Joe's Scallop Bites

In a previous post about TJ's pepper flakes, I mentioned a font on the packaging that greatly reminded me of the script found on the Spanish treasure map featured in "The Goonies." Here it is again, only this time it's even more appropriate: it's seafood. Scallop Bites. Yay. We haven't reviewed many seafood products on this blog as of yet...probably because Sonia is allergic to shellfish, crustaceans, and mollusks. The only swimmy things she can eat are fish. She'd probably be OK with aquatic mammals, too, but we generally steer clear of eating them because they tend to be very intelligent...and cute. Don't get Sonia started on these sea otters. She couldn't stop talking about how disgustingly cuddly they were for about 2 weeks after I showed her that clip on YouTube. At any rate, I'm thankful that those otters left some scallops for me, so that I was able enjoy these tasty TJ's Scallop Bites.

Scallops, in general, aren't easy to come by. You'll meet plenty of people that have never even tried them. Someone like that might not know what a good scallop should taste like, so let's briefly review my credentials, shall we? I do have some amateur scallop-eating experience, mostly fried ones from our local Bonanza restaurant as a kid. I also had some killer pan-seared scallops from The Warehouse Restaurant in sunny Marina del Rey, California a few years back. Delicious. So let's see how the Trader Joe's product holds up to the competition:

Well, they taste like scallops. They're a bit greasy, but not unbearably so. The jalapeño sauce is very subtle...if you're not into chiles and spices, don't worry, they're not very hot. When they came out of our oven, they were rather flat. The box depicts these perky little crown-like pastries, but ours were more like star-shaped pancakes. Overall, I'd say they were successful. They're certainly snackable, and they make good appetizers, but I did have to dock a point or two because of their greasiness, flatness, and lack of jalapeño-iness. They weren't quite the delicacy that the restaurant scallops I've had were, but in their defense, they cost a fraction of the price, they came frozen, and they only took 30 minutes to prepare. Definitely worth a shot if you're an appetizer-hound or amateur scallop-eater like me.

Anyway, I enjoyed them, and our Memorial Day weekend guests did, too. Since Sonia had to sit this one out, we'll simply double my score for the final total. I give them a 3.5 out of 5 stars. Bottom line: 7 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Coconut Shrimp

So a little while ago I made a list of things that didn't make sense to me. I'd like to add two more things, and in fact, I can't believe they didn't make the original rundown ... somehow they musta slipped my mind. Anyways, two things: First, who thought it was a good idea to position the number zero and the letter O right-freakin'-on-top of each other on your keyboard. At work where I mash buttons indiscriminately all day, I find myself continually pushing the wrong one mucking things up. Stupid nonsensical QWERTY keyboards. Secondly: how are fish and shrimp, clams, lobsters, etc, not universally considered meat? I'm not talking about the Lent/Catholicism/religious tradition issue as much as there seems to be different classes of vegetarianism where, depending on what you choose to believe, seafood either is or is not meat. I've asked several vegetarian friends* of mine about this, and they either stare blankly at me and really don't explain it, or I get an explanation that fish don't feel pain, they don't have blood, so it doesn't harm them. That sounds a little, well, fishy to me. To me, it's clearcut ... all those creatures have mom and dads, they were born/hatched at some point, they lived, breathed, ate, and pooped. At some point, somebody caught them and they died en route to my dinner plate. I don't know how we can determine that one type of animal feels pain while another doesn't, and as far as I know with my very limited zoological knowledge, fish gotta have at least some sort of blood-type system to keep them ticking. It was an animal. Animals are made of meat. Ergo, when I am eating a fish, I am eating meat.

Except ... enough people consider them not to be to create a loophole I will exploit. And Sandy agrees enough to allow us seafood while abstaining from meat during Lent. It's getting towards the end, I miss meat more than just about anything (I've told Sandy I want cheeseburgers, not jelly beans in my Easter basket), so I've been trying to check out some different Trader Joe seafood stuffs. When we went shopping on Monday, I definitely felt too strong an urge to not leave the store without something that used to have a face. Shrimp has always been my far-and-away favorite ocean animal to chomp on down on, so spotting this battered tasty-looking Coconut Shrimp required little to no thought.

Well, it's not bad, but it's definitely a little weird/not quite what we expected it to be. We've had coconut-battered shrimp before, and it's always been the shaved coconut mixed in with the breadcrumbs variety. The Trader Joe's tastes like coconut milk was either used as a base for the batter, or that the shrimpy guys were heavily saturated with it prior to crumbing it up. The result of this is this interesting mix of textures ... the fleshy-ness of the shrimp, the creaminess of the milk, and the crispy greasiness of the batter. It's definitely strange, especially the first bite when it's not expected. I didn't mind it too much, but Sandy was a little put off by it. But the taste itself is fairly gratifying. I've come to really enjoy things like rice prepared with coconut milk (coincidentally our side dish last night, with the mango-from-the-picture's cousin chopped up and mixed in) as it adds this creamy, slightly sweet, kinda ethereal dimension of flavor. The coconut with the shrimp did much of the same .... decently good, though when mingled with the batter I found myself wondering if the whole combination was the best idea. I thought the shrimp itself was good, not great. Each one was about a bite-and-a-half sized, definitely fresh and clean tasting, and not too salty/mushy/gritty like I've tasted with other store brands at other places. Sandy said she had one that tasted pretty fishy to her, though. I didn't notice that for any of mine, but the fact that she let me finish her allotment up told me she wasn't the biggest fan. I was so hungry for anything resembling meat I plowed them all down (mostly because I doubted they'd be any better reheated), and I think I managed to eat a tail or two by mistake. Yuck.

I can see us giving these a try again sometime to see if we like them any better then, now that we know a little more what to expect. Still, for now, Sandy could muster up giving them only a 2 because of the oddball texture and fishy tidbit. I'll grade them a little higher, but pantheon-bound these are not. The milky/creamy thing docks them down a little, not just because of the texture but also because it made the batter not stick to the shrimp as well as it should have, causing some half-naked pieces and extra scrubbing for the baking sheet. Also, I appreciated the product overall, but just wasn't left with enough of a glowing impression to recommend them too highly. I found myself enjoying the rice side dish more than my shrimp ration, and if you had any idea how much rice we've eaten recently ... Sounds like a 3.5 from me, though I'd totally get if you think we rated these too low.

Bottom line: 5.5 out of 10 Golden Spoons

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*I think some (not all) of my vegetarian friends ascribe to the theory that it is okay to only eat animals that cannot be considered cute and/or cuddly. I've heard people describe pigs, cows, and even chickens (though they are nasty little birds) as such, but never heard of anyone wanting to cuddle up with a fish or lobster or crab. So perhaps that's an argument for being cool with eating meat that swims. Hey, whatever works.

Trader Joe's Oven Ready Breaded Cod Fillets

Well, 'allo guv'ner! Do I fancy these fish fillets? They're rawther lovely, I say!

I felt like I was in a British pub when we cooked up our Trader Joe's fish and chips meal last night. It consisted of these cod fillets, Trader Joe's Crinkle Wedge Potatoes, and Trader Joe's Tartar Sauce. The only thing we needed was a pint of lager, but alas, until the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania reforms their laws about liquor licenses, TJ's doesn't sell beer at any of their Keystone State locations...so we made due with Diet Pepsi.

Anyhow, I was a big fan. I like fish. But I don't like fish to taste fishy. It should be flakey, light, and soft. And that's exactly how these cod fillets were. If tuna is the chicken of the sea, then this stuff is...I dunno, turkey breast of the sea? It may not lend itself to a proper Jessica Simpson-confounding land animal metaphor, but its taste and texture make up for that, and then some.

Next, let's look at the potato wedge dealies...So technically, they're "Trader Joe's Pacific Northwest Crinkle Wedge Potatoes." The "Pacific Northwest" part doesn't really work with our British fish and chips theme, but I liked them nonetheless. I really liked them, actually. They weren't greasy at all, just crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, and lots of fresh potato taste. Scrump-dilly-icious. I ate mine with ketchup, but they're fine without it, too.

Sonia mentioned a strange aftertaste from these fries that I most certainly did not experience. Maybe she has more sensitive taste buds than I do. I really can't complain about their taste at all.


And finally, we tried the Trader Joe's Tartar Sauce.

That clipper ship on the bottle sure looks like it could be headed back to Great Britain, loaded up with treasures from faraway lands. I imagine the captain of her majesty's ship kneeling down at the Queen's throne and handing her this bottle: a royal condiment for the royal fish n' chips dinner.

Now, I haven't tried many name brand tartar sauces. And if I have, I haven't taken notice of which brands they were. Tartar sauce is certainly not my favorite condiment. The only time I ever eat it is with fish fillets. But all I can say is that this is the best tartar sauce I ever remember trying. As far as I'm concerned, it is indeed suited for royalty...and slovenly middle-class American dudes that like fatty fixins on their fried fish.

So, for the Trader Joe's Oven Ready Breaded Cod Fillets: I give them a 4.5 out of 5. Sonia gives them a 4. Bottom line: 8.5 out of 10.

As for the Trader Joe's Pacific Northwest Crinkle Wedge Potatoes, I give them a 4.5 out of 5. Sonia gives them a 3.5. Bottom line: 8 out of 10.

And the Trader Joe's Tartar Sauce gets a 5 out of 5 from me. Sonia gives it a 4. Bottom line: 9 out of 10.