Trader Joe's Potato Pancakes

I love lazy weekend mornings at home, and when given the opportunity, I'll definitely take advantage. Take this past Sunday for example. I slept 'til I was done, got out of bed a little bit after that, meandered downstairs to get caught up on the news, and waited for my lovely wife to come home from her early morning 8-mile run through zillion percent humidity (she's training for her next half-marathon in a month and halfish, crazy chick) before she tackled finishing up end-of-program-year summary reports for a swath of her preschool kids. Okay, it was a lazy weekend morning for one of us*, at least, and I'm relieved she wasn't too mad that I missed her text message to have coffee ready for her when she came home. Needless to say, it was up to me to make us some breakfast, which is one of the things I love to do the most, especially with a little Jack Johnson or The Head and the Heart for a soundtrack for a pretty laid back morning.

Sandy specifically requested some Trader Joe's Potato Pancakes to go alongside her scrambled eggs and coffee. Truth be told, we bought these I'm not sure how long ago and had them buried somewhere in the freezer. I'm pretty glad I didn't have to chisel them out. I'm not sure if I remembered we had them, but I'm thankful she did.

Potato pancakes, or latkes, are a very simple, straightforward dish. Some potato (some mashed, some smaller bits), a little matzah meal, a wee bit of onion, salt and pepper, fry them up in a little oil (technically you can bake them too, but that seems a little silly). And that's exactly what these TJ's latkes are. The term "frozen prepared foods" brings to mind the thought of being preservative and sodium laden bad-for-you junk that doesn't taste all that good. In this incarnation, that could not be further from the truth. As far as I can tell, the only thing on the ingredient list that your grandma maybe wouldn't put in her famous homemade ones is dehydrated potatoes. No tetrahyglycerides or pantoglompooperamides or other made up words. As far as sodium...yeah, okay, they have a fair amount, but no more than any other potato pancake.

And in short, delicious. The onions add a lot of flavor without being overbearing, as does the salt and pepper. Outside, they crisped up well when fried but inside the pancakes were of the right semi-mashed texture. These latkes are pretty well sized, too, I'd say a good three bites or so each, so there's plenty to enjoy, and made the two-and-a-half we had each (somehow we had five of them left from a box of eight) more than enough to go along with our eggs. If we had some good applesauce I would have been pretty tempted to make that pairing a go, but alas we did not. I'm not huge on heaping some sour cream on them, but I know that's pretty popular, and that would make a delicious treat for those who are into that. Even though we enjoyed them with breakfast, TJ's potato pancakes seem versatile enough to serve with any meal, and quick 'n easy enough to scarf down as a snack as well.

I think I'd put them right on par with ones I've had out at places like Eat 'n Park (if you're not familiar with them, think Denny's except much better), so they're good in my book. I'll bestow upon them a four and a half. As for Sandy, she definitely enjoyed them as well, but said she's had some better ones that were homemade from some of the Eastern European and Jewish families at her school. Yeah, no doubt those would be better. Also, as I tend to do when juggling a few different dishes at once, I accidentally semi-blackened one side of them, which didn't do them too much injustice except Sandy mentioned that she would have them enjoyed them a little bit more if I didn't. "That's not Trader Joe's fault, though; that's Russ Shelly's fault," she said. Well, at least I made your eggs perfectly and exactly to order, Princess. Sandy settled on meting out a good solid four.

Bottom line: 8.5 out of 10
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*Lazy weekend mornings for one is alright enough, but for two is even better.

Trader Joe's Lemon Crisp Cookies

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know I make fun of my wife some here and there. Sandy's good natured enough to take it in stride and usually get a little chuckle out of it. Well, today, I'm going to behave, be a good boy, and write only nice things about her. There's many reasons why I love and appreciate her, but recently she's been taking charge of a lot of menu planning, taking into account what we have on hand, what we have growing in our veggie garden (eagerly awaiting our tater experiment!), and what's readily available at farmer markets (making a lot of recipes out of this), and then breaking down what we need to buy at Trader Joe's or elsewhere. It requires a lot of planning, but more times than not the results are healthy, balanced, really tasty meals that don't cost a zillion bucks or take forever to cook. She's done a tremendous job, really, and I'm grateful that she takes charge on it because honestly I'd probably give up eventually and order a pizza or something.

It also makes food shopping real easy. Trader Joe's is increasingly becoming more of an every other week stop for us, and that's mostly for some staples like cereal and tortillas, along with the occasional take-to-work lunch and, of course, snacks. I had to make the shopping trip while flying solo last night, but Sandy gave me a list for what we needed for each meal, but for snacks, just wrote down "snacks." I tend to reach for the saltier variety when given the choice, but for whatever reason, decided to take a closer look at the cookie varieties this time around.

I'm so glad right now that I saw the Lemon Crisp Cookies, as I just polished off a good handful of these, for, uh, professional reasons right before writing this. Dang, these little cookies are so darn good. They're light, very munchy, irresistibly snacky, and qualitatively addicting. I love them. The cookie wafers crumble gently when you bite in and melt in your mouth with not-too-overbearing lemon flavor, and when combined with the chocolate drizzle and sugar dusting...they're equally appealing in both taste and texture. So good. And I love that the little clear plastic tub of them comes packed to the brim with who knows how many cookies inside. The chocolate can get a little melty on them so I found it helpful to actually keep them in the fridge (of course, that could do more with my just vanquished reluctance to turn on the A/C despite near triple-digit heat). They're extremely tasty and I feel continually tempted to snatch them by the handful and go at it Cookie Monster style.

Of course, there's a downside. It's only natural that something that tastes this good has to be so atrociously bad for you. The lemon crisps definitely have the potential to be a diet-busting trigger food. I'm not exactly a health nut, but if you're semi-concerned about things like saturated fat, sodium and sugar intake, steer clear. To make some cookies this irresistably good, I'd imagine that Trader Joe's put in enough butter to make Paula Dean blush and enough sugar for your dentist to get her drill ready. If you do a Google search for the nutritional info, well, anything I found was significantly lowballed. Just take a look at the label on them if you're truly curious.

Anyways, both Sandy and I like them. We both snuck a few while I was packing them for my lunch this morning, and even more when she broke out the camera to snap a pic before going up to bed for the evening. I *may* have snuck a few more since...it's so hard to be good sometimes. At least I'm not making fun of my wife. Noting the overall crumbly goodness of the texture and well-balanced taste, Sandy slapped these with a fourspot, only saying they could be just a wee bit more lemony and not be worse off for it. Me? I think, for a cookie, they're zesty enough as is and overall, makes a tasty little snack if you can control yourself around them. They're not the most addictive thing I've found at Trader Joe's, but they're definitely close. Just wish they'd be not as bad for you. I'll round up ever so slightly to give them a four as well.

Bottom line: 8 out of 10 Golden Spoons

Trader Joe's Maryland Style Crab Cakes

Sonia and I recently visited Baltimore's Inner Harbor to see the National Aquarium. After a day of walking around the bay, watching fish and other sea creatures, we had worked up quite an appetite. Appropriately, we decided on seafood.

Now, Marylanders know their crab cakes. They're so into crab there, they eat potato chips with crab seasoning all over them. And although Sonia suffers from allergies to many seafoods such as clams, oysters, and scallops, she decided to be brave and taste her first crab cake. This was actually her very first taste of real crab or lobster. Ever. She had been avoiding them, thinking them to be in the same class of animals as the aforementioned mollusks. Since I paid some attention in 9th grade biology, I was able to explain that crabs and lobsters are actually crustaceans, and that her allergy may not apply. (Fortunately, it didn't).

We ordered one individual appetizer crab cake from Phillips Seafood. It cost about $7.50! (That was at Happy Hour. They normally cost $15 a piece). It was pretty small. I could have easily downed 3 or 4 of them by myself, but that was all beside the point. We wanted a true gourmet crab cake from people who should know what they're supposed to taste like. And indeed it was very yummy. Absolutely the best crab cake I've ever had.

The following weekend, Russ and Sandy had dinner at our place for our first ever "blog summit" meeting and some good hangin' out. One of our many entree items wound up being Trader Joe's Crab Cakes. They were frozen, came two in a pack and cost something like $4. Trader Joe had his work cut out for him again. How would his crab cakes hold up with the taste of Phillips Seafood's still so fresh in our minds?

Sonia and I were both impressed. The differences in quality, texture and taste from the Phillips crab cakes were negligible. The only thing I could put my finger on was that Trader Joe's variety seemed flatter and slightly less like a pastry. If anything, I'd say TJ's had more crab meat. Also, the Phillips crab cake had a delicious cup of fine tartar sauce backing it up, whereas we had nothing but a little hot sauce with TJ's brand. But they were just fine as they were. Having had only two crab cakes in her entire lifetime, one of which she ate just yards from the shore of the Chesapeake Bay (basically the crab cake capital of the world) and that cost nearly a dollar per bite, Sonia decided Trader Joe's was a very close second, and she scored it a solid 4. I absolutely agree. I could certainly tell a small difference between the two brands, but I've had dozens of crab cakes in my lifetime from various grocers and restaurants, and I too must declare that Trader Joe's was the second best one I've ever had, falling just after the one from Phillips. My score, a 4 out of 5.

Russ and Sandy concurred with our assessment and also thoroughly enjoyed the crab cakes at dinner. Russ described them as "light and flakey, but juicy," and noted that Sandy would "give them an all around 'mmmmmm.'" 4 out of 5 Golden Spoons from each member of the Shelly clan.

That gives us a unanimous 4 out of 5 score. Not too shabby, Trader Joe.

Our collective bottom line: 8 out of 10.