Trader Joe's Layered Beef Tostada

 Fast food cravings are pretty infrequent these days. 

Chick-Fil-A? Maybe once every couple months, and somehow, somewhat ironically, mostly on a random Sunday. Wendy's? About on the same schedule, but also rarely/ The fabled golden arches, or as my four year old likes to say, "Mick-ell-Donnells'? Maybe once a year, if only for a breakfast sando, or if the kids are hangry on a road trip, I'll consider. 

Taco Bell? Practically never...like once a decade...which is a lot more often than Burger King...but anyways....

If I were more of a Taco Bell fiend, I'd likely be more familiar with the "Mexican pizza" that's not on the menu rotation any longer from what I gather, and that the new Trader Joe's Layered Beef Tostada at least somewhat emulates and may serve as a somewhat suitable replacement for. 

Where do we start with this near disaster, though?

First, I guess, the basics. There's a beef and bean paste-like substance sandwiched between two tortillas that serve as the base of this offering. It's bland and nondescript without anything to it. Atop the top tortilla, there's a handful of cheedar cheese, some diced poblanos, sliced black olives and green onions all kinda haphazardly strewn about. It's as sloppy looking as once can imagine.

No matter, bake it up and it'll taste great, right? Well...no. Everything (and I mean everything) is pretty much devoid of anything resembling flavor. It's...so uninspirational. Just tastes like soggy cardboard. Oh, there's the word, soggy. Baked up at 425 for slightly longer than the recommended 18 minutes, it's still a wet, jumbled, not crispy or crunchy anything. It's a soggy jumbled mess. 

How can something go so wrong? Poblanos (or perhaps more aptly, poblandos) just aren't a pepper worth featuring in a dish. In a school play, they'd be a tree, not Snow White or one of the dwarves. And everything else just doesn't have anything to make up the slack. There's no spice, ni pizzazz, no flavor...just bland mush. Which, come to think of it, is exactly how I consider most of my Taco Bell experiences to be, so perhaps this is the perfect pizza to compare them with. 

If I were to ever eat this again, i'd need to bake longer and load up on some salsa or some sauces or something. But more likely than not, I'm just gonna skip it from here on out. 

My lovely bride was a touch more forgiving and said she'd try again as part of a snack or something. But she shared much of the same observations, so good to know it wasn't just me. 

So disappointing. It's an airball that shoulda been a slam dunk. Awful stuff. Just skip it, and hopefully that freezer aisle real estate can be reallocated soon enough to something much more worthwhile. One spoon from me, two from the Mrs.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Layered Beef Tostada: 3 out of 10 Golden Spoons.

Trader Joe's Sparkling Pineapple Juice Beverage

There's a raging debate in both cyberspace and IRL over whether pineapple should ever be put on pizza. The proponents of pineapple pizza will routinely cite the Hawaiian as a viable topping combo. The opposition will state that they find such a pie offensive. I myself have become a big fan of the Pizza Ranch Sweet Chili Pizza, which contains pineapple among its many ingredients. I've received credible threats of violence over my support of pineapple on pizza. Who's right? Which side are you on? Will pineapple pizza haters ever find common ground with their unconventional counterparts? The controversy never ends.

Fortunately, I've never met anybody that would challenge pineapple juice as a legitimate ingredient in a delicious, sweet, refreshing summer beverage. How could anyone be against it? Pineapple juice and sparkling water? Yes, please. The sweetness of pineapple tempered by cool, refreshing bubbly water? The only way one could possibly screw this up is if it's way too sweet—or less likely, if it's not sweet enough.

Luckily it's just about as sweet as you'd want it to be. If anything, it errs on the side of not-too-sweet. They list pineapple juice above water on the ingredients list, but my taste buds might have assumed otherwise. And...it might just be me...but I swear I taste a hint of fermentation in our batch. I'd blame it on the ridiculous heat, but we've had our box sitting down in our cool basement since we bought it. Sonia does detect it, too, but it's not an overbearing fermented flavor and we'll probably consume the remaining two cans with something fermented anyway...

I'm sure this would mix well with a whole bunch of different types of liquor. I'm thinking coconut rum and this stuff would make a nice cocktail. Vodka would work, too.

Let's see...Product of Vietnam? Maybe Hawaiian pineapples were too pricey for Mr. Joe. About four bucks for four 8.45 oz cans. I'll do three stars on this one. Put Sonia down for three and a half.

Bottom line: 6.5 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Watermelon & Peach Macarons

 

Macron.

Macarons.

Macaroni. 

Macaroons. 

It's my lovely bride's pettiest of pet peeves. Sure, it's easy to not confuse your kid's Krafty craving with the president of France, but call a macaron a macaroon near her, or macaroon a macaron? Or try to insist they're both the same things, or have the same name? No. No no no. It'll set her off in no time flat. Just don't. 

Especially when you could instead be using that time to munch down on some fun new summery looking treats from TJ's...like the new Trader Joe's Watermelon & Peach Macarons.

Fortunately, these are two different flavors. Watermelon and peach are separately delicious but would presumably make odd flavor bedfellows.  Maybe it could get pulled off, I wouldn't want to discourage such innovation, but still.let's do these one at a time. 

First, the watermelon one. Kinda obviously, it's the somewhat sickly looking greenish one. The color of it is nowehere near as vibrant as the packaging indicates, which kinda sets the mood. First bite in is fairly bland, and it's not until some of the flavor pops from the filling that there's much of anything going on. Also kinda obviously, the watermelon flavor toes towards being oversweet and super sugary, which should be anticipated because 1) it's a cookie and 2) that's just how most watermelon flavored things go. It's why we as a family tend to like plain ol' watermelon, for its natural tastiness, than anything watermelon flavored. It just dpoesn't translate well more times than not. 

As for the peach, it's the better of the pair. A little too sugary, sure, but it remains in bounds. Peach works better for cookies and treats. It's not really fair, but it just does. Plenty sweet, a touch tart, and about right as expected. No complaints there. 

Both varieties suffer the same flaw, though. texturewise, yeesh. Both the shells aren't as crisp and puffy, and the fillngs are not as creamy and more gummy than they should be. This is after following the instructions to let thaw at room temp for an hour. Maybe some more time would have fixed them up better, but there didn't seem to much hope for radical improvement upon our bite. Frozen macarons will never compare to fresh, sure, but one could wish these would be a closer approximation. 

Anyways, the package of 10 teeny tiny bite sized ones run a couple bucks and make for an okay enough treat. Maybe my lovely bride and I will get these macaroons for a picnic up in Cooks Forest, near where she went to college...ok, that's mean, I definitely meant macarons and Cook Forest, just had to get her twice there. 

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Watermelon & Peach Macarons: 5 out of 10 Golden Spoons