Sonia has a few quirky allergies that come and go mysteriously. One is to mushrooms. Although, that particular sensitivity didn't apply when it came to the Portobello Mushroom Fries. Another one of her fun "come and go" allergies involves certain kinds of shellfish. Maybe. We've figured out she's okay with crab and lobster. But she usually plays it safe with things like clams, oysters, and scallops...except when my dad orders the fried oysters and she takes a couple bites. Maybe she's grown out of the allergy and maybe she's not as sensitive when the food is prepared a certain way. Who knows? But it took some convincing to get her to try this paella. She finally agreed, but only on the condition that I take all the mussels out of her portion.
That was just fine by me, because I really liked these mussels. They came out nice and soft, but not too chewy. The "calamares" were by far the chewiest ingredient in our bag. I've had squid before that was not this chewy, but really, it wasn't horrendous—just a tad more rubbery than I would have preferred. The rest of the textures were wonderful and blended together seamlessly.
South Jersey is full of fresh seafood, but I haven't seen many places around here that offer any kind of paella. In fact, the only other time in my life that I've had proper paella was in Spain. There was a quaint sidewalk cafe in Madrid where I tried this "national dish" of España. It was a while back, but honestly, I remember not being impressed. It was much soupier than Trader Joe's offering, the vegetables were stringy, and I felt it lacked flavor. They might have given me a bad batch on purpose, though. They didn't seem fond of non-Spanish speakers there. <Sigh.> Six and a half years into a marriage to someone whose first language is Spanish, and I'm still trying to learn it.
But back to the paella. It's good. It's complex, flavorful, and not-at-all-fishy. Seafoody? Yes. Fishy? No. I'm not sure how authentic it is, but I certainly prefer it to the only other paella I've ever had. Ironically, this selection is a "product of France," not Spain, according to the bag. Eh, close enough, I guess. Four stars from me. Three and a half from my better half.
Pizza night! It's definitely a thing at our house. Probably yours too. Used to order takeout/delivery...but after a while, paying a premium for waiting 45 minutes for someone to deliver a mediocre lukewarm pie when your stomach is growling and kiddos are howling gets old. Time to make your own.
Well, you could go the old TJ's doughball route (not a bad one, we've done it plenty)...or make it even easier and a lot less messy with Trader Giotto's Brand Pizza Crust. This is our new go-to. They're prebaked and ready to top with whatever you fancy, and just a few minutes in the oven - BOOM. Pizza.
Now, there's other premade pizza crusts out there - but these are the best I've had yet. The outer edges and corners get all crispy and crackery-crunchy while the middles maintain a lot of chewy breadiness. There's that light, pleasant carby flavor that carries through as well, although it doesn't shine through as much with red sauce. Sandy and I have made a white pizza with a little extra olive oil and garlic, with chicken and veggies on it on a few occasions, and the outcome is legitimate restaurant quality for a fraction of the price.
The two pack runs maybe $3 at the most and is definitely worth trying out for your next pizza night. Thumbs up all around our family.
Bottom line: Trader Giotto's Brand Pizza Crust: 9 out of 10 Golden Spoons
Well, readers, gotta admit: all of us at WGaTJ's are a little disappointed. You see, in years past right around this time, we've been privileged to be part of the taste test process for new, interesting, exotic products before they hit store shelves. It's sorta like the once a year bone that Big Joe throws us for hosting one of the Internet's biggest rolling Trader Joe's lovefests.
But not this year. No particular reason why. Just...nothing. Maybe there's still some fallout from last year's sampling which just didn't quite meet final quality standards for some reason - what a crappy excuse. Eh well.
So, instead, we're going to branch out and give something a try that first came back to Trader Joe's shelves a few months back: Trader Joe's Cotton Kitchen Towels. They're sold in a three-pack for like $5.99, which seems to be a pretty decent value. But, really, we're confused here. Literally, there's no instructions or descriptions or anything, so it's like TJ's is selling these 100% cotton towels with the assumption that we're supposed to know exactly what to do with them.
I mean, how in the the heck are you supposed to eat them?
No preparation instructions at all, so we're just winging it here, trying to take some clues. Seeing that the towels are apparently shelf-stable and not frozen, refrigerated, canned, or packaged, we first tried them as is, just what I presume would be "raw." Bleh. Literally, no taste - with the red coloring I was hoping for at least a hint of strawberry or sriracha or bacon or something. Instead, it's just this bland, fibrous, tough cloth-type sheet that is impossible to bite through.
Giving TJ's the benefit of the doubt, we began thinking just maybe we're doing wrong here. So, with the lack of guidance, here began the experiments. We tried microwaving - just warmed it up, slightly, but otherwise identical to our first taste. We thought maybe boiling them would do the trick and soften them up - it certainly made the towels hot, wet and steamy, but the only thing that got any softer out of it was my beard. The smoke alarms made it unbearable to bake them for more than a couple minutes, and we had a nice little chat with the fire chief after trying to grill them...really, at a loss here.
I thought maybe we got a bad batch (it can happen) so on our next TJ's trip, I asked one of the crew members for a sample and some advice of how to properly prepare a kitchen towel. Much like the blank stare and head shake from the fire chief, the look we got was kinda discouraging and not entirely helpful.
Fortunately, these towels do seem to have a decent absorptive property to them. It's been a struggle over the years to scrape off every last bit of some tasty sauce or whatever from a bowl or plate - well, fortunately, these flat fiber sheets are flexible enough that I can wipe off most any dish and it'll pick up all those flavors. And apparently this is a process that can repeated over and over again, because these towels do so seem pretty durable, and there's just not any process we can find that make these towels digestible seem possible. So, there's that.
But, fortunately, I'm not alone. The Rodgers picked up this product about the same time we did. They went about the preparations a little differently, but found the towels similarly perplexing and disappointing. Here's a short video review chronicling their experience:
As you can see, we gotta go thumbs down across the board. From all of us here at What's Good At Trader Joe's: Zeroes.
Bottom line: Trader Joe's Cotton Kitchen Towels: 0 out of 10 Golden Spoons
From my childhood, I have what my lovely bride interprets as a bad habit on major holidays: namely, not really eat anything until the big dinner itself. You see, it's not a bad strategy when "holiday dinner" is at about 1 p.m. or so, so skipping breakfast isn't that huge of a deal, and come meal time, you have plenty enough room in your belly to eat your fill, and to be too full for dinner. Totally works because that's how I grew up. But on her side of the family, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners and the like are more towards the evening (5 p.m. or so), making this strategery much tougher to employ. Not to say I haven't tried...but every holiday with a later big meal, I get the speech: "You're not going to starve yourself all day until dinner time! You're gonna eat something! Set a good example for the kids!" and so on.
And so it was this past weekend out here in the 'burgh. Easter dinner, our house, 5 p.m. Got home from church, she started launching it yet again...blahblahblah...yes dear, alright dear, I ran 5.5 miles that morning so kinda hungry anyways...
...and then she pulled out Trader Ming's Kung Pao Tempura Cauliflower from the freezer. Game, set, match. Stop twisting my arm already, this looks good!
As the name implies, what we have here is a bag of frozen lightly breaded cauliflower florets with some spicy kung pao sauce to stir them all around in. The camera somehow ate the picture we took of the finished product, but the picture on the bag is a more than apt depiction of the vibrant veggie vittles inside. Except...most of the blossoms are freaking huge. Ginormous, probably a whole serving itself. That's not entirely a bad thing, but they do present a textural variant that can be difficult to account for in preparation. Naturally, the stemmy sections retains more crunch and stiff fibrous feel, while the actual "trees" sections are kinda all over the place. Some were done roughly right, with a good bite, while others seemed smooshy and almost creamy due to being just way too soft. If they were smaller, I'd think it'd be easier to prepare them in a more even manner. It didn't inhabit us too much, but I could see it being a potential issue for some.
As for the sauce, I didn't care much for it straight up (yes, I tried it). It seemed a bit too cloyingly soy sauce-y, with a little tang of pineapple juice and a tickle of heat poking out. However, once on the slightly crispy/greasy cauliflower, a lot of the soy tendencies mellowed out, while the spice amped itself a smidge. By the end of my bowlful, the heat definitely kicked up several notches from where it started. The breading itself is barely worth mention, except to say it was a fairly adequate medium between the sauce and veggie.
Overall, this particular Trader Ming's offering is a go...I'd feel slightly better recommending it if it cost $3.99 or so instead of $4.99...but chances are it'll be a repeat purchase for when the vaguely Asian food/don't feel like paying for takeout bug hits (which is often enough). Sandy offers up a four whereas I'll slide in a little lower.
Bottom line: Trader Ming's Kung Pao Tempura Cauliflower: 7.5 out of 10 Golden Spoons
Talk about subtle flavors! This might have the subtlest taste of any TJ's product I've ever tried. The smell of this product is at least twice as strong as its actual flavor on the tongue.
Now I'm down with oil and vinegar dressings, or most any kind of vinaigrette or what have you, but this stuff...I'm not sure where the balsamic part of it is. Or the honey part. Or the thyme part. It's basically just olive oil if you ask me—and maybe not even the most flavorful olive oil I've ever had. It's pretty bland, pure and simple. Sonia and I thought "Hmmm, maybe all the flavors are on the bottom. Maybe we didn't shake the container enough." But even after ample agitation, the trace amounts of balsamic we dredged up from the bottom of the bottle barely produced anything more tangy or tasty than the first few drab drizzles.
It's been a while since Sonia and I busted out a thoroughly negative review, and I always cringe when I have to do this, because negativity typically begets negativity. There are defenders for just about every one of TJ's products, so it tends to be safer to either just stick to stuff we like, or to downplay our negative feelings in some cases.
If you look back through the past year or so on this blog, the "Meh," "Not So Great," and "Blahhh" categories have been dominated by Russ. He's a braver man than I am. It's not that I've lied to you about Sonia's and my scores, it's just that we've tended to review products we have neutral or positive feelings for, and we've tried to do the whole "silver lining" thing when we can. But every once in a while, we just can't. This is one of the worst salad dressings I've ever had. And to top it all off, there are 21 grams of flavorless fat per serving!
Sonia adds, "I am really disappointed. I definitely won't buy it again." On a slightly brighter note, she liked the texture of it. One and a half stars from her. One star from me. Unfortunately, there's an even MORE negative review than this one on the imminent horizon. You might not see it on here tomorrow, but definitely before the end of the week. Stay tuned if you love drama. Bottom line: 2.5 out of 10.
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 somelemon. 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.
Foods that are supposed to be black: Well, there's not many. The seared outside of my steak. Black jelly beans (my favorite). Black olives. Black mission figs. And that's about all I can come up with. Oh, Oreos.
But foods that aren't: Much easier. The inside of my steak. Toast. Eggs. Milk. Easter ham. And the list could go on and on....
...and at some point, it would probably involve pasta. Black pasta? That's, well, unusual, and sounds like some sort of joke gone wrong.
Until now. There's Trader Joe's Organic Black Bean Rotini, made only out of black bean flour. I wasn't even aware that black bean flour was a thing, but well, I've been wrong before.
Spoiler alert: These spirally noodles taste 100% identical to black beans. I mean, perhaps a little beanier, in some ways, because there's probably some magical ratio of 10 beans to each one noodle. But there's no mistaking the taste, these are very strictly black beans in pasta form...by what kind of wizardry is that even possible? What a crazy world we live in.
If you take a look at the picture we snapped of them, you can probably imagine the texture a little bit as well. Probably the first thing I noticed is these noodles were noticeably drier than most of their somewhat distant semolina brethren. This wasn't just on the surface, where they didn't seem to retain moistness as well as regular noodles, but also carried through in the bite, contributing to a grainier, perhaps slightly chewier mouthfeel. Which makes sense - I mean, it's beans in some sort of condensed form - and with that expectation in mind, it wasn't completely unwelcome. But I can understand it being a little offsetting for some.
Eating them straight, I didn't particularly care for them...but black beans to me are more of an accompaniment dish instead of main feature. So instead, we made them up for some taco pasta which was a great idea - the flavor played perfectly into the rest of the dish. Which brings up a good point - I'm not entirely sure I'd eat these noodles straight up with some marinara or whatever else traditional pasta flavors, just because they are too strongly beany.
Sandy and I enjoyed them and will probably pick them up again, but these legumey linguinis probably won't be our new normal. There was just a little bit too much resistance from the kiddos about these, partially because our 3.5 year old M was disappointed to find out they weren't chocolate like she so desperately hoped for. Anyways, we're both hovering around a 3, but I'll toss in some bonus pointage for novelty and innovation.
Bottom line: Trader Joe's Organic Black Bean Rotini: 7 out of 10 Golden Spoons
