Trader Joe's Baked Onion Rings

Ah, junk food. You and I, we go back a long ways. You know how it is. You're easy, cheap, convenient, and although really not all that satisfying, you do just enough to keep me coming back for more, as much as I try to resist.

Lucky for me, even though Trader Joe's has lots of great, healthy items, there's lots of junky goodies all over the store. Lots of impulsive-buy type stuff. But some of them, while still not great for you, provide an at least semi-healthier alternative than the items they emulate, like these crunchy spicy cheesy guys. And these, Trader Joe's Baked Onion Rings, too.

Yeah, the obvious comparison for these baked o-rings is that omnipresent vending machine bag o' Funyuns. I'll admit it, every once in a great while, they're one of my vices. Truth be told, these Trader Joe imitators are pretty similar in texture and crunch overall. I'd imagine that they're made in much of the same process except that a little rice flour gets mixed in for a some added lightness and then, obviously, they're baked instead of fried. That part matters not, the TJ's rings still have all the bite and crunch necessary, and also makes them a smidge healthier. Or at least I tell that to myself. It's the other things where the two competitors part ways. Where Funyuns are a greasy, salty dustfest waiting to muck up your fingertips, the Trader Joe's ones have much less stuff on them. Sure, your digits won't come out of the encounter without needing a little attention, but not as much. Also, the TJ's try to emphasize the certain levels of sweetness some onions like vidalia ones can have, and so they up the sweetness while comparatively scaling back on the garlic and sodium, although, yes, there's plenty enough of that too. I can hear the salt police about it from here - "Too much! Toooo muuuuuch!" Well, to them I say, you're not gonna eat these anyways, and leave me alone.

Overall, I gotta say I like these better than Funyuns, I think. It's not that they're even all that overly good, but I munch on one or two, and it takes a little willpower to remove myself. These aren't my favorite TJ trigger food, or even my favorite ring-shaped onion product, but in the right time and circumstance, yeah, I could put a fair amount of these down.

Both Sandy and I munched on these as a pseudo-appetizer while making one of our favorite dinners the other night. I don't have a problem with that, and I'm pretty sure I can refrain from eating all of them myself. For under $2 a bag, they can be in the house every once in a while as an alternative to our usual chip and salsa-style snacking. Sandy was munching on these just as eagerly (if not slightly more so) than I was. "I'll give them a three, three and a half, maybe," she said. "I'd give them a little higher if they had just a little more taste to them." Indeed, they are much more subtle than the competition, but I think it's to their credit, so I'm rounding up for her and giving these a four of my own.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Baked Onion Rings: 7.5 out of 10 Golden Spoons

Trader Joe's True Thai Vegetable Curries

In a previous post or two, I've mentioned that 'm just not a lunch guy. It's like a necessary evil for me. Eating lunch more likely than not means I'm at work with about 5 hours of headaches in the bag and at least 3 more coming up, and honestly I just want to be alone more times than not just so I don't have to blabber about something or other. I don't *think* I'm anti-social, but I need that time to just unplug for a bit, even though I'd rather be eating with people. To me, that's about half the point of meals. It's certainly not about zeroing in to find your own table so you can blankly gaze into your iPhone while your coworkers think you're some lonely, kinda stinky jerkface who could use a shave. Eh well. It's what I do.

One thing I also do is Thai food. Love it. Trader Joe's has had some mild success with it over the years...there's only one miss I can think of (certainly not "slap another person worthy"...wait, what?)...with a big win or two (even though I'm convinced that this Thai Joe character is just a one trick pony). I guess if TJ's can make a viable, easy Thai lunch option, then I may as well check it out. Gotta eat somethin', and a little variety to the usual stuff would be great.

There's these two new True Thai Vegetable Curry options - Panang and Green. They're similar enough I'll tackle 'em both here (the panang is the one with all the pics). They're both easy to grab in a rush, cheap ($1.99 each), and both can remain in your manbag or desk drawer to keep lunch thieves away. Yes, I'm still bitter about that. For both, the curry sauce is the real star - the panang is a little spicier than the mellower green - but have rich coconut milk undertones with the usual Thai spicy suspects. Dee-lish. Both have about the same veggies in them - carrots, little babycorn buttons, cauliflower, etc, which are all kinda mushy. Not the biggest fan, although the green curry adds crunchier bamboo sticks, which make me feel like a happy chubby lil' panda gnawing away on them. Each are pretty decent with a little rice to mix in (as pictured) and zap up within a few minutes in the microwave. I suppose that, like the package says, one could mix in a little meat and they'd be good (the sauce is pretty darn good) but to me, that's not necessary to enjoy these. All in all, not a bad deal.

It's kinda funny though...I really never looked at the nutritional info on these until I started writing this post and loaded on the label pic. Is all Thai food this bad for you, with all the fat, saturated fat and sodium? Yikes. I had no idea. Must be the orice you pay for all that tasty spicy coconut milk. I guess you're gonna hafta have a real healthy dinner if you pick up one of these, like some flavored air or something.

Anyways, I'd ask Sandy her opinion on them, as a fellow Thai food lover, but the veggie mushfest that makes up the bulk of these curry cups make 'em a no-go for her. I would literally have to pin her down and clamp her nose shut to get her to try a spoonful of either one. Even though she'd probably like curry sauce itself, that's a little on the impolite side for me to do. So it's all on me this time around. I think, when all said and done, I'd rate the panang curry and green curry as about equals. I like how the panang's a little spicier, but the bamboo makes a huge difference for the green. If they were less mushy and a little more spicy, respectively...Both are about as equally bad for you, and this won't be the first time I make a nutritional knock for something. All things considered, both curries are far from the best you'll ever have, but they're good for what they are as an easy, inexpensive lunch option. I speak for both when I say...

Bottom line: Trader Joe's True Thai Vegetable Panang and Vegetable Green Curry: 6.5 out of 10 Golden Spoons

Trader Joe's Sesame Honey Almonds

Sonia loved these. I wasn't as thrilled. I love almonds. I love honey. And I feel fairly positive about sesame seeds. They work great on hamburger buns—the way Mickey D's does it. It's not overwhelming. I've had some buns from the grocery store, though, at summer barbecues and such that were simply riddled with sesame seeds. They don't have a particularly powerful taste, but when they band together in massive hordes, it's pretty hard to ignore them. Which isn't bad, except that they're usually eaten with something else—in the case of the hamburger bun, you're generally eating them: A) with a soft, white bread roll type baked good and B) with a nice big slab of dead cow or veggie patty or maybe chicken breast or something like that. Plus condiments and whatever else—my POINT being...you should taste the actual burger first in that case, and secondly taste the bread, and then maybe some mustard or ketchup—IF you taste the sesame seeds at all, it should be VERY subtle.


In this particular case, the sesame seeds are being eaten with almonds. In my opinion, almonds should be the "burger" of this snack, and the sesame seeds should always play second fiddle. They're just a little too sesame-ish to me. Again, I enjoy sesame seeds—but they're supposed to be...well, supporting cast members. Like Jay and Silent Bob. They make great background characters...characters that make cute, vulgar little cameos and then go away. In the case of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, it's just way too much Jay and Silent Bob. They should stay in the background. Sesame seeds are similar. But in this case, I think they overstepped their bounds a bit. Sonia disagrees.

Maybe my slight aversion to sesame seeds comes from these little candies my parents used to give me all the time. I wasn't able to have sugar candies back then, due to food allergies and sensitivities. These candies came from the local health food store and they were basically just sesame seeds glued together into these hard-candy-esque little rectangular dealies. I think they were sweetened with honey. I'm not sure what held them in their rectangular shape. It couldn't have just been honey because they were hard. When I'd put one in my mouth, I'd taste the sweet honey flavor, and I wanted more, so I'd try and suck all the sweet out of it. But the sweet went away quickly, and all I'd taste would be a big glob of soggy sesame seed. I didn't waste the sesame seeds, I'd eat them. A year or two later, I eventually got sick of these candies and decided never to eat them again. I just kinda suddenly woke up one day with this extreme aversion to masses of sesame seeds in my mouth all at once. All that to say that I'm probably a bit biased against masses of sesame seeds.

And these almonds have masses of sesame seeds glued onto them with honey. If there were fewer sesame seeds, I would have rated these much higher. It's a really good idea...just maybe not so much for people who hate masses of sesame seeds. Again, I don't hate sesame seeds. Just multitudes of them. I don't like them when they gang up on me. Individually, and in limited doses, they're quite lovely. Sonia gives these Sesame Honey Almonds a 4.5, noting that they are her favorite TJ's food this year so far. She likes them because they're extremely filling, slightly sweet, and a good source of protein. I give them a 2.5. That makes this product our biggest scoring-discrepancy in a long time.

Bottom line: 7 out of 10 stars.