Trader Joe’s Red Pepper Spread with Eggplant and Garlic
Posted: July 9, 2013 Filed under: Eggplant, Red Pepper, Spreads, Trader Joe's Brand, Vegetables | Tags: ajvar, serbian 7 Comments
A little Serbian Salad for ya.
It seems like there must be something wrong with Trader Joe’s Red Pepper Spread with Eggplant and Garlic. For one, that is a ponderous descriptor for something which has an actual name. Two, and more importantly, it’s bitter – so unpleasantly bitter!
“Add to pasta sauces, spread on chicken,” the jar enthusiastically suggests, “Top a burger with it!” Why, jar? I like all those things. Why would I want to smear a bitter condiment from the former Soviet bloc all over them?
That is being, perhaps, a bit unfair to the good people of Bulgaria, from whence this spread hails, and who I’m sure are only trying to do the best they can. The problem may lay in me, after all. Red Pepper Spread – or ajvar as it’s known as in its Serbian homeland – is not something I’m very familiar with. I’m more than willing to grant that the the subtleties of the spread are being lost on me.
Let’s take a quick look at the history of this unusual spread before we get into what exactly it’s trying to do to your taste buds.
Ajvar, also known under the more easily remembered but more frightening sounding name “Serbian Salad”, is basically a type of relish – made primarily from roasted red bell pepper and garlic, containing various quantities of eggplant, red pepper etc. Historically, the dish is known as a winter food throughout the Balkans, canned in early Autumn and subsisted on until spring brings fresh veggies.
I’m not quite sure why Trader Joe’s embraces some of the cultural names for its dishes, like dukkah, but not others, like this poor spread, unless perhaps they feared the outrage of countless babushkas, their dudgeon raised high by a sub-standard product peddled under the name ajvar.
All else set aside, I must praise Trader Joe’s for fetching interesting foods from interesting places. Always a culinary adventure at TJ’s! Of course, every adventure must have its times of misfortune, and that is where our red pepper spread comes in. In its homeland, this spread can be many things – piquant, red hot, even sweet – what it is not supposed to be, and what most foods try and avoid being, is unpleasantly bitter.
As the spread hits the tongue it is nearly sweet, thanks to the sugar added by TJ’s to offset the harshness of the taste. Even with the sugar, however, the bitterness comes through, clean and strong, right from the beginning. During the chew the bitterness rises in power, finally lording over your tongue for the length of the aftertaste. I can’t really figure out what it is they put in the spread that makes it so bitter – the list of ingredients is pure and simple, veggies, some oil and vinegar, no preservatives or artificial colors. It’s possible the fault lay in the preparation process itself. Ajvar is rumored to be best when roasted – not simply cooked on an industrial scale. Perhaps what the spread is missing is the tender loving of a roasting flame?
What isn’t bitter in the spread is certainly worth praising. The robust, earthy tastes of the eggplant and red pepper very nicely compliment simple meat and vegetable dishes, but the bitterness is simply too strong for me to actually enjoy any given mouthful of the stuff. It’s a nice idea for a spread, I only hope Trader Joe’s can reformulate this and bring it back under a prouder banner.
The Breakdown:
Would Recommend It: I’m afraid not, not even for novelties sake.
Would I Buy It Again: This spread has no place in my cabinet.
Final Synopsis: A hearty, tasty spread ruined by a strong bitter flavor.
Trader Joe’s Red Pepper Spread with Eggplant and Garlic – Nutrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Broccoli Slaw and Kale Salad with White Chicken Meat
Posted: July 5, 2013 Filed under: Chicken, Kale, Salad, Trader Joe's Brand 7 Comments
Man, red onion is an absolute salad winner – why are you leaving it off your label?
Ah, another delicious salad from Trader Joe’s – but like most TJ’s salads, their Broccoli Slaw and Kale Salad with White Chicken Meat has a unique set of quirks and shortfalls. Somewhere out there is the perfect Trader Joe’s salad, and while I’ve come close before it still eludes me. Nevertheless I press on, searching for that pot of leafy greens at the end of the rainbow.
Things get a bit weird from the word go as we face the fact that this is a kale-based salad – an uncommon choice in a world of iceberg and baby spinach. I have been underwhelmed by kale before, but at least now it’s being utilized for it’s intended purpose. Kale is a tough, flavorful leaf – a mess of roughage just waiting to scrub your insides clean, and as such demands a flavorful and carefully balanced composition to justify such a bold base. TJ’s finds exactly this with the addition of such hearty ingredients as cranberries, sunflower seeds, a coarse grating of broccoli slaw white chicken meat and, though it goes unheralded on the label, finely sliced red onion. Thin shavings of red onion are one of my favorite additions to any salad and they do beautifully here, adding a bit of zing to the broad, nutty flavors of the kale and sunflowerseeds.
What works a little less well for me is the broccoli slaw. Not that I have anything against broccoli slaw – in fact I buy Trader Joe’s Broccoli Slaw by the bagful for use in my own salads. That, however, is exactly the problem. The broccoli slaw on this salad is indisputable the same kind they’re peddling to me from the produce aisle three feet to my left. While that doesn’t necessarily drive me into a rage or anything, it does make me feel a bit cheap.
I suppose it was a little naive of me to think that Trader Joe’s might have a separate storehouse of special ingredients they use to make their salads and that weren’t just dipping into the common trough of their consumer goods and slapping something together. Nevertheless, it’s nice to see someone get dressed up if they’re courting your tastes. If you look at your little pail of food and realize it’s just just a diverted conveyor belt away from whatever goes into the bulk, economy bags the magic fades a little.
Aside from that rather abstract gripe, there’s only one other thing that bothers me about this otherwise very fine salad – the salad dressing. The packaging bills it as a “Sweet and Spicy Vinaigrette” which begins to approach the truth of the matter but then explodes in a burst of absurdity. Sweet and spicy? Yes, and very tasty to boot. Vinaigrette? Not on any planet I’m familiar with. The thick dressing that rolls sluggishly about its little plastic tub has more in common with 1000 Island than any vinaigrette I’ve seen in my life. In fact, a quick survey of the ingredients, or a quick taste, reveals that the dressing is primarily made from mayonnaise. Is this bad? Not necessarily, certainly not if you don’t mind a delicious but hugely fatty dressing on your kale. For my part, I substituted in Trader Joe’s Balsamic Vinaigrette and was much happier for it.
The Breakdown:
Would I Recommend It: Yes – even if you’ve never liked kale before you might like this.
Would I Buy It Again: Despite a couple short-comings, absolutely.
Final Synopsis: A robust, healthy salad with an unhealthy dressing.
Happy 4th of July!
Posted: July 4, 2013 Filed under: Trader Joe's Brand Leave a commentHave a great Independence Day, all! I’ll update the blog tomorrow.
Trader Joe’s 4 Dried Whole Persimmons
Posted: July 2, 2013 Filed under: Frozen Food, Fruit, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: gotgam, hoshikaki, korean delicacy 2 Comments
They are being very clear about how many you get. You get four.
What a totally cool item – good job Trader Joe’s! Four frozen (frozen!) tiny, whole persimmons served straight to you from Korea. Even with your history of craziness, that was an unexpected move, TJ. Nothing could have called out to me more – a tiny, dark box, sitting next to the ice cream as if it were no big deal, a total mystery even as it plainly stated that it was, in fact, 4 dried whole persimmons. It’s the sort of boldly simple statement that’s impossible to let slide – like a man who walks up to you on the street and says he can eat his own fist. What does that mean? Why are you even here? Unable to resist the pull, I took the mystery box home to investigate.
With such a straightforward title as Trader Joe’s 4 Dried Whole Persimmons you would think no one should be surprised by what they’re going to get. And yet I was more surprised by this product than I’ve ever been by anything at Trader Joe’s. I’ve covered persimmons before – I delved into the ins, the outs, and the evocative poetry of the fruit when I covered them here. Before opening the box, that’s exactly what I was expecting – four mushed up, wrinkled and brown hachiya persimmons, served cold. What I got were tiny works of art. Check these out:
Examine that delicate whiteness tracing the edges of the fruit – since these were just taken from the freezer you might expect that to be frost. It’s not though, it’s actually the fruit’s own crystallized sugar, extruded through the skin during the long drying process and carefully preserved.
The delicacy of the dried, whole persimmon is known as gotgam in Korea and by other names in China, Japan and Vietnam. What everyone can agree on is that they’re a delicious, sweet treat. Trader Joe’s, in their continual bid for excellence, has sourced these persimmons directly from the green rolling hills of Gyeongbuk, South Korea where they are harvested each fall and then immediately dried and frozen. The drying part is common world wide – it’s the freezing part that’s uniquely Korean. Functionally meant as a way to preserve the sugary, moist fruit for the long term, it also makes for a unique way to cool down in the summer heat with a totally natural treat.
Although I’m a big fan of this strange item on the grounds of it’s unusual nature alone, there’s less I can say about the taste. Despite being frozen, these dried persimmons taste just like any other dried persimmon. Their beautiful exteriors don’t do anything to change that wonderful sweet and mealy persimmon taste of sweet potato, pumpkin and brown sugar. This isn’t a bad thing, I like the taste of persimmon, but it doesn’t really make a case for the exotic freezing, high price ($3.99 for four persimmons), or TJ’s breathless product copy.
The value of this item comes from the mystique surrounding it. If you can produce your fancy box of frozen persimmons to a few choice friends (or kids), read off the box copy (“made from the perfectly ripe hachiya persimmons of Gyeongbuk”), and pass around the gorgeous treats you’ll make a memory. Beyond that, there isn’t much difference between these and any other dried persimmon you may choose.
Breakdown:
Would I Recommend Them: Yes, if you’re a persimmon fan looking for a single memorable experience or a Korean ex-pat.
Would I Buy Them Again: The appeal of these is primarily in their novelty, so no.
Final Synopsis: Like regular dried persimmons, but colder.
Trader Joe’s 4 Dried Whole Persimmons – Nutrion Facts
Trader Joe’s Cheddar and Horseradish Chips
Posted: June 27, 2013 Filed under: Cheese, Chips, Snacks, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: cheddar, horseradish Leave a comment
I’m rather taken by the design. Almost like a winged block of cheese with a halo.
I did not intend to buy Trader Joe’s Cheddar and Horseradish Chips, not in the least. While it might seem like exactly the sort of misfit I’m drawn to, not unlike this insane chip mash up, this product just failed to grab my gustatory attention. Why, for instance, was this product championed as if it were unspeakable outré, by its own packaging nonetheless (“Cheddar and…horseradish?!”), but poor Beurre Meuniere Popcorn, released at exactly the same time, has been left omitted from the Fearless Flyer and left to languish in obscurity? Conspiracy? Perhaps. But in this case, as with the Elvis’ assassination by teamsters or New Coke, the conspiracy has won. Compelled, as if by forces beyond myself, I bought a bag and crunched in. What I found was much what I feared – a nice chip that is sharply spicy, sort of cheesy, but overall not as interesting as hoped for.
First, before I go all crazy on the mingling of tastes and all, a word on horseradish. I’ve often wondered just where the “horse” in horseradish comes from, a question that was piqued in my mind by the boldly emblazoned horseshoe on the package. It’s a common association, and one that’s all the more interesting given that the horseradish is actually poisonous to horses. Why the conflation? The answer can be traced back, like all else that is good in the world, to the filthy peasants of late 15th century England. Evidently, at some point a peon hefted one of these large roots before his eyes and remarked, “Cor, what a horse radish!” Horse being the word for “large” or “strong” at the time. The peasants, being no slouches, knew a good turn of phrase when they heard one, and the name stuck.
The presence of horseradish in these chips is downright undeniable. I was actually warned multiple times at the register by a cashier who was perhaps overly concerned that these chips were for horseradish lovers ONLY. I certainly fancy myself that, but at the risk of appearing haughty, I’d say a single, mild warning would do. There chips do come in with a sharp horseradish kick, but it flares out in half a second, sliding into a quick cool down and the arrival of some generic cheese flavor. Notably horseradishy definitely, but not quite a strong taste and nowhere near the real thing. While Trader Joe’s Cheddar and Horseradish chips do get hotter on the gongue than your standard, long-burn jalapeno chip, the effect is much shorter and the overall experience a milder one.
While the horseradish definitely delivers, there is less to talk about on the cheddar side of things. After the burn, the cheese taste is an anticlimax, muted and uninteresting by comparison. I’m not necessarily a fan of the super cheesy Cheetos approach to snack foods, but these chips could certainly benefit from a more complex flavor. The chip itself is thick, very crunchy, kettle-cooked and wavy – a strong chip that requires a moment to chew through and ensures you get the full horseradish blast.
The Breakdown:
Would I Recommend Them: Not particularly. Give’m a shot if you love horseradish, or need a new weird chip flavor.
Would I Buy Them Again: For me, these aren’t quite compelling enough.
Final Synopsis: A sharp, fun bite, followed by a more or less average chip.
Trader Joe’s Cheddar and Horseradish Chips – Nutrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Cowboy Caviar Salsa
Posted: June 25, 2013 Filed under: Gluten Free, Salsa, Trader Joe's Brand, Vegan, Vegetarian | Tags: caviar, cowboy caviar, Salsa 2 CommentsTrader Joe’s Cowboy Caviar Salsa is, hands down, the grossest product name in the store. I’m no marketing expert, but if you want to sell someone your strange, globular salsa you might be thanked not to name it after fish eggs pulled from the ugliest fish in the Caspian. That aside, this corn-filled, black bean-based salsa is a bold, tasty alternative to your standard yellow-cap Pace and worth a look for anyone.
Do not confuse with Rocky Mountain oysters.
I should say that the blame for the name is not strictly TJ’s fault in this case. Cowboy caviar was first crafted into existence in the 1950’s by Helen Corbitt, famed chef, fresh food advocate, innovator of bold new cuisine and, ultimately, head chef at the flagship Neiman Marcus in Dallas, Texas – famed at the time (and known still) for its fine eating. The South, as every good southerner knows, has a hankering for black-eyed peas – a hankering that includes, but is not limited to, mandatory black-eyed pea consumption on New Years Day. Thus the decree that Neiman Marcus was to roll out an “all-Texas” menu, prominently featuring the beans was no surprise. No, the surprise was that Helen Corbitt, herself a Yankee girl from New York, detested black-eyed peas, and couldn’t bring herself to serve them in a traditional way. Instead, she pickled them in onions and served them as a chill dip – and lo history was made.
Trader Joe’s differs from its primogeniture by introducing the aforementioned corn, plus onions, red bell pepper and , perhaps hereticaly, swapping black beans for black-eyed peas. The chunky veggies are mortared by a mix of chipotle peppers, adobe sauce and lime juice – and the result is a dang good, medium salsa that give you plenty to chew on chip by chip. In addition to the touch of fire, you’ll pick up a citrus tang and even a hint of sweetness, which makes this an interesting salsa all around.
I myself am a die hard salsa fan, willing to take it any way I can get it, and to me this is one astounding find. Even with the sudden coming into vogue of non-traditional salsas (mango & papaya salsa, for example) there’s still a paucity of tomato-free varieties. Why not get the tomatoes the hell out of there? It’s the 3rd millennium A.D. isn’t it? “Nothing is sacred” is all but the mantra of our epoch – I don’t see why we should stop at tomatoes as salsa.
If you’ve ever been to a Trader Joe’s you know that they have a host of intriguing chips to go along with this salsas and dips. Why not try a bag of Super Seeded Tortilla chips when you pick up your southwester, rough-ridden, saddle-packed jar of cowboy caviar.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: Surely I do.
Would I Buy it Again: It’s a good change of pace salsa, if not an everyday kind of salsa.
Final Synopsis: Pickled corn and beans? As a salsa? Yessir, and damn good one.
Trader Joe’s Cowboy Caviar Salsa – Nutrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Crunchy Black and White Rice Rolls
Posted: June 20, 2013 Filed under: Rice, Snacks, Trader Joe's Brand, Vegan, Vegetarian | Tags: Black rice, rice rolls, sushi rice Leave a comment
The put the little window on there like, “Check out the crazy colored rice!” But there is no crazy colored rice. What is your end game here TJ’s?
Trader Joe’s Crunchy Black and White Rice Rolls are just rice folks, slightly sweetened, crunchy rice in a little roll. They’re good tasting, pretty healthy and convenient. That’s about all there is to say on these, folks. I mean, c’mon, really – it’s just rice. I suppose I should be thrilled by coming across such a cheap, tasty, and healthy snack, but I’m not a mom. I’m a guy with a slightly faulty “Act Like A Normal Person” switch in his head. The light is steady from time to time, but mostly it sort of blinks on and off. I suppose I’m just a little disappointed by such a utilitarian, ordinary snack after the aggressively weird brown butter, lemon and parsley popcorn the other day. We must wonder, however, what is black rice, and why cylinders instead of disks?
The main reason I picked these rolls up was because of the intriguing mention of “black rice” in the title. Now, there are several kinds of black rice cultivated around the world, form the “forbidden rice” once reserved only for the Chinese Emperor’s table to Thai black jasmine rice. The exotic lure of the promise of such a deviation in color pulled me in, much as the promise of black eggs, or black milk would have done. Unfortunately, I found myself left to disappointment. Not only is it impossible to taste any difference between the “Black Pearl Rice” and “Sushi Rice” used, but impossible to even see any difference. Black rice usually cooks up to a deep purple color, but whatever cooing method Trader Joe’s employed has denatured any chromatic differences between the two. Perhaps I should champion these black and white rice rolls as a paragon of color-blind, racial harmony, but instead it feels bland and sterile. Even TJ’s, usually so florid with their food descriptions, can’t seem to muster much enthusiasm for their generic rices in the product copy. Humph.
This, I sense, may be my own idiosyncratic quibble. As I already said, these really taste quite good – rice cake or not. Even better, they appear to be air puffed, like a bunch of lightly sweetened corn pops smushed lightly together, giving the whole roll a light and airy feeling. This certainly an advancement over ordinary rice cakes whose density can sometimes make a snacking session feel like an arduous slog.
So, sweet, light and crunchy – what’s not to like, really? It may, of course, be possible to take issue with the shape. Why cylinders, TJ? Is the traditional disk shape too square for you? Not hip enough for the educated, middle-income crowd? Functionally, this is not actually much of an issue, except in one important way – it’s difficult to layer or spread any condiments on the rice rolls. As a man who always has some room for a nice puffed rice cake smeared with a thickness of peanut butter, this qualifies as a design flaw.
A final word, unlike some other items I’ve reviewed, the rice rolls compare very well to their mainstream alternatives. Despite the differences in shape and texture, Trader Joe’s Black and White Rice Rolls are nearly identical in sugar, carbs and calories to Quaker’s ubiquitous sweetened rice cakes.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend These: Yes, especially to moms.
Would I Buy Them Again: As I have no kids and enjoy spreading peanut butter, probably not.
Final Synopsis: A good, but chromatically perplexing, rice snack.
Trader Joe’s Crunchy Black and White Rice Rolls – Nutrition Facts
Trader Jacque’s (Trader Joe’s) Beurre Meuniere Popcorn
Posted: June 18, 2013 Filed under: Popcorn, Snacks, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: a la meuniere, brown butter 13 Comments
I don’t know, I can’t say it either.
Wow, Trader Joe you magnificent bastard. It seems any time I have reason to pout over how Trader Joe’s is, when you get right down to it, no different from any store trying to trick you into buying what you don’t need, they release a product that makes me cheer with delight at the sheer, bloody nuttiness of the thing. Trader Joe’s Beurre Meuniere popcorn is that lemon zested, herb-rubbed popcorn that you didn’t ask for and you don’t actually need, but which enlivens the world regardless.
Let’s begin by exploring what exactly the hell a beurre meuniere popcorn is. A word of warning out the gate – this is going to get complicated, so hold on tight.
The Miller’s Wife
To cook something, as the French say, a la meuniere means to do so in the manner of “The Miller’s Wife”. What it really means is that you’re going to be adding lemon, thyme and parsley to a brown butter sauce and cooking with it. In one of those awesome quirks as etymology, somehow, at some point, a Frenchman conjoined the concept of a simple, tasty preparation with the idea of a miller’s wife and the two have been fused forever more. This is very different from the typical American word association with “A miller’s wife” which is “Wha?” (Unless, of course, you’re an English major, in which case you’re probably reminded of an act of brutal, sexual humor so unspeakable it could only have been dreamed up by Chaucer.)
Where things start to get crazy is that the act of preparing thins a la meuniere is almost completely limited to fish. And not even a lot of types of fish, basically just sole and trout. Trader Joe’s decied to instead apply it to popcorn. Normally I feel like I can tease out the psychology behind TJ’s moves, but this one is totally opaque to me. Evidently someone with some clout in the organization was eating a nice piece of white fish and said, “You know what this would taste good as? Popcorn.”
Now at this point, I know what you’re thinking: “There’s a brown butter now?!”
I, too, became elated when I heard tell of this tasty sounding beurre, but in truth there is little to tell. A butter is browned simply by letting it melt on the stove for a goodly time. The melted butter separates into its constituent parts – the lighter clarified butter that floats to the top and the heavy butter solids that settle down. The solids then brown as they heat and there you have it, brown butter. It is to this that the lemon, thyme and parsley are added followed by, in this case, the popcorn.
Ambitious, but worth it?
So this is obviously a very interesting thing. In fact, as far as my research shows, no one has ever, as in ever, made a popcorn a la meunierre before, which means this isn’t just madness, but an unprecedented madness. In my book, that’s something to be proud of. But what does it taste like?
Basically just popcorn with lemon juice on it. The herbs make a very timid appearance here, adding a fiat undertone to the much stronger zing of the lemon and the even stronger, lingering starchy taste of popcorn. As for the brown butter, sadly I was totally unable to locate even a hint of a difference from popcorn produced with regular oil. If you’re having trouble imagining the taste, consider that you’ve almost certainly had fish prepared this way, just replace the taste of tender trout with crunchy kernels of corn.
Is this a taste you’re going to like? Maybe? This product is so idiosyncratic that it’s hard to pass judgment on. I will say that it’s not an immediate palate pleaser. After a handful of the stuff I had no trouble setting the bag down for the night. The taste is challenging and more than a little acidic, and while that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it is certainly nowhere near as strong a contender for your calorie budget as the salty, sweet or cheesy kinds. This is not a snack to try and make kids happy with, though it might make for an interesting cocktail party addition or a cultured accompaniment to a foreign language film.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: Yes, $1.99 isn’t too much for a totally novel taste experience.
Would I Buy It Again: No, for a bag of popcorn it just isn’t that enjoyable.
Final Synopsis: Most men say “Why?”, Trader Joe’s says, “Why not?” (With regard to manufacturing zesty, herbal popcorn.)
Trader Joe’s Super Spinach Salad
Posted: June 13, 2013 Filed under: Gluten Free, Quinoa, Salad, Spinach, Trader Joe's Brand, Vegetables, Vegetarian | Tags: miso, pumpkin seeds, Salad Leave a comment
Why do the little grape tomatoes get left out? Poor little grape tomatoes, always overlooked…
An interesting salad, this Trader Joe’s Super Spinach Salad, an intriguing salad, but not necessarily a very good salad.
Spinach is an incredible base for any salad – tender, and flavorful, and supple, and yielding to the ardent bite, and nutritious, and, and, and – well, I could go on. I have a deep and abiding love for leafy, raw spinach that manifests itself in a refrigerator stuffed full of salad greens and dirty looks I throw at petulant children. My adoration of spinach, I’ll admit, is partially irrational. You see, I lost my salad virginity to spinach.
I was a young man, a college freshman. I hadn’t been looking for love, I didn’t even think I was interested in salads. I had grown up around plates of iceberg lettuce and, apart from the occasional juicy crouton or Baco Bit, they did nothing for me. But then I saw it, there in the dorm cafeteria’s buffet , demure but intriguing. I remember stuffing my mouth full of the delicious young sprigs, the juicy blast of nutritious flavor. I can taste it still. That day changed my life, leading me into the wonderful world of salads, and though I’ve often played around with exotic radicchios and roquettes I’ve always returned home to those tender, loving fronds.
So you’d think a TJ’s spinach salad would be an almost perversely easy slam dunk, right? Not so. Trader Joe’s Super Spinach Salad offers up the sort of charmingly eclectic list of ingredients see in some of their other excellent salads, quinoa, carrots, cranberries, chickpeas, edamame, tiny little tomatoes, and pumpkin seeds, but they simply do not work as well as a unit. It’s hard to say where the salad goes wrong. The main problem seems to be the carrot ginger miso dressing, which is, one, a strange combination of ingredients that don’t work very well with the salad mix, and two, unusually thick, almost like a very gritty mayonnaise that resists spreading evenly across the salad. Worse, the dressing leaves a strong aftertaste of onion in your mouth that lingers on long after the salad is finished.
The veggies do make for a crunchy, crispy unit that’s not bad for munching on, and I would suspect that if you ditched the dressing and substituted it for a personal favorite the salad would benefit greatly by it.
Even worse than being unpalatable, the dressing commits the all-too-common sin of wrecking the otherwise very healthy nutritional profile of the salad. Check out these post dressing stats: 19g of fat (a third of your daily intake), and a whopping 53g of carbs which, even controlling for the 10g that come from fiber, is more than a Big Mac packs.
I’ve got nothing against the occasional decadent salad (perhaps choked with gorgonzola and candied pecans), but it has to be pretty fantastic tasting to make the calories worth it. This salad fails to deliver anything like the level of enjoyment I’d demand for blowing my diet for the day.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: With a caution – lose the salad dressing and substitute a healthy alternative.
Would I Buy It Again: Not I, there are far more interesting salads to explore.
Final Synopsis: A very promising salad ruined by a very poor salad dressing.
Trader Joe’s Super Spinach Salad – Nutrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Honey Mints
Posted: June 11, 2013 Filed under: Candy, Chocolate, Gluten Free, Snacks, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: honey, peppermint 8 Comments
Both title, and total list of all ingredients. Whoa.
What a name! Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Honey Mints, this little confection could not be cheekier – 3 ingredients, all listed there in the name, thrown together in a fit of what could only have been hubris. Dark chocolate, honey and peppermint extract. This is an almost frighteningly bold undertaking – even the most cursory glance at the ingredient list reveals that TJ’s is not f-ing around here. There are seriously only three ingredients – honey, chocolate liquor and oil of peppermint. Is it even okay to do this? Or, better question, is it reasonable to do this?
When you’re squaring yourself up against York Peppermint Patties, beloved classic and mainstay of parlor candy dishes the nation over, do you really want to start self imposing handicaps like “oh, and we can only use three ingredients.” It is absolutely a move on which Trader Joe’s should be applauded, in the same way you should applaud someone who just ran ten consecutive marathons or ate a box of light bulbs, after a brief pause and with a quizzical look on the face.
The fact of the matter is that these patties are not particularly helped out by this three ingredient policy. They taste simply alright, like a slightly stronger and aggressive York patty with a sweeter aftertaste. The texture, size and minty bang are nearly identical – the clash of flavors is what marks it as different. The honey whipped filling doesn’t exactly gel with the mint flavor and the dark chocolate shell.
As we’ve previous discussed, dark chocolate, while perfectly good on its own, simply cannot be treated like milk chocolate. These are not mere adjectives people, dark and milk chocolate are different beasts all together – milk chocolate the friendly pony who nuzzles your hand as he prances, dark chocolate the powerful, curried stallion, illuminated for a moment on a rocky crag by a flash of lightning. While it complements the mint oil, the honey wants to be sweeter than the unsweetened dark chocolate will allow.
Would this taste issue be ameliorated if TJ’s had allowed the addition of byzantine bisorbates and other curious additives? Perhaps not, but as it stands the candy doesn’t work well enough for me to spend my calorie budget on them. Afterall, even though it lacks the preservatives, artificial colors, and high fructose corn syrups it’s still 17 grams of sugar and 6 grams of fat per serving – a worse nutritional profile than York Peppermint Patties. To adherents of certain nutritional philosophies I’m sure the absence of manufactured additives constitutes an enormous draw, to me however this comfort is purely hypothetical. I listen to my brutal, masticating jaw and swollen gullet, and they advise me that despite the intriguing lead-in there is little to recommend this product.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: No, save for those with grudges against the York corporation or an adversion to America’s typical food chemicals.
Would I Buy It Again: Sadly, no.
Final Synopsis: A York Peppermint Patty, but with a greater clash between bitter and sweet.
Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Honey Mints – Nutrition Facts
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