I don't know what made me pick these up on our last Trader Joe's run. They're not Christmassy or festive at all. I mean, I guess you could argue that the bag is red with green trim. That's sorta holiday-ish, no?
I probably picked up these Middle Eastern Style Kebabs because I love me some Middle Eastern and Mediterranean foods. Also, maybe subconsciously, I knew I'd be watching the World Cup in Qatar and imagining I was there. Apparently, kebabs wrapped in pita are a popular type of Qatari street food. Yum.
And if they're half as good as this offering from Trader Joe's, then they'd be worth a purchase or two. Sonia's definitely a bigger fan of these ground beef kebabs than I am, but I'm not hating on them, either. Let's dig in.
Trader Joe's Middle Eastern Style Kebabs are made with seasoned ground beef, rather than lamb or a combination of both beef and lamb. That's a plus in my book. There are six long, skinny slabs of beef, almost like elongated hamburgers. We used the air fryer to heat them and needed an extra two minutes above what the heating instructions asked for.
Sonia repeatedly remarked that she couldn't believe that the meat had been frozen just a few minutes earlier. It had a texture very similar to that of an American burger, with some bread crumbs mixed into the ground beef. She also adored the peppery, garlicky spice blend. I was thinking they needed just a tad bit of help to put the flavor on par with something close to restaurant quality.
We plated them up with salad and hummus, along with authentic Middle Eastern pita bread. Okay. You got me. It's not even pita. It's a low carb Mission flour tortilla there in the picture. But it served the same purpose and worked remarkably well. I added a piece of havarti cheese to my kebab pita tortilla sandwich thing and made a tasty Latin-Scandinavian-Middle Eastern fusion dish.
I was more than pleased with the overall taste after the cheese and hummus came to the rescue. The kebabs would have been even more delicious with tzatziki sauce. Or maybe some garlic spread. Perhaps zhoug sauce? Any or all of those would have been very welcome in my international meat wrap creation.
Sonia likes the kebabs just the way they are. She has promised to buy more on her very next visit to Trader Joe's. I don't blame her. They're good. I just can't quite muster the same level of enthusiasm for some reason.
$6.99 for six kebabs. Two patties each was more than enough to fill both Sonia and me up for dinner. Four and a half stars from the beautiful wifey. Three and a half from me for Trader Joe's Middle Eastern Style Seasoned Ground Beef Kebabs.
Bottom line: 8 out of 10.
I suppose if you added vodka to a glass of chocolate milk until you had something with roughly 15% alcohol content, it wouldn't be a far cry from what we have here. This beverage is much smoother than that might sound, however, and possibly even a bit more tasty.
Trader Joe's Cocoa Cream Liqueur isn't quite as chocolatey as I might have guessed. But that's okay by me, because it's significantly more creamy than I might have guessed, too. There's a nice balance of flavors. It's not cloyingly sweet like candy, nor is it harsh or astringent in any way.
It even feels like chocolate milk as it slides easily down your throat. It's medium-thick, with about as much body as other products in Trader Joe's holiday cream liqueur line. It's got a very similar texture to the drink we looked at last week: Trader Joe's Peppermint Joe-Joe's Cream Liqueur.
It'd be great with java as a sort of mocha Irish coffee drink. Or you could mix it with hot chocolate, chocolate milk, eggnog, or even another cream liqueur. I'd whip up some chocolate peppermint cocktails if we still had any of the peppermint liqueur on hand.
It was $7.99 just a year or two ago, but it went up to $8.99 in 2022. Even Trader Joe's is susceptible to inflation. All in all, it's another big thumbs up from Sonia and me. Four stars from Sonia. Four and a half from me for Trader Joe's Cocoa Cream Liqueur.
Bottom line: 8.5 out of 10.
It might be an unpopular opinion, but in general, I think food should just be food and decorations should just be decorations. I've never discovered a product that excelled at both simultaneously. And that's to be expected, isn't it? Most edible decorations have been handled excessively before anyone gets the chance to eat them. And if they do, in fact, serve the purpose of ornamentation, well, then...they've likely been sitting out in the open collecting dust, being touched by children and licked by pets for goodness knows how long.
Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. And that's one of the reasons we'll be looking at this classic Trader Joe's Decorate Your Own Holiday Ornaments Cookie Kit. We'll be sure to score based on value and fun-factor, not just on taste and texture of the "baked cookies."
First observation: this is a big box. It's heavy. It's one pound and 4.7 ounces! I think that's the second heaviest food product we've ever purchased from Trader Joe's after the big round tin of Jingle Jangle.
There are three tubes of icing: red, white, and green. The colors aren't particularly vibrant. They're rather drab for holiday red and green. I suppose we can chalk that up to Trader Joe's using natural stuff for colors like vegetable juice, paprika, beet powder, turmeric, and spirulina extract instead of typical man-made dyes. That's fine. It's a trade-off.
There are two of each cookie shape: gift box, Christmas tree, snowman, and snowflake. And there are two little packets of candy decorations, one with tiny snowflakes, candy canes, gingerbread men, trees, and balls of various colors. They also give you shiny golden twist ties to hang the ornaments from your Christmas tree.
They taste like the most boring sugar cookies ever. They're only moderately sweet, and they taste and feel like they were meant to be decorative. The candy sprinkles and icings aren't much better. I honestly wouldn't buy this as a food item. I guess kids might like 'em, but I can't imagine many adults being enamored by the taste and texture of these things. A full cookie contains 300 calories, and that's not even close to worth it by my estimation—especially around the holidays when there are so many super tasty foods available.
But I gotta admit, they're cute. Feel free to critique our handiwork in the comments below. I'm sure your kids made much nicer cookies than we did. We're a little out of practice at decorating edible Christmas ornaments.
$7.99 for eight cookies. We'll offer two separate scores here, one as a food item, and another as a decorative one. Four Christmas stars a piece from Sonia and me as far as a fun family activity and ornamental value are concerned for Trader Joe's Decorate Your Own Holiday Ornaments Cookie Kit. Two grinchy Christmas stars a piece from Sonia and me for the edible aspects of this box of cookies.
Bottom line: 8 out of 10 stars for the fun-factor.
Bottom line: 4 out of 10 stars for the food-factor.
