Trader Joe’s Greens and Seeds Salad
Posted: October 15, 2013 Filed under: Feta, Pomegranate, Salad, squash, Trader Joe's Brand, Vegetarian | Tags: feta, pumpkin, pumpkin seeds Leave a comment
Greens and seeds *and* squash, is more like it.
I picked up Trader Joe’s Greens and Seeds Salad the other day after a moment’s hesitation. Greens and seeds? Seeds are not normally my go to salad toppings. I was even more surprised by the ingredients: butternut squash, feta cheese, pomegranate and pumpkin seeds. First off, I’m not sure butternut squash counts as anyone’s idea of “greens”, but more than that, who’s ever heard of mixing pumpkin and pomegranate seeds together. Nevertheless, remembering the rather delicious lessons Trader Joe’s couscous and cabbage and quinoa and wheat berry salads taught me, I decided that I’d better just suck it up and give it a try.
Folks, I’m glad I did. The salad mix might be unconventional, but the taste is right on. This is exactly the kind of salad I go for – a hearty, robust mouthful that hits every taste bud on the way down. Where salads like Trader Joe’s Walnut & Gorgonzola focus on a narrow, rather bland taste profile, the greens and seeds in this mix cover the whole pallet. The butternut squash is savory with mellow, earthy tones, the feta is as intensely flavorful as a nice fragrant fetid should be, the pomegranate packs that astringent, high-toned zing, and the pepitas are salty and nutty. It could, and maybe should, be the taste equivalent of dressing in a tux, sandals, and a clown wig, but somehow it manages to all hang together. The eclectic assortment of tastes are helped in no small part by the excellent salad dressing pairing – a zingy and creamy honey dijon balsamic. The dressing is strong, quite mustardy and vinegary, so you might only want to put about a third of it on at first, but it’s this strength that unites and accentuate the tastes of the other ingredients.
Two potential marks against the salad. First, it’s meat free. I’m perfectly happy to make a meal of salad alone, which generally means I’m looking for something with at least a little meat in it. That said, all the cheese and seeds in this salad means that you’re getting 11 grams of protein per serving. That’s not bad. The other caveat is that the squash is, as you might expect, a bit squishy. That doesn’t bother me, but if you get hung up on texture this may not be the salad for you.
Trader Joe’s rolls out new salads all the time, but this rather wild salad combination has come out this fall for more reason than mere happenstance. Spring mix and summer salads abound, but this is one of the few truly autumnal salads I’ve ever had – a pointed and purposeful concoction made with only those ingredients that are in season during the harvest – or so they say on the company website, at least. I’m a food fan, sure, but I’m an even bigger fan of food born out of high concept musings. Kudos on this happening salad, TJ!
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: Yes, if you don’t mind squishy squash in your salad, you’ll love this one.
Would I Buy It Again: Absolutely, I’m adding it to the shopping list now.
Final Synopsis: A hearty salad with a tasty autumnal bent.
Trader Joe’s Gorgonzola & Walnut Salad
Posted: October 3, 2013 Filed under: Cabbage, Cheese, Nuts, Salad, Trader Joe's Brand, Vegetarian, Walnuts | Tags: gorgonzola, Walnut 2 Comments
A very attractive old timey font on this salad. Not much else to brag about though.
Oh, Trader Joe’s your salads are so uneven. Sometimes your salads are so good that I do little dances in my kitchen, and sometimes they simply fall flat. Trader Joe’s Gorgonzola and Walnut salad seemed like it was going to land in the first category, but ended up squarely in the second – rather bland and generally unexceptional.
How do you go wrong with such a simple concept? This salad has the fewest ingredients I’ve seen in basically any salad ever. They are, all inclusively, lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, gorgonzola and walnuts. Five ingredients, that’s it. Such a pure, simple recipe, such a confident delivery – it’s enough to make you think those few ingredients are actually enough to make the salad taste good. It’s enough to make you think that gorgonzola and walnuts by themselves will be enough to make you sit up and go, “Yowza, I can’t believe this salad!” This, my friends, is not the case.
Gorgonzola has been served alongside walnuts since time immemorial, for the very good reason that they pair well. You’d think these two would be a delicious meal in and of themselves, salad or not. Splash a little zingy balsamic vinaigrette on that, mix with some greens and you’d think we’d be talking about a definite winner. The fact that this salad actually tastes so plain and uninteresting is rather perplexing.
The problem here lays in the cheese. When you think of a nice gorgonzola, you’re probably picturing something like a rich, aromatic wedge of veined bleu cheese. This istandard gorgonzola, the most popular kind, is known as gorgonzola piccante or gorgonzola naturale. It is this type of firm, crumbly, strong tasting gorgonzola that isn’t packaged in this salad. Instead, we are dealing with lumps of gorgonzola dolce, or “sweet” gorgonzola. This is your option B among gorgonzolas – a softer and much, much milder cheese.
I’m quite boggled as to why TJ’s went for this mild variety. The stronger gorgonzola naturale would have melded deliciously with the nutty bitterness of the walnuts and the acidic pop of the balsamic dressing. Instead, the mild gorgonzola dolce fades into the unimpressive wallpaper of the lettuce and cabbage. The overall effect is that you’re left with a salad that never really seems to get started.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: Not this one, no.
Would I Buy It Again: There are too many delicious salads at TJ’s to waste time on this one.
Final Synopsis: A perplexing cheese failure wrecks what could have been a great salad.
Trader Joe’s Walnut and Gorgonzola Salad – Nutrtition Facts
Trader Joe’s Salad with BBQ Flavored Chicken
Posted: September 26, 2013 Filed under: Chicken, Salad, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: bbq chicken, bbq chicken salad 4 Comments
An uninspired name for an uninspired salad.
Today we have yet another entry in TJ’s seeming endless parade of salads. Unfortunately, Trader Joe’s Salad with BBQ Flavored Chicken is a pale imitation and poor match for the much more delicious MexiCali salad or, well, most of the salads I’ve tried from TJ’s.
TJ’s BBQ chicken Salad commits one of the great crimes of food – being bland. The salad is basically fine – it’s not unpalatable or gross or particularly unpleasant at all really – it’s simply mute, a more or less flavorless meal. This would have been less of a surprise if I this salad was all boiled watercress or something, but were talking about what sounds like a knock-out line up of ingredients. Lettuce, black beans, corn, minced red pepper, tortilla strips and smoked Gouda cheese. The smoked Gouda I’m not going to say a word against – it’s delicious burst of flavor in an otherwise uninteresting salad. Instead, let’s take a look at the BBQ flavored chicken itself. Sounds good, right? Or does it?
I suppose the “flavored” line in the title should have tipped me off. When people start tossing in qualifiers like “flavored”, as in “grape juice flavored beverage drink”, you know you’re going to be getting some sub-par cuisine. That’s what we’re getting here. This isn’t barbecue chicken, or chicken with barbecue sauce, its barbecue-flavored chicken, meaning, I suppose, that instead of actually cooking the chicken up like someone who cares, you sort of mist the chicken with a barbecue solution while it runs by on a conveyor belt. Whatever the method, the chicken holds only a weak bbq sauce taste that vanishes under the stronger lettuce and corn flavors.
Hand in hand with the bland bbq chicken, goes the bland BBQ Vinaigrette. We’ve already looked, very briefly, at the proud tradition of vinegar-based BBQ sauces native to the Carolinas. This is not they. The included BBQ vinaigrette tastes like a weak, watered down BBQ sauce that does no favor for the vegetable medley. If you cut this out and substituted it with a more robust, flavorful sauce, maybe a blue cheese of some sort, you might have a salad worth recommending. That’s probably more effort that it’s worth however.
Overall, this salad manages to be less than the sum of its parts. It’s not the worst salad in the world, but it really has nothing to recommend it either. When you’ve got panoply of truly great salads just waiting for you in the produce aisle, it’s hard to imagine why you’d ever go for this guy.
The Breakdown:
Would I Recommend It: No, try the Mexicali salad instead.
Would I Buy It Again: Maybe ironically.
Final Synopsis: A salad as bland as it is poorly named.
Trader Joe’s Salad with BBQ Flavored Chicken – Nutrition Facts
Trader Jose’s (Trader Joe’s) MexiCali Salad
Posted: September 3, 2013 Filed under: Salad, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: mexicali salad 5 Comments
One of these days, I hope someone uses “CaliMexi”, just to shake things up.
Of everything I love at Trader Joe’s, I must love their salads best of all. Why? Trader Jose’s MexiCali Salad with Chili Lime Chicken is all the explanation I need offer. Dig this bad mother – it’s got it all, minced greens, corn, diced pepper, sun-dried tomatoes, pepitas (aka pumpkin seeds), asiago cheese and of course the chili lime seasoned white chicken all tied up in a creamy jalapeno Caesar dressing. Daaaaaaamn.
Is that good? Yes, man, it’s great! Is it necessary for Trader Joe’s to have a “MexiCali” Salad when they already have the Southwest Salad? Sir, if you’re asking that question, you obviously haven’t tried these two back to back like some bloggers. The MexiCali salad blows the southwest salad away, and not just because the MexiCali salad has chicken and the Southwest salad has mere vegetables, but because the MexiCali salad is an almost ecstatic blend of savory, flavorful ingredients that really gives you something to chew on. Of course, I’m not trying to suggest an either or situation here. We need both salads! It’s my personal opinion that we need as many types of salad as 100% of the fully utilized workforce is capable of developing, though I’m willing to admit that I run toward the extreme on this issue.
What’s really nice about Trader Joe’s MexiCali Salad, what won me over, is how unique it tastes. Going into it I was expecting something exactly like the Southwest Salad, but with some chicken thrown on top. This is absolutely not the case. Not only are the ingredients unique to this salad, but with the asiago cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, pepitas and chili lime chicken the salad is practically chewy. This may sound off putting, but it’s actually tremendously delicious. Each bite puts up delicious resistance, flooding your mouth with the savory, complex tastes of rich, tangy vegetables, zesty chicken and the creaminess of the mildly spicy jalapeno infused dressing. In fact, the salad’s contents speak so well for themselves that you’ll want to go light on the dressing so you can better appreciate the actual flavors at play.
Nutritionally, you’ll have to pay a light toll for the rich flavors. Even with dressing on the salad comes to a scant 350 calories, unfortunately nearly half of those are from fat. The hearty helping of cheese (attributing to the above mentioned chewiness) is the culprit here – even without the dressing this salad still covers 20% of your daily value of fat. Of course, you’ll be getting 26 grams of protein as well, and only 27 grams of carbs (6 of those from fiber).
On a final note, whoever was in charge of composing the salad green mix went all out. Constituents include some well-known faces (romaine lettuce, green and red cabbage), but also some much less common leafy friends, such as mizuna, frisee, tatsoi, tango, lollorosso and galactic. I haven’t even heard of half of those, let alone eaten them. It may be hard to tell if you’re eating galactic or tango when they’re all mixed up in a salad, but you should feel cool knowing they’re there.
The Breakdown:
Would I Recommend It: Yes, this salad is a taste sensation.
Would I Buy It Again: Readily.
Final Synopsis: MexiCali must mean “rich and savory, protein-packed salad done right” in some language.
Trader Joe’s MexiCali Salad with Chili Lime Chicken – Nutrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Bacon and Spinach Salad
Posted: July 25, 2013 Filed under: Bacon, Salad, Spinach, Trader Joe's Brand 3 Comments
12 ounces of heart-clogging goodness.
When is a salad not a salad? No, that’s not the set up for a hilarious joke – it’s a dead on serious philosophical musing. Undoubtedly there are as many different answers as there are salad lovers on this planet. Some might quibble over the presences of leafy greens, others might argue the necessity of a dressing. For me, it comes down to nutrition.
When a salad is delivering 108% of your daily fat intake in a single serving, that’s a poorly constructed hamburger not a salad. When someone can say to you, “Whoa, buddy, instead of that salad, why don’t you try something healthier. Here, shove these two Big Macs into your mouth at the same time.” That for me is where a salad crosses the threshold into junk food. What I’m saying is, brace yourself for Trader Joe’s Bacon and Spinach Salad.
I bought this salad the other night because I was hungry and had managed to convince myself that, you know, in light of the paleolithic diet, Atkins, etc TJ’s Bacon and Spinach Salad wasn’t actually that bad for me. If you haven’t looked yet, I’m going to direct your eyes to the bottom of this article. Yup, that’s right. Not just 108% of your daily recommended fat, but 105% of your cholesterol, 68% of your sodium, and even some trans fats in there for good measure, all delivered directly to your arteries on a healthy bed of fresh spinach.
Who in their right mind can call this a salad? If they’d stopped at the bacon, that’d be one thing but this salad by no means stops at the bacon. What else is in there?
Well, we’ve got some cherry tomatoes, nice plump and juicy, that’s fine, a whole hard-boiled egg, that’s not too bad, then we have the mozzarella cheese and the poppy seed dressing. I’m not sure which of those chokes me with surprise more. I mean, the mozzarella just seems egregious. We’ve already slathered the spinach with a hefty helping of cured pork belly, bacon that is literally sagging with fat, who was out there was thinking, “This salad just isn’t rich enough. Throw on a bunch of fatty, white cheese!” And, with that in mind, can I just say – poppy seed dressing? Really, Trader Joe’s? On top of everything else, poppy seed? One of the richest, liquid-fat infused dressings on the books? And not even a poppy seed dressing that makes overtures at healthiness, but an oily poppy seed dressing? Honest to god, this poppy seed dressing has a thick layer of oil floating on the surface when you crack it open. I’ve had poppy seed dressings many times before, but never one that comes with its own oil slick.
It’s astounding, readers. This salad is practically a novella about the rage simmering beneath the exterior of one crazed salad designer at Trader Joe’s, a man who has been forced, day after day, to design fresh, light new takes on lemon chicken while his soul within slavers for sticks of butter and pork flesh, a man who, one day, snapped when presented with a bag of broccoli slaw, the levees of his mind giving way to the flood of carnal need, and leapt about ransacking the shelves, tongue hanging out of his mouth, loading up a bed of spinach with his every secret, depraved desire.
Okay, so if you eat this salad everyday your body fat will eventually smother your heart and you will die, on that we can all agree. On the other hand, it’s very tasty. And of course it’s tasty, it’s a pile of fat and salt – it’s incredibly delicious. Pour on the poppy seed dressing, mix up the bacon and cheese and dig in – you’re taste buds will be taken on a wild ride of salty, fatty, meaty tastes. In fact, the most incredible thing about this salad is that it’s actually edible. As anyone who’s had a Big Mac can testify, it’s hard to eat so much fat and salt in one sitting and not leave feeling at least a little ill. For this we can thank the spinach and cherry tomatoes, which provide a clean, light taste counterbalance to the more dominant heavy tastes. In a way, it’s a brilliant solution to the problem of how to eat a bunch of fatty bacon and cheese all at once. If that’s not a problem your trying to solve, then this may not be the salad for you.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: No to salad fans, yes to bacon fans.
Would I Buy It Again: I’m not sure my blood pressure can take it.
Final Synopsis: A novel way to eat a bunch of sloppy bacon.
Trader Joe’s Bacon and Spinach Salad – Nutritional Facts
Trader Joe’s Artichoke and Hearts of Palm Salad
Posted: July 16, 2013 Filed under: Artichoke, Heart of Palm, Salad, Trader Joe's Brand Leave a comment
You had me at artichoke.
A heart-based salad? How intriguing, Trader Joe’s. Was this done on a bet? Did some Hawaiian-shirt wearing executive in TJ HQ start shooting off at the mouth about how nobody, but nobody, could make a delicious salad centered on two different types of plant hearts? And then did a little guy (also in a Hawaiian shirt) step forward and go, “I created a salad out of goddamn marinated beets – just watch me.” If this is not what happened, please don’t correct me.
At any rate, Trader Joe’s Heart of Palm and Artichoke Salad feels absolutely decadent. God knows – God almighty in his blue heaven knows – that there’s nothing so good as a nice artichoke heart. To make a salad of them feels almost hubristic. They don’t look like so much – little, uninteresting, drab cubes sitting mundanely on a bed of arugula instead of, as I would have imagined, gleaming with magic sparkles and heavenly rays. A single bite, however, and I was immediately hooked. I didn’t doubt that this would be the case. I mean, it’s goddamn artichoke heart. I’m definitely on the record as a fan of mango, but my mango addiction doesn’t even compare to the pleasure I derive from a properly prepared artichoke.
I think we can all agree that the artichoke is an amazing food. It’s crazy looking as hell, fun to eat, strangely delicious and hides, in its secret, armored center, what might as well be a heart of gold – the absolute intersection of crunchy and succulent. It’s goddamn madness, the kind of food that, if it didn’t exist, Philip K. Dick would have had to drop acid to envision.
Not satisfied with only one heart, Trader Joe’s reaved a second from the palm tree. Heart of palm is less of a palette pleaser than artichoke heart, but has an intriguing taste and decadent history all its own. Also known by the evocative name “Millionaire’s Salad”, the heart of palm was historically harvested from the core of a young coconut palm – killing it outright after the long labor to raise it, and throwing away of the great worth of a mature palm tree. This, being more or less the culinary equivalent to lighting a cigar with a hundred dollar bill, earned the salad it’s name. Nowadays, heart of palm is less extravagantly wasteful – the heart is cut from a different type of palm that creates off shoots, allowing the core to be harvested without killing the whole tree.
The fanciness of the salad is beyond reproach – but does it taste any good? My love of artichoke heart aside I found this salad quite tasty. There are really three big flavors going on – the the succulent crunchiness of the artichoke heart, the marinated zing of the heart of palm and a touch of bitterness from the otherwise mild baby greens. These tastes meld into an enjoyable symphony of tastes, taking your tongue one way one moment and another way the next, but ultimately playing well together. At 7.5 oz, it’s a bit smaller than the average TJ salad, but packs big, novel flavors into it’s small size.
My one big mark against it is the salad dressing – a raspberry vinaigrette that hardly lives up to the name, a thick, opaque pink dressing with the appearance and consistency of Pepto Bismol. This purported vinaigrette packs a fair amount of fat as well, so I substituted Trader Joe’s Light Champagne Vinagarette instead. For a salad already so decadent, I thought a little champagne only a fitting touch.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: Yes. This is a tasty, if unusual, salad.
Would I Buy It Again: It’s got artichoke heart, man. I’ll be back.
Final Synopsis: A salad that manages to stand on it’s novelty.
Trader Joe’s Artichoke and Hearts of Palm Salad – 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.
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 Vegetable and Grain Country Salad
Posted: April 25, 2013 Filed under: Cabbage, Salad | Tags: bulgur 2 Comments
Why can’t the shredded cabbage be considered part of the salad? It’s a vegetable too.
I never would have guessed raw cabbage and cooked bulgur could be so tasty, and yet here I have my proof in Trader Joe’s Vegetable and Grain Country Salad.
Let us first commend this hearty and delicious salad as a study in the art of simple, elegant salad making. The salad is skillfully tossed together from 4 simple components – a bed of shredded cabbage, a scattering of garbanzo beans and a few select cherry tomatoes embedded in a dense field of moist bulgur. Raw shredded cabbage is ordinarily hard to make palatable, but in this instance it works as crispy counterpoint to the yielding, flavorful grain. Add a few choice spices, and you’re left with a rich, sumptuous salad that smells enticingly of the middle east and fills you up without weighing you down. It does, however, lead us to our first question. Bulgur – what is bulgur?
Bulgur. This is not a word the average American runs into on network TV or his daily paper. It sounds fashionable, in that return-to-the-past sort of way, maybe the sort of thing peasants in medieval Italy were stabbing Cypriots with pikes over. “Unload your mule of my bulgur, varlet” was probably a common cry somewhere at sometime.
In actual point of fact, bulgur is a Mediterranean crop – a high fiber grain, related to wheat but looking and feeling like couscous and with a lightly nutty flavor. If you’ve ever had tabbouleh, you’ve had bulgur, (a phrase which is as fun to say as it was to write). Bulgur is somewhat in vogue nowadays due to the fact that it cooks up like white rice, but with more protein and fiber, and a lower glycemic index.
This leads us to our second question. Where does Trader Joe’s get off calling this a salad?
Being made mostly of grain, it’s pushing the definition of salad further than normally tolerated. It would be just as accurate to call this a pasta dish with a side of shredded cabbage. Not to mention the absence of a salad dressing. Has there ever been an actual salad-type salad that you can eat without a dressing? Top scientists say no. Except maybe in the case of pasta salads, of which this is almost certainly one, which I suppose negates the entire point of this paragraph. Never mind, let’s move on.
Although possibly a bit unorthodox, there’s s nothing to regret about Trader Joe’s Vegetable and Grain Country Salad – simple parts that come together in a tasty, well-designed medley of refreshingly unusual tastes and textures and exotic smells.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: Yes, to anyone who is at all curious about salads or bulgur.
Would I But It Again: A little carb heavy as a salad, but tasty as a side dish, so yes.
Final Synopsis: A resounding yes to the question, “Does bulgur taste good as a salad?”
Trader Joe’s Vegetable and Grain Country Salad – Nutritional Information
Trader Joe’s Authentically Korean Seaweed Salad with Spicy Dressing
Posted: March 28, 2013 Filed under: Salad, Trader Joe's Brand, Vegetarian | Tags: Salad, Seaweed 3 Comments
With all your favorite agars and carrageenans!
When it comes to foreign cuisine, no supermarket chain kills it quite like Trader Joe’s. Case in point – Trader Joe’s Seaweed Salad with spicy dressing. We’ve already looked at some of TJ’s bold, if shaky, forays into the Korean kitchen. With this fun spicy salad they can proudly boast that they’ve done something well that no one will appreciate.
Seaweed is not high on the list of most American shoppers, so hat’s off to Trader Joe’s for branching out into the exciting world of undersea vegetation. The history of seaweed cultivation and consumption is as vast and engrossing as the wide Sargasso, and I doubt I can do it justice in this forum. When confronted with a man who just ate a big bowl of limp kelp, the more pressing question of interest is “Does it taste any good?”
Yes, absolutely, this sea weed salad does – if you’re in the market for authentic Korean cuisine. If, instead, you’re looking for a nice, ordinary salad to accompany your casserole, try one of these. If, on the other hand, your on the hunt for an entirely different taste, and texture, sensation to make dinner memorable you couldn’t ask for better.
In a lot of ways Trader Joe’s Seaweed Salad is exactly what you’d expect – a big pile of wet, limp seaweed that smells more than slightly of the sea. In other ways though, this salad might surprise you.
For one, the salad is actually thrown together from a wide variety of seaweeds. Each one brings it’s own texture, color and toothfeel to the dish, seven different types of sea plants go in, from the translucent agar-agar to the bright Carrageenan Yellow.
Eating these fronds is unlike eating any other salad you’ve ever had – large, tender, sometimes slick, sometimes springy textures slide and bounce their way across the mouth with each bite. It doesn’t exactly come packing the taste – few things are as bland and mild and wet seaweed – but what it lacks in taste it makes up for in texture and appearance.
Of course, TJ’s was aware that seaweed needs some help to become tasty, and it provides that help in the form of a monstrously large packet of “salad dressing: that is, essentially, a thick, paste of red hot peppers. Again, kudos to Trader Joe’s for taking the authentically Korean route here. Many mass retailers might have tended toward a milder, more edible dressing, instead TJ’s gives you the full-on Korean restaurant experience.
This is a seriously hot condiment folks, and it’s given to you in a quantity far beyond what you’ll likely need to enjoy your salad. Try a dab of the dressing first before slathering your salad and adjust accordingly. I found about a 1/6th of the packet enough for me – but as we established before, I’m also a bit of a chili wuss.
A final note, making this salad was more fun than it should have been. The meal comes as a freeze-dried thatch that you must dump in a big bow of water and leave to quintuple in size – dinosaur sponge style. It brightened up my day, but then again I am easily amused.
The Breakdown:
Would I Recommend It: Yes, if you think you like seaweed or interesting textures. No to everyone else.
Would I Buy It Again: I could see it happening.
Final Synopsis: This is a great, exciting, interesting seaweed salad but, ultimately, a seaweed salad it remains.
Trader Joe’s Authentically Korean Seaweed Salad with Spicy Dressing – Nutrional Facts
Eating At Joes 
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