Trader Joe's 24 Chocolate Days 'til Christmas

Busted. This isn't really a food item. Well, part of it is. Chocolate. Well, really, if you've tried this product, you'd know that the "chocolate" involved here isn't really even food.

The chocolate in this advent calendar is quite probably the most revolting chocolate I've ever ingested during my 33 Christmases. (I'm 32 years old, but you have to count the one Christmas I lived through before I was a year old). And, yes, if by some strange chance I had worse chocolate at 6 months of age in December of 1979, I would have remembered it. In fact, I would have been so scarred by the incident, that I would have written off chocolate for the rest of my life and been one of those rare souls that dislikes chocolate for reasons they can't fully explain.

The chocolate in this advent calendar tastes like a combination of plastic and cardboard, with an emphasis on the cardboard...with an extra dose of the weird glue that holds the particles of board together as a solid substance. The graphics on each window are fairly cute and well-designed, but really, they have nothing to do with Christmas at all. Not secular Santa-style Christmas. Not the true Jesus-inspired Christian Christmas. There's a baseball on there, for crying out loud. This might as well be a countdown to Labor Day.

Granted, there are other versions of Trader Joe's Advent Calendars, but I'm reviewing this one...which very well could be four years old or so. The chocolate tastes like it's at least that old...which reminds me of the time my grade school friend and I handed out 5 year old chocolate at Halloween. It was white. And I don't mean it was white chocolate. I mean it was traditional brown milk chocolate that was so old that it was turning back into sugar. We gave it to a group of cheerleaders that went to our high school. They returned a couple hours later and threw the half-eaten candies at us. It was hysterical. It was worth it.

It seems that karma has seen to it that I am now the brunt of such a joke—a cruel joke perpetrated by my old friend TJ. Good one, buddy. This stuff tastes like butt, and you tricked me into paying you for it. With other advent calendars, we would generally fight each other over who gets to eat the chocolate, but with this top-shelf quality product, my wife and I bicker about who has to eat the chocolate each day.

TJ's could have at least thrown us a bone and put Bible verses with the Christmas story behind each window, or maybe individual lines to The Night Before Christmas. But no. Everything is just blank. The chocolate isn't even good for you...not even a little bit. All things considered, I'd rather be eating carob.

And I hate carob. Well, except for Sunspire Unsweetened Carob Chips. Those are yummerific.

I give this stuff a 1. Way to go, Santa Joe. I'm'a have the fire going Christmas Eve, buddy. Don't try to enter through the chimney. Sonia gives it a 2. I don't feel bad. Call me Scrooge. Merry freakin' Christmas, TJ's. 24 Revolting Chocolate Days 'til I Puke My Face Off.

Bottom line: 3 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Spicy Shrimp Bao

I'm not particularly proud of it, but I'm a carbivore. I'm definitely into anything with breading...chicken nuggets, chicken fingers, fried shrimp, anything parmigiana, and pretty much any kind of Asian dumpling. I would have said just "any kind of Asian dumpling," but after many years of happily gorging myself on many different kinds of high-carb delicacies, I've finally found a dumpling I don't like.
To be fair, I must admit we made them the fast way. The box said microwaving was acceptable, but there were alternate instructions for those patient folks who could wait an extra 15 minutes to eat their food. That version involved cooking them on the stovetop with water—not oil, but water.

These dumplings were dry, lacked flavor, and had very little shrimp in them. In fact, the vast majority of the matter in each pastry was the bland, white, bread-like shell. Though they were small, it was entirely possible to take a bite of them and get only fluffy white nothingness.

I'm usually such a fan of carbs that getting a mouthful of nothing but bread wouldn't bother me, but in this case, the dough was so plain and seemingly stale, that I found it not only unpleasant, but nearly inedible. Even a greater amount of the inside-filling couldn't have redeemed these little wannabe hors d'oeuvres completely, as the main substance in the center was a vague greenish mush, with only slightly more taste than the mass of bleached breadiness surrounding it.

My expectations had been pretty high, since other Trader Joe's Asian dumpling-esque items like this and this were pretty darn successful if you ask me. We ate the shrimp dumplings with soy sauce, but I don't think there's a condiment in existence that could bring these suckers back from the brink of nastiness.

I was surprised that Sonia gave them a 3. She was disappointed with the lack of veggies and shrimp in the middle, but didn't seem as disgusted by the dough as I was. I'm going with a 2 since, in all fairness, they might have been much better had we made them on the stovetop. Otherwise, as we ate them, I might have been tempted to give them a 1. I should totally just stick to traditional holiday fare during the month of December.

Bottom line: 5 out of 10.