Trader Joe's Olive Chicken Bites

Ever wonder where food concepts were thought of/ Like, their originations? It's an interesting thought exercise. 

Take, for instance, this: Who would watch a chicken drop a spherical white orb from its butt and decide, "Hey, I wanna pick this up." I mean, I've seen an egg fresh from the source, and let's just say there's a lot of cleaning involved before it makes its way into a carton. A LOT of cleaning. But then, pick it up, decide to crack it open, see all the egg insides and then have the insight to add a heat source and watch it firm up and then decide to actually eat it...and find out that it's really good? Especially with salsa. Crazy. I never would have come up with that myself.

Nor would I have invented something quite as silly as Trader Joe's Olive Chicken Bites. 

No, I am not saying that these newish frozen appetizers are going to be a dietary cornerstone like eggs, cuz no, that's ridiculous. But who thinks of putting an olive inside a chicken bite...and how does that actually taste, anyways.

Second question first. It's...odd. As you might be able to tell by my pic, I made up a batch in the air fryer for lunchtime the other day. Anything to beat PBJ/mac n cheese/ramen day 10,142 in a row, seemingly at least. As I waited for the bites to warm up and crispify, I read the ingredients. Potato, onion and chicken, along with the olive and whatever else to hold it all together and season it a bite. A protein, a starch, a veggie or two all in one - it's like a meal in a bite. 

So all that stuff aside from the olive makes up the outer shell. There's nothing too wrong with it. It is dark meat, which i don't mind but I know that's a deal breaker for some. The meat itself is the chicken nuggety-y variety, all kinda mashed and shredded with the potatoes and onions kinda holding it all together. Kay. Not bad, but not overly flavorful, aside from the flavor leaking out from the olive core. 

About that olive...okay, who's idea? It's so just so random and basic and odd and bewildering at once. Why a plain green manzanilla olive with a little pimento in there? If you're gonna do an olive, why not something a little more lively like a kalamata, with a little garlic? That'd be bomb.  Even better, why not a hot pepper or some bacon or a little cheese reservoir or something of that sort? Something a little more than just a plain boring green olive. It's like trying to be clever with paper clip chains. If you're gonna go the basic kitschy route, you have slim margin for error. 

There's not much flavor other than the olive, though. A little dipping sauce would probably go a long way towards appreciating the product. A little cheese here could real compliment it well. 

Anyways, pretty much everyone in my family except me turned their nose at them. I ate them...not happily, I was just hungry. Back to those PBJs I guess for everyone. For $4.99 I was kinda expecting this experience but was hopeful for better. Oh well. Not gonna score too high here, let's just call it a 4 and move on. 

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Olive Chicken bites: 4 out of 10 Golden Spoons

 

Trader Joe's Chocolate Lava Gnocchi

Gnoccolate. C'mon, man. You missed a golden opportunity to create a beautiful new word, Trader Joe. 

In keeping with this week's chocolate theme so far, it's time to take a look at something many of you already have an opinion of: Trader Joe's Chocolate Lava Gnocchi. We were unable to obtain them last year, so since Sonia and I haven't had much luck scoring this year's newest products in a timely fashion, we'll be sharing our opinions on this formerly buzzworthy product making its sophomore appearance in Jolly Old Saint Joe's frozen section, just in case you're still sitting on the fence about making the $2.99 purchase or not.

It's not the first time we've seen Trader Joe's choc-ify something that's not traditionally chocolatey or desserty. I wasn't particularly impressed with last year's chocolate hummus, but all four of us on the team appreciated the chocolate raspberry tamales in the happy golden days of yore. Do they still sell them? Didn't see them on our last run. Oh well. They should if they don't.

In my opinion, these chocolate lava gnocchi fall squarely in between the two aforementioned choc-ified concoctions. They're not the sweet, rich, indulgent desserts I was hoping for, nor are they a wholesome savory dinner item, either. They're basically chocolate-flavored potato balls. If that sounds good to you, then you might love 'em.

But you also might hate 'em. They're starchy. Like very starchy. Potato is about the most starchy substance I can think of. And then whoever formulated this product was like, "Hey it's not starchy enough with just potato puree. Let's add some rice starch and more potato starch. Then Starchy Joe's Starchy Starch Balls with Starch and Chocolate will be complete!"

I mean, they do taste like chocolate. But like I said before, it's not the rich sweet flavor I was hoping for. A little whipped cream goes a long way in terms of sending these gnocchi in the indulgent dessert direction, but doesn't make them entirely delectable. As far as "lava" is concerned, there's not much. No need to evacuate the town at the bottom of Mount St. Gnoccolate. There's a mild wetness you can see in the center of a piece cut in half on the right side of the pic I took, but even that gets sucked right back into the starchy void before it can really liquefy completely and flow freely. So the lava factor was disappointing. 

Also, they look like fresh reindeer droppings.

We'll have no problem finishing the bag today. We had most of them for breakfast. Is that weird? But we probably won't re-purchase. Three stars a piece.

Bottom line: 6 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Candy Cane Joe-Joe's Dark Chocolate Bar

In the spirit of the season, we'll be making a list and checkin' it twice:

Trader Joe's. Check. 

Candy cane. Yes. 

Joe-Joe's. Yup.

Dark chocolate. Texas sized 10-4. 

A chocolate bar with a name like Trader Joe's Candy Cane Joe-Joe's Dark Chocolate Bar should be fun, festive, seasonal, joy inducing. A cure for what ails ya. It should be a little snippet of merriment, a little piece of contentment, a little bite of something good in a world gone mad. I mean, it's a candy bar, but really, can you blame anyone for pinning at least a little hopes of something positive on it. 

Hate to sound grinchy, but that's a bit too much for this chocolate bar. It's simply just okay, kinda good but certainly not great. Let's run through that list again and see what's naughty and nice. 

Trader Joe's - on the nice list! Really, did you expect anything different?

Candy cane. Oh there's plenty of candy cane, and it's very candy cane-y. That's a good thing. The "generously topped with crushed peppermint" is a bit of an oversell - I prefer the underpromise/overdeliver model of satisfaction personally - but there's plenty enough little candy cane shard that get all up in there and in tooth crevices and whatnot to make the bar plenty candy-cane'd up. Nice and minty and everything. No issue.

Joe-Joe's. Well, okay, here's where things start going sideways. For the uninitiated, Joe-Joe's are TJ's version of Oreos. They're rather ridiculously tasty, and featured plenty this time of year in all sorts of festive offerings. But here? It's literally just cookie crumbs from the Joe-Joe's table. There's not a lot of them, and the ones present are rather small. This could be forgiven if Joe-Joe's creme filling were somehow incorporated (like a little reservoir in the bar itself?) but nope. The cookie essence is completely lost as the cookie crumbs aren't prominent enough in either size or taste to stand out at all. It just feels like another small crunchy bit that could be attributed to a candy cane instead. Not enough in my book. 

Dark chocolate; The usual goodness here. As usual, i could do darker but no complaints. 

There ya have it. For a $1.99 you could do better for sure, and while these won't ruin your day, if your kid ends up snatching the whole thing to use for shingles for a gingerbread house you shouldn't be heartbroken either. Middling score here all around with a double 3. 

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Candy Cane Joe-Joe's Dark Chocolate Bar: 6 out of 10 Golden Spoons.