Trader Joe's Strawberry Greek Frozen Yogurt Parfait Bars

On hot summer days, I'll pop open the freezer to see what frozen goodies the wife has stashed away. I'll often find a box of Outshine yogurt bars hiding behind stacks of frozen veggies and waffles. Sonia knows better than to advertise such purchases to me. After grocery runs, she'll discreetly put them in the back of the ice box when I'm not looking. 

It's not that she wants to keep them all to herself. She's smart enough to know that I'll eat the entire box in a day if I'm aware of them right away. So generally, she'll consume the first bar or two in the day following their arrival to our freezer, and all the rest will rapidly fall prey to my insatiable sweet tooth. For those of you who like to preach "self-control" and "willpower," I'd like to point out that there are, in fact, different kinds of self-control. Mine is the kind that refrains from purchasing sweets while at the grocery store in the first place. Once they're in the house, it's game-over for me, provided that I'm aware of their presence.

I'm pretty sure these parfait bars will take the place of Outshine in our freezer now. Sonia is a huge fan. And that's a good thing. Because she'll make sure she eats at least half of them right off the bat. This first box didn't even last a full hour between the two of us. We ate two immediately upon arrival, semi-melted from the July heat, while the remaining two re-froze for a bit.

The flavor is excellent. Not too sticky sweet, not too tangy. It's strawberry yogurt at its best—creamy, flavorful, and satisfying. The granola is a wonderful addition. It's not intrusive or excessive, and it adds a little body and fullness to the texture. If you're expecting super crunchy granola, you might be a bit disappointed. It's "soggy" granola, for lack of a better word, but we both like it just fine. It's like the granola you might find in one of the "bowl" offerings from Jamba Juice or somewhere similar. The bars are relatively small, but they're fairly filling.

$2.99 for four bars. Pretty decent numbers as far as fat and calories are concerned. There's a fair amount of added sugars, but when balanced against the overall satisfaction factor, it's definitely not a deal-breaker here.

Four and a half stars and an enthusiastic thumbs up from Sonia. Four stars from me.

Bottom line: 8.5 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Shrimp Scampi Lasagna

Hmmm....

...hot, bubbly, cheesy lasagna...

...baking at 400 degrees for nearly an hour...

...on a hot, humid July evening...

...in an insulated, Thermosified brick oven of a house, with no AC...

...just to sit in your stomach, requiring a shower after to cool down from. With your house all heated up from that oven.

Yeah, I'd almost pretty much have to say no to that.

Except we're talking about Trader Joe's Shrimp Scampi Lasagna. It's all the rage on Instagram from what I hear from my lovely bride. So, off to do our sacred duty once more.

The whole premise of this product sounds great, right? Make a decent shrimp scampi except in lasagna form, with the layered noodles and whatnot. Add enough garlic and butter to make a sanguivoriphobic Paula Deen blush and it should be a slam dunk, right? How can this lose?

For perhaps the first time in reviewing TJ's products, I'd say the failure is the shrimp itself.

Listen, I get what they're going for here. With the open intent of making the product even more lasagna-esque (and likely also to help obfuscate how many shrimp are actually in here), the shrimp here are ground up. As in, not whole. As in, not fleshy and firm but instead little mealy tidbits kinda resembling really bad ground turkey. It just doesn't work. The shrimp tastes fine but still just seems wrong, if that makes any sense. Ground shrimp? That'd be a no from me.

Everything else works well enough if graded on a frozen pasta curve. There's plenty of the mozzarella/Parmesan cheese mix to go around - even my cheese loving kids said there was a little bit too much. I got a pretty good guilty pleasure from scraping some of the last remnants from the tray that had some extra butter and garlic on them. The white wine sauce was solid if not overly notable except a little tick up in spice from some crushed red pepper, and noodles were fine and firm and all that.

Still, yeah, the shrimp...the scampi lasagna would have been better with whole shrimp, even if it meant shrimp in less bites. Quality over quantity.

The setup costs $5.99 and comes as 3.5 serving tray. We picked up two to have for our family and it seemed about the right idea. My lovely bride enjoyed the shrimp lasagna just fine, without the same qualms I had. One kid scrunched her nose at it but ate it anyways, mostly, while another one asked for seconds, so there's a plus. I don't love it, I don't hate it, there's a good chance I wouldn't buy it again but wouldn't be upset if we did.

Maybe we can wait til it's cooler out though.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Shrimp Scampi Lasagna: 6 out of 10 Golden Spoons

Trader Joe's Soft Baked Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

For a grocery store chain that's known for carrying exotic fare and maintaining at least a facade of healthiness, they sure roll out a lot of dang cookies. By a quick count, we've reviewed somewhere in the ballpark of 60 or 70 different types of Trader Joe's brand cookies on this blog alone. 

That's a lot of cookies, the vast majority of which aren't reduced guilt or low calorie or anything like that. If you click that link, it'll show you the results for searching "cookies" on this blog. Apparently some browsers are covering the additional pages of results with a banner ad. I'm looking at you, Google Chrome. Worked fine on Firefox for me. But most of you aren't going to wade through seven pages of cookie reviews spanning the past decade anyway. I wouldn't blame you. 

Because many of these cookie varieties aren't particularly memorable. A few are, but I highly doubt we'll agree on which two or three of those Trader Joe's baked goods we want to take to our desert island and survive on for the rest of our life.

Funfact: the cookie on the packaging is actual size. See pic above.

This particular offering isn't bad, but it's definitely not one of my desert island choices. And, I mean, I LOVE peanut butter. 

You can taste the peanut butter for sure. These are basically typical, everyday peanut butter cookies that happen to be full of chocolate chips. They're a little softer than your average peanut butter cookie, I guess, and perhaps a tad thicker, both of which are pleasant variations on the classic cookie. Still, I would have preferred them to be even softer, chewier. They're kind of crumbly and dry as they are. 

The flavor is fine. There is peanut butter and there is chocolate, but they never really come together in that special way that Reese's seem to. The bread part of the cookie seems oddly dominant, and there's a bit of an aftertaste.

Sonia seemed to like them more than I did, which was unexpected. She'll give these three and a half stars. I give 'em three.

Bottom line: 6.5 out of 10.