We had to pick up these seasonally-appropriate pet treats because, hey, Alfred and Sadie love the fall just as much as we do. I mean, they really love all the seasons. Well, maybe not winter so much. They are half chihuahua, after all.
But spring, summer, and autumn, they're quite content. And why not celebrate the flavors of the fall along with us? Here we have waffle-shaped treats featuring real turkey, apple, and pumpkin. In fact, turkey is the number one ingredient. They even flaunt spices like basil, thyme, and sage. I don't think I've ever seen dog treats that have a sophisticated spice blend like that before.
These treats are a tad bit bigger and slightly tougher to chew than some of the other treats we looked at recently, so our fur babies will dock a few points for that reason. But they love the flavor of the treats and the fun, festive art work on the packaging and the overall autumnal harvest theme of the product. We've got another resealable bag here, so the treats stay nice and fresh for many days.
$3.49 for the 4.5 oz bag. We wish TJ's would offer a fall-themed dog treat that's tiny and super soft. The Pumpkin Flavored Dog Treats were fun, but they were way too hard for our pups. The Maple Bacon Stuffies were a big step in the right direction since they were soft and chewy, but the pieces were still way too big without breaking them in half. We're waiting for something along the lines of the Peanut Butter & Vanilla Dog Treats, but with a harvest theme instead of a Christmas one. Anyway, these treats are fun and harvestacular and would be great for bigger dogs. We'll go with seven and a half out of ten paw prints on this one.
"What sort of wizardry is this?" I thought to my young self as I marveled at the combination of firm chocolate and soft, milky ice cream sitting atop my friend's waffle cone at the local Dairy Queen. I was sitting in a booth when my compatriot returned from the counter with the hard-shell dipped ice cream confection. "Why did I get this crummy Blizzard when I could have had that?"
Since then, the novelty of the hard shell ice cream has worn off, especially since they started selling the stuff in grocery stores. And, of course, I'm not thirteen anymore. But even as an old man, I still enjoy some creamy treats topped with child-like wonder every once in a while.
So I was excited when I squeezed this bottle of Trader Joe's Hard Top onto my bowl of ice cream for the first time. Except instead of a shiny chocolate liquid emerging, a long, narrow cylinder of dull brown goo came out of the container. It didn't coat the ice cream at all. We'd kept it at room temperature and never refrigerated it. So why was it so solid?
At any rate, Sonia read that you can put the squeeze bottle in warm water to re-liquefy it. After just a few minutes, I shook the bottle and determined that it had, in fact, returned to a much more viscous state. I squeezed out another shot and voila! Our vanilla ice cream had an attractive chocolate shell atop its center scoop (see photo above).
It's a darker chocolate than most chocolate shells I've had. It's rich and tasty. It coats and then immediately solidifies. It's still fun to tap the shell and listen to the little thud and then crack it into pieces before eating it.
Both the price and the ingredients of this product are comparable to other leading brands. Here's a link to the only other do-it-yourself ice cream hard top product I've ever had: Smucker's Magic Shell, in case you're interested.
$3.29 for the 6.17 oz squeeze bottle. This isn't a product we have any use for on a regular basis, but if for some reason we needed chocolate hard shell for our ice cream again, we'd consider grabbing Trader Joe's Hard Top Chocolate Shell Topping. Seven and a half stars from Sonia. Seven out of ten stars from me.
This isn't the biggest box of crackers in the universe, to be sure, but at five plus ounces it ain't the smallest either. It's imported all the way from Italy, as a good many of Trader Joe's products are. I'm just saying, have you seen the price of a box of crackers lately? And I'm not talking fancy, top-of-the-line crackers for rich people that you'd find on a charcuterie board at the Met Gala or a rare vintage wine auction. I'm talking regular old water crackers or butter crackers.
They're easily more than double the price of these Italian imports. At $1.49, these parsley crackers are, if nothing else, a great bargain. One side is mostly dark green, infused with a significant amount of parsley flavor. I might even dare say they taste more like parsley than actual parsley tastes like parsley. That is to say, parsley by itself doesn't exactly pack a wallop in the flavor department. And while these crackers aren't a stellar snack just in and of themselves by my estimation, they do have a pleasant, salty, savory, herbaceous essence. I guess they taste as much or more like garlic as they do parsley, but that's just fine by me.
They go great with feta cheese. Olives, artichoke, egg, tuna, or any kind of canned fish really would work well with these crackers. Most cheeses would go great with them. Soups? I can't really think of a soup I wouldn't try these with.
There's a dense, crisp breadiness to these snacks. Texture-wise, they kind of remind me of certain pita crackers I've had. Along those lines, I think they'd go great with hummus or any other Middle Eastern type condiment.
The best crackers we've sampled from Trader Joe's in a great while, or maybe ever, were the Green Olive Flats, also imported from Italy. Those were just about double the price of these inexpensive morsels. I think I still prefer the texture and flavor of those olive flats, but these parsley crackers are quite decent, too.
If you're looking for something a little different for your next get-together or party, keep these in mind. Sonia and I would both buy them again. They're versatile, crunchy, and very inexpensive. Buck and a half for the 5.28 oz box. Product of Italy. Sonia will throw out eight and a half stars. I'll go with seven and a half out of ten.
