Trader Joe's Name Tag Classic Lager

Sandy and I could not do anything else other than look at each other and make a quizzical face. We were away for the weekend at a resort in Ohio this past weekend, at dinner Saturday night at the onsite restaurant, and when we requested a refill on our Sprites, our waitress brought them out...one at a time...in a Styrofoam cup...to pour right into our glasses...right in front of us. If we weren't the only ones there and would have been so obvious, we might have busted out laughing at the absurdity of it. I've never seen this before, and while a valid way to refill a drink, I suppose, it certainly made me feel a little more confident about our decision to pass up the "unbeatable price" and "tremendous value" of the time share spiel we had to sit through earlier that day.

Of course, the weekend wasn't a total loss. It's always great to have a little time away with your better half, and always funny when a buffalo almost gets its head stuck in your car window on a drive-through safari (true story). Plus, the fine citizens of Ohio have some privileges that we, the plebes of Pennsylvania, don't, like certain types of products available for purchase at Trader Joe's...uh, not that we did...the beer fairy came by again....yeah, that's it...

I shoulda told the beer fairy to not bother at all with the Name Tag Classic Lager. It's so bad that Trader Joe didn't even really put his name on it, though like the kid with muddy boots on standing on a messy carpet, it's obviously his fault. Look at the font used and the flower, and the familiar oval-shaped name tag logo....yeah, it's his. And it's bad. Listen, I went to Penn State, then lived near Pitt campus in Pittsburgh for a while, and have been flat-out broke at times, so I know what crappy beer tastes like. This, simply said, might be the absolute worst. The first ice cold sip I took tasted like literally nothing except a faint sickly sweetness at the end, which was kinda gross. Subsequent sips were tastelessly bitter and bitterly tasteless, if that's even possible. Finally, it got to the point where I could discern what this tasted like...precisely just like the metallic innards of the can. This putrid, super light, watery, nastastic spew was so utterly devoid of its own flavor it had no choice other than to absorb whatever it could from an aluminum can. To my memory, this was only the second beer I've ever tasted that, based on sheer nastiness, the remaining gulps were poured down the kitchen sink and not into my belly. This is terrible stuff, and to make it even worse, no hot chicks other than my wife appeared, no parties broke out, no one pointed out all the other "unmanly" things I'd done that day already (like stop and ask for directions at a gas station), no silver bullet train ran through the living room...nothing like that when people drink other crappy beers on TV. I just kinda sat there feeling numb and depressed over a horrible beer while making all sorts of grimacing faces. Sandy didn't have to taste it to know she wouldn't like it. Ugh. I think PBR or even something called Beer 30 Light that my younger bro mentioned to me the other night would be at least ten, if not twenty, times better than this. It's just that bad. At least it's cheap at $2.99 for a six pack, but I'm certainly more than glad we, uh, the beer fairy, procured us some other inexpensive TJ adult beverages, or otherwise the shopping trip would have been a complete disaster.

It's so bad, in fact, while deliberating a score, I seriously wondered if I should set a precedent by giving something negative Golden Spoons. But I can't do that, for two reasons. First, if this, or even this, doesn't garner a negative score, nothing can, even though I think this may be the absolute worst TJ's product I've tried yet. Secondly, some of this crap-veza might have a valuable use, and no, I don't mean giving the leftovers out to the random adults who insist on trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. I've found that bad beer often is a valuable ingredient when used in making a good crockpot full of chili, and as it's getting colder, I feel my first batch coming on soon. My brother and sister-in law, who also choked down a few gulps before ditching the can, pretty much agreed. For that, and that only, I think between the three of us we can muster a total of half a spoon from the three of us. For one of the very worst (if not THE worst) beer any of us ever tried, that has to be considered more than fair.

Bottom line: 0.5 out of 10 Golden Spoons

Trader Joe's Halloween Joe Joe's

A while back, Russ reviewed the Candy Cane Joe Joe’s. Those things are so popular, they have their own Facebook fan page with nearly 2,000 followers! Russ wasn’t quite as enthused with them as some people seem to be, but they got an OK score from WG@TJs. And a long, long time ago, I reviewed the Joe Joe’s n’ Cream Ice Cream. Pretty good.

I’ve heard a bit of online chatter about these Halloween Joe Joe’s, available only seasonally, and they’re apparently a pretty big hit, as well. It’s kind of a holiday theme I see here: sandwich cookies with candy canes at Christmas, Jack-o-Lantern face cookies for Halloween (or should I say “Joe-o-Lantern,” haha), and then who can forget the Thanksgiving Joe Joe’s with cranberry sauce filling or the New Year’s Joe Joe’s: two thin chocolate cookies with layers of pork and sauerkraut in between. Yummy. Actually, those last two types of Joe Joe’s don’t really exist, at least not to the best of my knowledge. But my point is that there’s a whole line of Joe Joe’s products, including a few seasonal items that people wait eagerly for each year.

Now, I wasn't as courteous as Russ with this post, because I didn't think to take a picture of the nutrition information before I threw away the box. I will attempt to remember to do so in the future, as our readers have asked for that. And it's just one more practical way we can help people plan their weekly grocery store trips. For these cookies, I'm going to go out on a limb and tell you that these are not low fat, low calorie, or low anything. These cookies are full-on dessert items. Hopefully Trader Joe's used real sugar and other natural sweeteners like they usually do instead of something out of a test tube, but other than that, there's probably not a whole lot that was spared to make these a sweet treat type of food, as opposed to a lite, healthy snack.

As far as taste, well, they're chocolate sandwich cookies with vanilla filling. Very sweet. They seemed sweeter than most to me. And I have a sweet tooth. Sonia, who claims to like sweets less than I do, says that they were the perfect sweetness and better than Oreos. That's a bold statement. I don’t know if I can agree with that statement totally, but I will give them this: their “vanilla bean cream” filling actually tastes like vanilla bean…very natural—super sweet—but certainly not fake. I guess it might be better than the filling in an Oreo. And let’s face it, the filling is the best part. I thought the chocolate part of the cookies was pretty standard.

I don’t know what else to say about them, except maybe that they’re cute. Yeah, everything from the packaging, to the orange-colored filling, to the aforementioned “Joe-o-Lantern” face on them is remarkably well-designed and season-appropriate. Props to the designers.

Maybe in part because she's a graphic designer and has an affinity for cute things (such as myself), Sonia’s gonna give ‘em a 4. She’s a fan. They’re good…but there was something about them that made me feel like I had eaten too much after eating only about three. And that doesn’t happen to me very often. If not for the ounce of self-control I was blessed with, I could generally down an entire package of cookies like these before getting that “Oh, maybe I should stop eating” feeling. So I’ll give ‘em a 3.

Bottom line: 7 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Beef-less Ground Beef and Taco Seasoning Mix

Nathan sure was right a few posts back. We really do like our desserts, and probably from the looks of me, a little too much. I guess it's not that surprising that Trader Joe's, in my estimation, has a lot of tasty sweets. But tasty fake meats? I'll admit it, as an avid carnivore, that's a shocker. There's the soy chorizo, the first item I ever reviewed for this blog, and still an every-trip pick up. The veggie sausage turned out a winner, even over the more famous national brand. Heck, I don't even really like corn dogs all that much, but the Trader Joe's Meatless Corn Dogs? Sandy and I got them a couple weeks ago, and dang it...tasty. Good call, Nathan.

So...Trader Joe's Beef-less Ground Beef. Once we saw it, based on our good fake meat history, Sandy and I figured it'd make a worthwhile purchase, despite its problematic name a la the soy chorizo. This time, it's all English, no fun with Spanish. See, the "Beef-less" kinda cancels out the "Beef" part of the equation, leaving this as simply "Trader Joe's Ground," as in, like, dirt. So, buying something that kinda resembles dirt, and its label practically says it's as much, so as I began making it the other night I was sure hoping it'd be something more suited for my belly than our garden out front.

Tell ya what: I don't think it's as good as the other fake meats listed above, but still, it's pretty decent. It comes fully cooked and vacuum-packed so for some quick tacos after a babysitting night, it made an easy choice. Consistency-wise, it's not quite regular ol' ground chuck, but it crumbled up okay enough, and I suppose it's moist enough that one could attempt to make meatballs and burgers out of it. Still, it's kinda obvious that it's fake when you chomp in. Rubbery or chewy or smushy isn't the right word...just fake-ish. But, the beefless beef tastes alright. It definitely comes a little seasoned on its own, but not overly, so it's the kinda thing to do with what you will. I think Sandy and I would be up for trying it out in some lasagna or try to make meatballs or do whatever else we want to the next time we go on some crazy meat-free kick.

Anyways, if you're making tacos when it's late and you're hungry, you need an easy way to spice up your carne dementira. So why not some Trader Joe's Taco Seasoning Mix? I'm usually the type who likes to spice my own meat and chili and all however I see fit by grabbing whatever off the spice rack and going all Bobby Flay on it so I'm kinda anti pre-made spice packs. I picked up a pack a weekend or two ago for making some homemade white chicken chili, though, because I wanted to pay some more attention to the pierogi I was also making, and man, that was good chili (even Sandy liked it!). And somehow I found another packet in my pantry, so I figured, why not for our tacos. This is some good good spicy stuff. It's heavy on the cayenne and chili pepper, with a good dash of black pepper, too. In other words, my kinda mix, except I didn't make it. It's definitely spicy, although, naturally, a little too heavy on the seasoned salt and salt in general.

In all, our tacos were pretty good and hit the spot while we caught up on "Glee." Yes, I watch "Glee," with my wife, so she'll let me watch football every once in a while with minimal grumbling...sometimes. It's not like I kinda sorta like the show or anything...but some of those kids got talent...okay, back to fake spicy meat. Sandy gave the beefless beef a three, mostly for texture concerns, while she really didn't say anything much about the seasoning mix except to say "mmm...spicy." I guess that means a four from her. Let's see, for me, I'll go with a 3.5 for the fake beef, I think, and perhaps another 3.5 for the taco seasoning mix. I kinda liked them both but for the beef, it just wasn't quite all there enough somehow, and I just like my own random spice combos over some prepackaged deal, however good it may be. In all, not bad for a quick fix, but sometimes the real deal just has to win.

Bottom lines: Trader Joe's Beef-less Ground Beef: 6.5 out of 10 Golden Spoons
Trader Joe's Taco Seasoning Mix: 7.5 out of 10 Golden Spoons