Trader Joe's Meatless Italian Style Sausage & Cheese Flatbread

So, I'm not exactly a trendsetter kinda guy, if you haven't noticed. But, I'd like to be one. Sort of. For instance, one of my very covert goals for this blog has been to try and enter the phrase "chocolate gum theory" into the parlance of our times. I mean, it makes sense, to me, at least. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go click that link, it'll explain it. Just...think about dropping into a conversation every once in a while, will ya?

But one way I just might have been a key force in bringing in some new trend: flatbread pizza, or just flatbreads, or Flatizzas, or whatever silly (or in the case of Flatizza, absolutely stupid) name you want to slap on them. You see, a few years back I reviewed Trader Joe's Lavash, and specifically mentioned how delicious they were to use as a pizza crust. I feel like I stumbled across that idea by happenstance, by some remnant shred of bachelor laziness that laid dormant until that fateful purchase.

Okay, perhaps you're still not convinced. That's fine. But I am, thanks to Trader Joe's Meatless Italian Style Sausage & Cheese Flatbread. I mean, is it absolutely crazy idea that "Big Joe" read that same lavash post, knew about my outspoken displeasure of the discontinuation of the soy chorizo (bring that back already!), knew about my appreciation of most TJ fake meat products, and came up with this particular item to try and get me off his back? Is it?

Well...if all that is true, he'll need to do a little better next time. I mean, this isn't a horrible pizza/flatbread/flapizza/piflatbrezzad/whatever at all. The "sausage" is a convincing enough knockoff of the real deal to fool both our toddler, who hates meat, and the teenaged Chinese exchange student who lives with us, who loves meat. It's got the right bite and texture and overall flavor, and to TJ's credit, there's a lot of it. The little roasted red peppers and tomatoes make a nice addition, though I wish there more of them. And even though we could've baked it longer, the flatbread crust got reasonably crispy enough, while the cheese was plenty stringy and gooey, much to our toddler's delight.

It's just...the end result tasted too much like an average thin crust freezer pizza. It just lacked something, anything, to go to the next level, like even a little red pepper flakeage, or whatever made another one of their pizzas so darn good. If I weren't so bent on preserving the last few drops of the world's best hot sauce I have readily on hand, I would've slathered that all over the place, just so my dinner would have a little flavor. It's just fairly nondescript as is, and I know TJ's is capable of better.  C'mon, TJ's, can't you just...TJ it up a little? Please?

Sandy kinda agreed, while noting that she enjoyed the salchicha falsa, she wishes the pizza was a little bigger, so it'd be more servings for the four bucks or so for the pizza. It was kinda small overall, but piled reasonably high with toppings, so perhaps it was a bit of a trade-off. "Kinda average at best," she said. Agreed. She defines average as a 3, while I say average means a 2.5.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Meatless Italian Style Sausage & Cheese Flatbread: 5.5 out of 10 Golden Spoons    

Trader Joe's Uncooked Ground Buffalo Burgers

Buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo. That's a complete, grammatically correct sentence. No really. It's a command telling a bison from Buffalo, NY to baffle or intimidate another bison from Buffalo, NY. And this wikipedia page says you can actually use eight "buffalo's" in a row and make a grammatically correct sentence. Just try to wrap your brain around that. Yeah. And people say that English is a practical language.

When I was a kid, I had all kinds of allergies, including allergies to foods. My mom did too. So an allergy specialist recommended that we rotate our foods so that we wouldn't develop allergies to them. I could only eat beef one out of every four days. So on those other days, we'd eat chicken one day, we'd eat fish another day, and on the remaining day...well, we'd get adventurous. My dad had an international company ship us exotic meats from around the world. They were packaged with dry ice, and man was that stuff fun to play with! The dry ice, I mean, not the meats. But anyway, the point is that I tried buffalo, among many other bizarre meats, at a very young age, and it's always been my favorite red meat, which puts it very high in the running for my favorite food, which puts it very high in the running for my favorite thing on planet Earth.

So, this ain't my first day at the buffalo rodeo. In fact, I've even had a Bison Burger at a Red Robin restaurant in my hometown in central PA circa 2008/2009. Apparently Franklin County, PA is more open to buffalo burgers than either southern California or south Jersey, because my wife and I asked about buffalo burgers at Red Robins in both of those places, and in each instance, we got blank stares followed by talk about beef burgers containing buffalo sauce, bleu cheese, and ranch dressing. But freakin' A, that bison burger at the Red Robin in my hometown was the best restaurant burger I ever had. I think I paid $2 more than their average dead cow sandwich. Worth it, if you ask me. I guess the powers that be must have heard a rumor about a weird family in historic Chambersburg, PA that ate buffalo meat and told their friends that it was tasty, and so they decided to make that their test market. Or maybe they slaughtered the aged, dying bison from ZooAmerica in Hershey for cheap, and then had them shipped down I-81. Either way, it totally worked.

Despite the TJ's product's high fat content (20%), fortunately it didn't taste or feel that way. I like to think that most of that fat cooked out of it when we put it in the skillet. The pan was full of liquid grease after we cooked the burgers in a thin glaze of Coconut Oil Spray. The taste of buffalo meat is very similar to beef, but it's even more flavorful in my humble opinion. During the buffalo's attack, it tasted like it was going to be gamey, but then it evolved into a non-gamey, tannin-free alkaline red meat flavor, and finished clean, with a medium-bodied "butter beef" essence. Of all the stupid things I've written on this blog, using wine critic terminology to describe buffalo burgers is bound to attract the most internet trolls, although I must point out that Sonia coined the term "butter beef," not me.

In other news, these patties are 'spensive. $10 for three. Yep. They're tasty, but if you're preparing for the imminent decline of the US dollar like I am, you better budget your bucks before you buy bloody buffalo burgers. Boom. Oh, and that reminds me: these patties were unbelievably bloody. Like readily dripping with red blood out of the package. Delightfully macabre.

I give this product 4.5 stars for its exceptional taste. Sonia gives it a 4. Click here for a pic of the raw product.

Bottom line: 8.5 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Non-Dairy Almond Beverage

I love my wife, and I know better than to question her judgement (after all, I'm one of them)...but sometimes she gets some nutty ideas in her head. Take for instance me and cereal. Now, I've rekindled my love affair with the generic honey nut Cheerios - you know the type, comes in a bag that's too big to fit in the pantry* - as a "replacement vice" for the former semi-torrid (and all horrid) relationship I had with fast food. Sandy, generally speaking, approves of this, except when I pour what she deems as too many O's into my bowl. "That's more than one serving!" she decries in a tone that sounds like one she'd use if I told her I spent a whole paycheck on lottery scratch off tickets. She's never, ever plays "serving police" on anything else on a consistent basis EXCEPT cereal. It doesn't matter that, for a vice, it's a decently healthy one, or that I've lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-12 pounds this year, or that she saves things like three slices of pizza for me for dinner, I just eat too much dang cereal in her book.

Meh.

Another idea sprung forth from her brilliant (albeit quixotic) mind a couple weeks ago, when she randomly declared how curious and "unnatural" it was for humans to drink milk from other animals, since we're just about the only animal who does that. I kinda let that go in one ear, bounce off something hard, and go back out until she brought home a carton of almond milk a day or two later. Good call, as we both don't care for soy milk, detest rice milk, and are ambivalent about coconut milk (except the canned kinda stuff) at best. Also, as I was happy to find out, it was cheaper than the organic milk we routinely bought, and in all, tasted just fine.

Trader Joe's Non-Dairy Almond Beverage, though not the first brand I've tried, is also pretty tasty. I kinda wish they called it "almond milk" and not "almond beverage" because that makes it sound like some sort of weird soda or juice to me. There's not a lot to dislike. It's subtly nutty, like other almond milks I've had, and has an acceptable consistency and smoothness, although a little chalkiness if you inspect too close. I wouldn't drink a glassful of it straight, but then again, I've rarely done that with regular milk either. I think the TJ's version tastes a little closer to actual milk, too, since it's unsweetened, unlike other brands I've had. And believe me, it pairs well with your early morning/late night bowl of cereal, or a couple Oreos, and could reliably be depended upon to be regular milk's stunt double. I like it quite a bit.

As an added bonus, I really like the packaging for it, mostly because it's bright and pink and kinda idiot proof. What do I mean? Well, the store brand we've brought previously came in a light tan carton with red lettering that looked exactly like the organic whole milk we buy for our sweet little toddler, who may or may not be slightly allergic to nuts. And I hate whole milk, so the once or twice that we've mixed them up in a pre-caffeinated daze were not good experiences - watching/charting/discussing possible hives or ruining an otherwise great bowl of cereal  are not fun ways to spend a morning.

In all, yeah, it's almond milk and that's pretty much all there is to it. Not a bad deal at all for $2.99. I'm thinking that it'll continue to be on our shopping list on a weekly basis. It's another dairy-alternative win for TJ's. Good stuff.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Non-Dairy Almond Beverage: 8 out of 10 Golden Spoons
---------------------------------------------------------
* Couldn't find the link, and it makes me mad, but the brilliant comedian Jim Gaffigan has a great bit about bagged cereal, calling it "homeless" because at least other cereals had a box to live in.  So, as an added bonus, here's a brilliant bit about parenting or his great cameo in one of the best worst movies ever.