Trader Joe's Organic Ginger Turmeric Herbal Tea

"It's kinda weird to drink something that smells like Indian food," Sandy stated the other night before sipping her first steaming mug of Trader Joe's Organic Ginger Turmeric Herbal Tea.

Yeah...ginger tea? Of course. But turmeric? That's a pretty classic staple for most Indian chow I'm familiar with. So how's this going to work?

First off: it's very aromatic. Not in an overly flagrant or fragrant kinda way...but when you cath a whiff, there's a lot going on. The aforementioned ginger and turmeric, of course, but there's a good citrus essence as well. There's a little something else, too, a "darker" element to give the aroma some depth, which I presume are the licorice and pepper...

...so yeah, it kinda smells like what the ingredients says the tea is made of. Nice thing is, while all components can be individually detected, it comes across as a very nice, balanced cuppa tea.

Wish it tasted that way as well.

The sips start out pleasantly enough, with the dominant taste being a fairly mild ginger dose. The turmeric is there more in a support role, with the orange peel adding a nice arc. But then...it hits. That aforementioned licorice and pepper. Listen, I love licorice and anise and all that much more than the average guy, but it just seems a little out of place, perhaps, and gets punctuated by the pepper. It's not harsh at first, but about halfway through the cup, it's about all I can taste, as if my mild cuppa tea slowly got polluted by a flavor overstaying its welcome.

It probably doesn't help that I'm more of a coffee than tea kinda guy...I rarely drink anything other than black coffee, water, or whiskey in fact. So, quite literally, this just might not be my cup of tea. Sandy, though, enjoys it quite a bit. More power to her. "It's a great fall tea," she said last night after the kiddos went down and a cool almost autumnal breeze blew in the kitchen window. "I dig it." After I finish my current cup (gave it a second taste to confirm my thoughts) I'll probably be done with it. But for $2.49 for a box of 20 bags, and the possible health benefits of turmeric, I can give it a little more appreciation.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Organic Ginger Turmeric Herbal Tea: 6.5 out of 10 Golden Spoons

Trader Joe's Coffee Mochi

Trader Joe's can and will turn anything into a mochi ice cream flavor—from basic flavors like chocolate to double mango to pumpkin pie, we've seen them run the gamut. We haven't seen mushroom mochi ice cream yet, but just to be clear, we're not asking for it, Big Joe. Not at all. Cookie butter mochi, on the other hand...

Now let's shift gears and focus on the product at hand, shall we? My major problem with this mochi is the same problem I have with traditional coffee ice cream: it actually tastes like coffee. I mean sure, it's kinda sweet and creamy, but the overwhelming flavor is that of dark, earthy coffee beans. I'll drink coffee, if I must, for its caffeine content, but I much prefer energy drinks (ones without high fructose corn syrup) for my morning wake-up beverage. Among coffee drinkers, that fact generally arouses suspicion, outrage, and indignation. Why would a non-coffee-drinker even review a coffee-flavored product?

Because I'll defer to my coffee-appreciating wife's opinion on this one. She liked these a lot. The texture is just like any other mochi we've reviewed: a soft, chewy, rice-based shell, a layer of smooth, cold ice cream below that, and similar to the aforementioned mango mango mochi, there's a glob of liquidy goo in the middle. I personally didn't feel like the "saucy mocha center" added much, but Sonia thought it added a nice rich flavor and extra creaminess to the product.

She loved the taste of this product because she loves the taste of coffee. The flavor of the mocha filling reminded her of Original Roast Coffee Rio Candy, which is apparently sold at some Trader Joe's locations.

Even though I didn't appreciate the taste quite as much as my better half, we do agree on one thing: this mochi is rich and intense enough that just one or two pieces at a time is more than sufficient for one sitting. Sonia gives this product four stars. My disdain for coffee might have led me to give this product a fairly low score, but I did say I'd defer to my wife on this one, for the benefit of all you sophisticated coffee connoisseurs...so I'll go with three and a half to make sure this falls squarely in our "really darn good" category.

Bottom line: 7.5 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Marinated Rack of Lamb with Herbs

After yesterday's review slightly toeing the line of religious imagery. today's review will steer clear. There's a lot of lambs in the religious pasture. But to be fair, Sandy and I also partook of those three cheese wafers, and also came away with the unshakeable impression of communion wafers. The only thing I'd like to add is, I've been to Communion performed, by a very serious, straight-faced pastor...with a hot dog bun. There was a slight miscommunication that week for who was bringing the bread. Classic.

Sandy and I also tried out the new Trader Joe's Marinated Rack of Lamb with Herbs this past week. There's also the oddly placed and/or punctuated "fully cooked" part of the product name...are the herbs the fully cooked part? The lamb? The whole shebang? Well, let's drop the slightly premium price of $15.99 a pound to find out!

As much as we both love lamb...a lamb rack is not a cut of meat we're overly familiar with. See: that price point. The few times we venture into lamb, we're more lamb chops/lamb roast/gyro kinda folks. So what I'm about to say about the meat itself, not sure how much it is intrinsically indicative for the particular cut versus this TJ branded box. But...there's not very much meat at all. Once we got it on our dinner plates, our meat looked like mostly bones, with a lot of fat and sinew intertwined in there. I'd say we each got maybe three or four reasonable bites of lamb meat, then the rest was picking and baby bites before kinda surrendering. At a certain point, the visual analysis showed that the effort wasn't worth the payoff.

But what meat was on there...soft, tender, pink, delicious. Despite its nearly raw appearance, the lamb was fully cooked via the sous-vide method before we ever got our hands on it. Very savory, and the herbs added a great little smidge of flavor, especially some mild garlic, without overpowering the natural goodness of the meat. You can't have that much fat without some natural juicy goodness, which really shone through.

There's a couple oddities I think are worth note. First: So. Much. Packaging. The lamb comes vacuum packed...inside a box so relatively large I'm surprised it didn't say "Some Settling May Occur"...that is in turn shrinkwrapped. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that's to give the impression that there's much more meat in there than there actually is, so as to make the price point more appealing. Could be true, can't prove it's not. Also, the prep method: Heat in oven for 35 minutes (on a hot summer night? No way) or microwave then pan sear? Odd. We went the second route, and though not the nuke wizards the Rodgers are, I think we succeeded.

This probably won't be a repeat buy. Which is kinda a shame. I get that it's lamb, fancifully (and may I add skillfully) prepared, with some major convenience factor built in, and it's delicious, so I appreciate it all...but for paying $13 and change for what amounts to a few bites, can't say I'm completely satisfied, either. Wife is in the same boat. Oh well. At least we had a quiet small fancy dinner together, just the two of us, before it quickly devolved into some animalistic bone gnawing. Three each.   

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Marinated Rack of Lamb with Herbs: 6 out of 10 Golden Spoons