It has been absolutely frigid here lately. I guess it's another "arctic blast." Fun. Have already done some snow shoveling with the beautiful wifey this year. It's always nice to duck in out of the cold, sit down by the fire, and warm up with a nice big bowl of ice cream, don't you think?
And not just any ice cream—it's Trader Joe's English Toffee Ice Cream. Finally, an English toffee product I can get behind. It's got a brown butter ice cream base, small toffee pieces covered in chocolate, almond bits, and a caramel-esque swirl. It's extremely buttery, sweet, rich, and indulgent.
Sonia and I are both happy it has a yummy toffee flavor without massive jawbreaking slabs of hard candy. It's mostly smooth, but the nuts and toffee pieces keep it interesting. It's got whispers of chocolate, but not much more than that.
We polished off the whole thing in a single day. It's one of the better holiday ice creams we've seen from Trader Joe's. English toffee is far from my go-to flavor, but it's seasonally-appropriate and this offering didn't disappoint.
$3.79 for the pint. Kosher. Would buy again next year. Eight out of ten stars from both Sonia and me for Trader Joe's English Toffee Ice Cream.
Numerous readers have noted that these Trader Joe's refrigerated pastas and raviolis are "too much for one person" yet not enough for two or more. I concur. Although, if you're serving them with sides, they're just about adequate for a couple.
The "servings per container" is officially 2.5 or 3 on most of these products. It's three in this case, although I really don't think it's realistic at all that three adults could share this one package for dinner without copious quantities of sides, toppings, and/or fillers. If we're talking light lunch, then pairing this entire package with a decent salad would probably suffice for two normal folks.
But odd serving sizes aside, this is a decent product. We like the festive red and green colors, courtesy of all-natural tomato and spinach powders. We like the generous amount of ricotta cheese, and we both like the seasonings and pesto flavors involved. We've got basil, parmesan, and even nutmeg in the mix.
We boiled the pasta for six minutes or so. Traderjoes.com recommends serving it with their Rosatella Sauce, but we were unable to obtain that on our last TJ's run. Alternatively, you can serve it with olive oil and grated cheese. We went with avocado oil and parmesan. Honestly, these would probably even do just fine with a traditional marinara pasta sauce.
We polished off the package in a single sitting, devouring the majority of it during the recording of our eight and a half minute video review. We decided that it must be a pasta optimized for Festivus, the fictional winter holiday made famous on Seinfeld. It's probably just the Italian way to say "festive," but I can't think of anything more appropriate for dinner on December 23rd than Trader Joe's Pasta Festiva.
$3.99 for the 9 oz package, found in the refrigerated section. Sonia would buy again and I wouldn't stop her. Eight out of ten stars from the beautiful wifey. I'll go with seven out of ten stars for Trader Joe's Pasta Festiva.
I think the classic Brookie from Trader Joe's was just an instance of getting my hopes up too high before trying a product. I thought the Peanut Butter Brookie was a step in the right direction, and I like this one even more still. But this might just be a case of not having my hopes up particularly high.
Sonia and I are both wary of peppermint desserts. The peppermint can easily overpower the other flavors and ruin a perfectly good treat. Also, the presence of candy canes or candy cane pieces can dampen my enjoyment of a product. Biting right into hard candy isn't an undertaking I'm actively seeking out these days.
Fortunately, the peppermint in this product adds to it rather than detracting from it. It's a sort of sparkly peppermint dust scattered across the top of the brookie—no big rock-hard candy canes. It's peppermint forward, but there's plenty of chocolate brownie and sweet bready cookie in the mix along with it.
The cookie and brownie are nice and soft. We found nuking the dessert for 8-10 seconds made it even softer. Heating it woke up the flavors even more and made it seem creamier, gooier, and even more indulgent.
We like the serving size. We like the texture and flavor. We like the value. This product would stack up pretty well against any traditional grocery store holiday dessert fare. Sonia and I are both pleasantly surprised with Trader Joe's Peppermint Brookie.
$4.99 for eight brookie squares. Kosher. Found with the baked goods. We would buy it again. You'll most likely have a few days from when you purchase it until the "best by" date. Eight and a half out of ten stars from the beautiful wifey. I'll throw out seven and a half stars for Trader Joe's Peppermint Brookie.
The obvious product to compare these happy frozen dessert treats with is Trader Joe's Maple Leaf Ice Cream Sandwiches. We enjoyed those quite a bit. Judging by appearances, they're coming from the same third party supplier up in the Great White North straight to your friendly neighborhood TJ's grocery store.
Like the maple leafs, Trader Joe's Gingerbread Ice Cream Sandwiches come in a fun shape, although the beautiful wifey points out that the leaves were slightly more intricate and aesthetically pleasing. As you might have guessed, the cookie part of these sandwiches is indeed gingerbread flavored. The ice cream, on the other hand, is vanilla bean. I guess they were going for a balance of gingerbread spices with creaminess. It's not like Trader Joe's can't do gingerbread ice cream.
The overall effect is nice. The vanilla sweetness is offset by mildly-spiced ginger cookies. There is a hint of grittiness in the cookies. They're not 100% smooth. However, like their predecessors, they are nice and soft. I think crispy, crunchy cookies might have killed the mood with this product.
$3.99 for four ice cream sandwiches. Product of Canada. Kosher. Would buy again. In the end, we liked these for sure but maybe just a tad less than we liked the maple leaf sandwiches. Eight out of ten stars from me for Trader Joe's Gingerbread Ice Cream Sandwiches. Sonia will throw out eight and a half—just a half star less than what we gave to the leaf sandwiches from each of us.
Apparently there's another viral sensation going around involving lasagna soup. There are myriad variations on the particular ingredients used—some are high-protein, some are optimized for the crock pot, and others have lots of greens and veggies. This offering from Trader Joe's is pretty much ready to go if you're not into the whole DIY thing. It can be heated in the microwave or on the stove top.
It's got a fair amount of lasagna pasta. They're not big sheets. They're more like "bits" with an occasional "chunk" of wavy Mafalda macaroni. There's ground turkey, as well. Most of the turkey appears as little meat crumbles with a few larger wads floating around in the soup. It's all suspended in a thick, tomato-based broth with Asiago cheese and traditional Italian spices including onions, garlic, basil, oregano, fennel, salt, and black pepper.
It's a nice hearty overall flavor. Sonia and I are both fans. We finished the whole 2.5 serving tub in one sitting. We love that TJ's chose turkey meat. Perhaps it's fate that we're putting this review up right after Turkey Day.
Complaints? Sonia wants more pasta. I want veggies like diced tomato, spinach, kale, and bigger onion chunks. We think it would be better with turkey meatballs instead of ground turkey. But we're nitpicking. We always nitpick.
Five bucks for the 20 oz tub found in the refrigerated section. Would buy again. Eight and a half stars from Sonia for Trader Joe's Lasagna Soup with Turkey. I'll throw out eight out of ten stars.
Of all the many things you might find at a Thanksgiving Dinner spread, I think I like stuffing most of all. I mean, ideally, you're never really eating stuffing all by itself. You're gonna have turkey, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce to go with it. But I mean, if I had to pick just one item from Turkey Day that's my favorite, it's stuffing. I am a carbivore, after all.
There's a cornbread stuffing mix that you make yourself. We like that one. Also, there used to be a cornbread stuffing that came pre-mixed with chicken sausage in it. That one was so-so, but I don't think it's available this year anyway. Trader Joe's even sells stuffing-flavored potato chips. Those things are awesome. And we did a short video review of their stuffing-flavored popcorn. Sonia and I enjoy that product a lot, too.
Right now, we're focusing in on Trader Joe's Cornbread Stuffing with Roasted Apples, Dried Cranberries, and Savory Herbs. This might be my favorite Trader Joe's actual stuffing product. The popcorn and potato chips got the highest scores on our blog, but if we're talking actual breading/dressing/filling/stuffing then I think this is the best one we've seen from TJ's.
It's very moist and slightly sweet. It's salty and savory, but the apples and cranberries add a nice fruity taste to the breads, herbs, and spices. It's soft and fluffy. We heated ours in the oven right in the tray that it comes in, and it came out great. I'm told it winds up a bit soggy when prepared in the microwave.
$5.99 for the 17 oz container, found in the refrigerated section. Would buy again. Sonia didn't grow up eating pumpkin pie or cranberry sauce, but she did grow up with turkey and stuffing, and she likes this product as well. We'll probably have this again for Christmas Dinner. We'll both go with eight out of ten stars for Trader Joe's Cornbread Stuffing with Roasted Apples, Dried Cranberries, and Savory Herbs.
Can you believe it's Thanksgiving week already? Man, 2025 has absolutely flown by. It's a great time to remind yourself that no matter what you're going through, no matter how hard things have been, even if things in the world don't look the way you want them to, there is ALWAYS something for which to be thankful.
I could wax poetic about the holiday ad infinitum and name all the things I'm grateful for, but this here is a food review, so let's get to it. We're looking at Trader Joe's Cranberry Sauce. I'll give you the TL;DR up front: I LOVE the taste, and I'm not a huge fan of the texture.
$3.29 gets you a 12 oz glass jar of sauce made with nothing but cranberries, sugar, water, and pectin. That's it. That's the entire ingredients list. Love it. It's very sweet, very tart, and is absolutely bursting with real cranberry flavor.
Unfortunately, the cranberry skins are left intact to the point that certain bites are somewhat chewy. There's a grittiness to the texture, too. Although I grew up with the ultra-smooth Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce at most of my Thanksgivings, I don't mind a bit of fruit pieces floating around in the condiment, but this is too far in the opposite direction.
I really love the taste as well as the texture of Trader Joe's Cranberry Orange Relish. It's got like a...well, like it's a similar texture as pickle relish but obviously not the same taste. That's still my favorite "cranberry sauce" from Trader Joe's and gets my full endorsement as a Thanksgiving Day fare recommendation. This offering is just a tad too chunky for my preference. If it were pureed a bit more, I think it would be great. Some folks will love the "au naturel" style sauce complete with cranberry skins, seeds, etc. Others won't.
I like this better than Trader Joe's Cranberry Ginger Chutney which has too much vinegar flavor for both Sonia and me. We both love Indian food and enjoy the vast majority of chutneys, but that sauce was a thumbs down for us. And of course, if you're looking for something similar to this shelf-stable product but refrigerated and more recently produced, there's always Trader Joe's Fresh Cranberry Sauce which comes in a tub rather than a glass jar.
We'll be having the cranberry orange relish again this year for Turkey Day. This one will be great for some folks and just okay for others. Watch our video review for more thoughts and commentary. Seven and a half out of ten stars from the beautiful wifey for Trader Joe's Cranberry Sauce. I'll go with an even seven.
"Salsa macha" is another delightful condiment from our neighbors to the south. It's spicy, nutty, garlicky, and in this case at least, it's quite oily. My mother-in-law (mi suegra) is quite familiar with the sauce, and she's a big fan of this offering from Trader Joe's. We actually decided to pick it up thanks to her recommendation.
From what I've gathered, there are many iterations and varieties of salsa macha—some with peanuts, some with seeds, some with chili peppers, some with vinegar. Most are at least a tad spicy and most have some amount of garlic. Although "macha" is pronounced just like "matcha," as in green tea leaves, to the best of my knowledge nobody puts matcha in their macha.
The nuttiness from three different types of seeds is what makes this product special. If you like the taste of pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and sesame seeds, it's a safe bet you'll enjoy this salsa. It is a bit spicy, but it's not off the charts. There's a nice warm ambient heat that creeps up on you after several bites thanks to "dried pequin chile pepper." Sonia says it's about a 5 out of 10 on her spice-o-meter. The garlic flavor is nice. If anything, I'd ask for more garlic, but I'm kinda weird like that.
The whole thing is floating in a generous pool of oil. TJ's used olive oil this time, which we're very happy about. It's on par with Trader Joe's Chili Onion Crunch and the Chili Cranberry Orange & Onion in terms of overall texture and oil content. It's packaged very similarly, as well.
$4.49 for the 6 oz jar. Product of Mexico. The container says to "store in a cool, dry place" and does not mention refrigerating after opening. Is it as good as Trader Joe's Pepita Salsa? No. No, it's not. But we'd both buy it again just for variety. Seven and a half stars from both Sonia and me for Trader Joe's Crunchy Sesame, Sunflower Seeds & Pepitas Salsa Macha.
Let me start off by saying Sonia and I have both been to Paris independently of one another, and while there, we both sampled some crepes from street vendors. We both remember them being shockingly inexpensive, warm, and delicious. They were one of the few things I perceived to be both uniquely French and also within my price range.
They weren't long and thin like these crepes. They were made with a similar-looking dough and folded into roughly triangular shapes and shuffled into a paper sleeve to be carried off and eaten on the go. I don't remember for sure since it was many years ago, but the crepes were filled with generous amounts of a chocolate spread of some kind—it very well may have been Nutella. It was creamy and full of cocoa flavor. The dough they used was amazing. It was buttery, slightly crispy in places, and it just melted in your mouth.
These are a far cry from those Parisian street crepes. The dough is the most intrusive element. Sonia and I both find it to be chewy—totally lacking that melt-in-the-mouth quality. To be fair, these crepes are pre-packaged and stored at room temperature for a number of weeks and then heated (or not) in the microwave. I guess you can also serve them unheated. I'm tempted to see how they turn out in the air fryer but I fear that they might dry out.
The hazelnut filling is chocolatey enough and tastes decent, but there just isn't enough of it. I remember creamy chocolate oozing out the sides of that delectable street food. That's not the case here. There's way more breading than the hazelnut cocoa filling.
There were some frozen crepes from Trader Joe's quite a few years back. We liked those significantly more than these room temperature dealies. Not sure why they disappeared, but that's pretty much par for the course with TJ's, unfortunately.
At $3.99 for six individually-wrapped servings, the cost isn't much steeper than those very inexpensive crepes from France all those years ago, but the quality isn't even in the same ballpark. Kosher. Would not buy again. Six out of ten stars from both Sonia and me for Trader Joe's Hazelnut & Cocoa Filled Crepes.
