Trader Joe’s Cowgirl Bark
Posted: September 18, 2014 Filed under: Candy, Chocolate, Cookies, Snacks | Tags: 2 stars, Chocolate, chocolate bark, Snacks, Trader Joe's, white chocolate 1 Comment
Ginger and cranberries – I suppose that’s kind of girly?
Trader Joe’s Cowgirl Bark raises all sorts of questions. What does that strange set of words mean? Why did TJ decide to keep going with the bark thing, after last years lackluster Cowboy Bark? What is bark? And, most importantly, what makes this a girl bark instead of a boy bark?
While the era of sexism is long from over, society’s the tolerance for male-centric, “we make the rules” BS is lower than it’s ever been. It is a time of striving for equality, and reappraising long held assumptions. It is in this climate that Trader Joe’s decided to make their bag of “girl” candy pink with flowers on it. Pretty brazen move, TJ.
Based just on the bag alone, I had low hopes for this chocolaty snack bag. Neither myself nor any of my taste testers had much love for the Cowboy Bark, a rather lazily styled re-release didn’t seem like it was going to change my mind. The formula, as Trader Joe’s points out on the bag, is certainly different – white chocolate, crisp rice, triple ginger cookies, pretzels, cranberries, almonds and peanuts and mushed together instead of dark chocolate, toffee, Joe Joe cookies, pretzels, almonds and peanuts all mushed together.
In theory, it doesn’t sound that bad, except, of course, for those two words right up front – white chocolate. The world is filled with a plethora of strange thing, but white chocolate is, to me, one of the strangest. Whoever was in charge of protecting the chocolate name against low-quality imitators was clearly out to lunch when white chocolate came along. Although I’ve had the occasional falling out with chocolate, it’s still a beautiful, wonderful thing – delicious in any form, and on any occasion. Like bad sex, as they say, bad chocolate is still pretty good.
The issue with white chocolate is that it does not taste like, and is in fact not, chocolate. Who does white chocolate think it’s fooling, really? It’s one of the classic disappointing switcheroos. If you offer someone chocolate, then hand them a bar of white chocolate, you have just deeply disappointed that person – guaranteed. 100% of the time people are less excited to get white chocolate than real chocolate.
Is that unfair to this “white” sheep of the chocolate family? Certainly not, white chocolate sucks, that’s all. In addition to it’s delicious sugar and cream contents, real chocolate contains a wide rage of intriguing stimulants and anti-oxidants, such as theobromine, thiamine, phenylethylamine, and of course, our good buddy caffeine. In white chocolate, all of these are missing – stripped from the chocolate, on purpose, in order to turn it into white chocolate. White chocolate is, literally, what’s left over when you take all the good stuff out of chocolate. The colorless corpse of chocolate, from which the soul has departed.
And yet folks – and yet, I actually like Trader Joe’s Cowgirl Bark considerably better than their Cowboy Bark. The big failing of the Cowboy bark was that the intensity of the dark chocolate overpowered the other, allegedly tasty, ingredients. With white chocolate there’s no such problem, and the pretzels, peanuts, et al. get to make their presence known. The result is actually a fairly tasty mash up of chocolate and snack foods. You’ll certainly notice the salty pretzels and crunchy nuts the most, with the cranberries and ginger cookies more or less unnoticeable amid all the other noise.
Nevertheless, overall this bark basically works. I wasn’t wowed by it, and it may be made with white chocolate, but taken altogether the salty, sweet punch of the candy is good enough to bring you back to bag for seconds and thirds. There’s certainly room to improve – storing chocolate in a loose bag, as we’ve explored before, is not a good idea unless you want it to melt together into a huge messy blob – but Trader Joe’s is getting closer. Maybe they’ll come out with a third iteration using milk chocolate instead (Cow Bark perhaps?), and it will actually win me over. There’s a brilliant idea in here somewhere, they just haven’t quite reached it yet. Until then, the general populous can probably steer clear.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: With hesitation, to people who don’t mind messy fingers.
Would I Buy It Again: No, this is the best white chocolate I’ve had but it’s still just white chocolate.
Final Synopsis: A treat best reserved for people who like white chocolate, like confectionery bark, or both.
Trader Joe’s Cowgirl Bark – Nutrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Fruit Bar with Flax and Chia Seeds
Posted: August 26, 2014 Filed under: Apple, Candy, Fruit, Snacks, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: 3 stars, chia seeds, flax seeds, Fruit, fruit bars, Snacks, Trader Joe's 2 Comments
Flax seeds *and* chia seeds *and* stylish packaging? I’m in.
Trader Joe’s has renewed it’s fruit bar producing efforts of late. We just took a look at their new line of thick and hearty two ingredient only fruit bars. Not content to rest with a mere 14 varieties of fruit bars across three separate labels, TJ’s has released yet another one – this one simply called “Fruit Bar with Flax and Chia Seeds.” The hardest part about covering these bars are their homogeneous names, a trend that TJ’s has decided to double down on by not even telling you what kind of fruit this bar has in it. Fruit, it suggests to you coyly, with seeds! Okay TJ, that weird enough to get my attention.
The reason, it turns out, that Trader Joe’s leaves the fruit name off this one is that, for once, it’s a blend of the whole orchard. Apple puree is the primarily ingredient, followed by a mixture of pear, elderberry and strawberry touched with lemon juice.
I went in to the bar with low expectations – after reviewing every fruit bar TJ has to offer, I was pretty sure they wouldn’t have any more surprises for me. I was wrong. This bar easily bests all of the Apple & Whatever bars I reviewed last month. That maybe shouldn’t be such a surprise really – when you limit yourself to just 2 ingredients, you’re also limiting our flavor palette. Trader Joe’s Fruit Bar with Flax and Chia seeds has a much deeper, more nuanced taste, injecting each chewy, tacky bite with a density of flavor, one fruit mingling harmoniously with the next in a way that teases the tongue to probe each bite. The lemon juice, in particular, has an appreciated presence, giving the bar a zesty bite that sets it aside from its starchier, blander siblings.
In and of itself, Joe has a winner here. However, they don’t stop there, mixing in a pinch of flax and chia seeds to boost the nutritional profile. Both flax and chia seeds have been very much in the public eye of late for their “super nutrient” qualities. While their purported qualities owe as much to marketers as they do to science, these seeds are undeniable potent sources of nutrients and fats. Each bar brings a full 1000 milligrams of Omega-3 Fatty Acids, advertised right there on the front of the wrapper. That’s a fun perk if you’re trying to get more into your diet, and an interesting concession to texture for the rest of us.
As already mentioned, the bars is gooey and tacky in that “stick to the wrapper” kind of way. The added seeds give the bar a touch of crunch to each chewy bite that lends them a touch of welcome body.
The result is a surprisingly tasty, fruity, and munchable fruit bar. If you’re looking for single ingredient fruit bars (or fruit leather), you’ve got plenty of choices out there. However, if you’re just looking for a good fruit bar to snack on, this is the best TJ currently has to offer.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: Sure, if you like fruit bars, or need natural alternatives Fruit Roll Ups.
Would I Buy It Again: I’m not a big fruit bar guy, but if I was this is the one I’d go for.
Final Synopsis: Trader Joe’s tastiest fruit bar.
Trader Joe’s Fruit Bar with Chia Seeds and Flax Seeds – Nutrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Dried Fruit – Just Mango Slices
Posted: September 20, 2011 Filed under: Fruit, MANGO!, Snacks, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: Dried Fruit, Mango!, Snacks, Trader Joe's Brand 7 Comments
Just mango is good enough for me.
Let’s talk delicious mangoes. My ongoing, free-verse tribute to my intense love of mangoes continues today with this lovely dried, unsweetened and unsulfured variety I picked up.
There is a wide world of difference between the dried green mango I enjoyed the other day and these. Why does sweetened mango abound so? Is not dried mango sweet enough on that it can glide blissfully over our tongues without being pumped full of glucose? Having only rarely seen unsweetened mango, and never tried it, I didn’t know – but eager to find out. The answer is a resounding yes. Not only does the absence of extra sugar make the snack more healthful and diet friendly, but it allows the natural fruity flavors to delicately emerge. Without the disguising taste of a sugar coating, I found I could actually distinguish a different taste in the slices depending on how close to the core they had been cut – sweeter and sunnier from outside, more reserved and green tasting at the core.
The slices themselves are stiff, broad flaps of fruit of drab whitish yellow – very different from the bright candy yellow-orange of sweetened mango. I found the change in color rather appealing, much like with Trader Joe’s Green Protein, if something is going to be healthier for me, I expect it to look more natural to boot. In fact, over all I found these a better buy then your regular, dried sweetened mango. Enough sugar already, I say. Let the mango speak for itself. Plus it’s unsulfured, so that’s a plus, but more on that tomorrow.
Are their any downsides to today’s dried mango? Is it even possible to conceive of a mango-related flaw? Yes, it would appear. Through an astounding exercise of willpower I managed to savor these over two whole days, and had the unhappy surprise of finding the pliable mango slices of the night before become increasingly stiff and leathery the next day. Within 24 hours of being opened, the mango slices had become about as difficult to bite off and chew as an old boot. The taste remained as delectable as ever, but eating them became an increasingly arduous task. If only Joe had packaged these in a resealable bag instead of a disposable one the whole issue could have been avoided. If you buy these, be sure to transfer them to a sealable bag upon opening, that’s my advice.
Would I Recommend Them To You: Yes, with the above proviso.
Would I Buy Them Again: Over sweetened mango? Every time.
Final Synopsis: Sweetened mango’s healthier older brother.
Trader Joe’s Mango! Mango! Fruit and Yogurt Gummy
Posted: September 13, 2011 Filed under: Candy, MANGO!, Snacks, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: Candy, Gummy, Mango!, Snacks, Trader Joe's Brand 3 Comments
The sophisticated man's choice for gummy candy.
Mad mango-rama continues with Mango! Mango! gummy candy. Other than being a big fan of the bag’s enthusiasm for it’s contents, I wish I had more to say about these. They are gummy candies that come in a three flavors – mango, mango-yogurt and passionfruit-mango. As is usually the case, the flavors names promise a little more than the factory can put out, and the candy’s actual taste bears only a passing resemblance to their namesakes. Not that I blame them – only some sort of insane simpleton would expect a gummy candy to taste just like the real thing – I’m just saying is all.
Is this good gummy candy? Yes. Is it the best gummy candy you’ll ever taste? No, but it’s reasonably excellent all the same. Does the stupid name put me off? A little.
All three types of gummy are pleasantly fruity and flavorful, and the pieces are large and thick enough that even one makes for a nice mouthful. The texture leans a bit more toward rubbery than gooey, which is what I personally prefer from a gummy candy. In fact, after munching on these for a few minutes I started getting sore temples from the vigorous chewing action. Now that’s a substantial gummy.
What makes these gummies stand out in the battle for your recession dollar? Not a whole hell of a lot, but what they’ve got they do well. They exist mainly to fill that niche in the life of adults who still love the unique, addictive qualities of gummy candy, but feel self-conscious about buying Haribo’s tiny pouches of cartoon frogs and peach rings, or whatever.
Joe can also proudly boost that his Mango Mango gummies are made form real fruit, with passion fruit and mango juice concentrate being the primary the flavorings in the mix. We can add to that one other interesting ingredient – elderflower berry juice – not as flavoring, but as the source of coloring to give the candy it’s fruity hue. Like our Italian Blood Orange Soda, no red 42 is to be found here – just wonderful, all natural secretions of Earth.
How cool is that. Though it may be outlandishly nerdy to admit as much, Trader Joe’s use of non-artificial coloring agents is quickly becoming one of my favorite things to look out for.
Would I Recommend It: For you’re gummy dollar, it’s worth it.
Would I Buy It Again: Though gummy is not my first candy choice, I can forsee these in my future.
Final Synopsis: Mango(od)
Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate covered Peanut Butter Wafer Cookies
Posted: September 10, 2011 Filed under: Chocolate, Cookies, Snacks, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: Chocolate, Cookies, Peanut Butter, Snacks, Trader Joe's Brand 3 Comments
Such deceit hidden behind such alluring words
I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking what I was thinking. “Oh man, dark chocolate with peanut butter on a crispy wafer? That sounds good.” And it does sound good, it sounds really good, but it’s just not the case. It is simply alright.
Now, in all fairness much of the fault here has got to go to the packaging. In general, you can rely on Joe to come up with clever packaging that’s as effective and efficient as it is eye-catching. Not so here, just a jumble of snack squares tossed into a bag. This is a fine approach for animal crackers and dog food – foods that are heat and crumble resistant. Not so much for chocolate, peanut butter and wafer. The first time I opened the bag I was presented with a gooey mess – peanut butter and chocolate slumped messily over irregular bits of wafer.
In a perfect world this probably could have been avoided, I would have kept the bag perfectly level upon purchase and placed it in a cool, spacious drawer. As is all to clear from the wars, famines and imperfect snack goods that assail us – this is no perfect world. My food cabinet is crowded and located above the stove. Things get cramped and warm from time to time, and there’s not much I can do about that.
The reality of the situation is that there’s no way around ending up with this mess. I stuff my snacks in my cabinet with everything else and the house heats up during the day. I treated these guys no different from anything else I buy, and the end result is a mess that’s as technically difficult to eat as you’re liable to find.
Even if they cookies hadn’t come to me melted, there’s no way they could be indulged upon outside or exposed to the mild heat of a house in summer – we’re talking about chocolate for god’s sake, known to melt at the drop of a hat. Seems to me like ol’ Joe should have taken that one into account. If he knew what he was doing, these’d come in a little, sub-divided plastic tray (like most cookies), and I’d have nothing to complain about but the taste.
What’s wrong with the taste? Not much, to be honest. They taste fine, but fine isn’t all that I expect from a chocolate-peanut butter cookie. The main issue, I believe, is that dark chocolate does not go as well with peanut butter as we’d all hope. That may be shocking to hear – we’ve been conditioned to spring energetically from our seats at the mere mention of chocolate and peanut butter combined, but sometimes it just doesn’t work. Maybe it’s time that we, as a nation, start to break from our all-encompassing, slavish acceptance of the peanut butter-chocolate duo and start examining each instance on its own merits. In this case, I’m sorry to say it just doesn’t hold up that well. If we were talking milk chocolate, sweet and smooth, that’d be another case entirely. As it stands, the strong, slightly bitter overtones of the dark chocolate fight against the peanut butter and render the whole experience average at best. All in all, it’s enough to make you wonder why you even bother sometimes.
Would I recommend them: By no means.
Would I buy them again: Only as a tool of retribution.
Final Synopsis: Your hands will look like you pooped on them.
Trader Joe’s Dried Fruit – Green Mango
Posted: September 9, 2011 Filed under: Fruit, Snacks, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: Fruit, Mango!, Snacks, Trader Joe's Brand 4 Comments
The little temptress.
This one’s is easy to explain. Imagine you are eating a piece of dehydrated mango. Now imagine it’s a little more tart than usual. That’s about all there is to say for this simple snack. Green mangoes are, as they sounds like, mangoes which are harvested before maturity. In the wild these would be unedibly tart, but after the miracle of dehydration and with the liberal addition of sugar they hit the spot.
I loved these and ate them up at a pace so dangerously quick that I’m putting a prohibition on myself from buying them again too soon. If I didn’t, there’s more than a small chance that my diet would quickly slide into a sort of all-dehydrated-green-mango binge, and that my friends would soon find me, naked, fat and dead, in a room littered with empty mango pouches, a fistful of dehydrated mango wedged half-way in my mouth. The fact that, if at all possible, I would marry a mango and engage in passionate love making with my mango bride probably makes me more susceptible to the sweet and tangy wiles of this fruity snack than others, but I don’t hesitate to recommend it all the same.
The tangier green mango provides a nice change of pace from the super sweetness of normal dehydrated mango, and does so without losing any of that potent mango flavor. The only small issue I had was that I was hoping for a tarter zing than the green mango delivered. The pack-promised tartness manifests as a subtle undertone rather than a pyrotechnic blast, but it’s hard to get too bent out of shape over a product that tastes as good as this.
Would I recommend it: Yes.
Would I buy it again: Yes, but only while carefully self-monitoring.
Final Synopsis: Like regular dehydrated mango – but better!
Trader Joe’s Roasted Seaweed Snack
Posted: September 8, 2011 Filed under: Snacks, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: Seaweed, Snacks, Trader Joe's Brand, Wasabi 2 Comments
Seaweed, served to you in a cocktail glass
So good, but so far from food. Eating these is like eating firecrackers – a hot, spicy pop that vanishes into empty air.
If you don’t think you’d ever eat a sheet of roast seaweed, try these. Now I, personally, love eating sheets of roast seaweed, giant unflavored sheets that I fold into my mouth like wallpaper, but I can understand that this maybe isn’t everybody’s bag. These f—ckrs are a totally different beast– tiny, bite size seaweed snackers dusted with an invisible layer of burning hot wasabi flavor. They are absolutely addictive, as soon as I got up off my ass after eating the first one I dove for another, and another, until there were no more. The wasabi practically stings when it hits your tongue, then vanishes in a flash leaving just a limp, little flap of seaweed to slide mundanely down your throat.
With a snack this original and tasty and all together rad, it’s a brutal blow to the solar plexus that they’re sold in almost infinitesimally small packets. Trader Joe’s isn’t exactly packing the value into this one either. Popping open the pack, you’ll see that it isn’t exactly packed to the gills. A judicious spacing is alotted each sheet, like a seaweed condo, so that you only get about 20 of the teensy slices. A whole serving (1/2 the pack, by the way) accounts for only 30 calories – about the nutritional content of a gumball.
It’s a shame that such an awesome product is parceled out in such scanty portions; it renders the product nearly purposeless. The flavor is too intense to sit and crunch on all day, and too airy to justify packing jut a couple with your lunch. Short of stocking up on 5 cartons at a time, the only use I can see for these is either as an unusual snack spread at a party, doomed to be gobbled up in a flash, or as a small, critical component in some sort of homemade Asian-Fusion cuisine.
Would I recommend them: To seaweed lovers and the seaweed neutral alike.
Would I buy them again: If I was holding an Asian-Fusion cuisine party.
Final Synopsis: All sizzle, no steak.
Trader Joe’s Potato Trio
Posted: August 24, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Chips, Potato Chips, Snacks, Trader Joe's 3 Comments
The quasi-patriotic chips
As I suspected when I bought the bag, these unsalted potato chips taste like unsalted potato chips. The fact they are made from red, gold and “blue” types of potato made me wonder if it wasn’t some sort of quasi-patriotic tie-in to flag season. However, the chips themselves look all but identical, either white or dark blueish-brown wafers of identical taste.
That said, as far as unsalted potato chips go, these are nice. The chips are strong enough to dig into a dip and very broad. The bag copy makes a point of this – pointing out they make their snack from whole potato slices and not potato scrap left overs like other companies. Not just laudable, but a definite revolution on the snack front.
The chips aren’t too greasy – probably aided by the fact that, as the side of the bag touts, they’re vacuumed fried. Vacuum frying is basically just deep frying, except that the deep fryer is inside a vacuum chamber. Without an atmosphere, the oil boils at a lower temperature allow chips to retain more of their natural color and flavor and, allegedly, are less greasy, though only by a few percent.
Now, if I were the kind of man who buys unsalted potato chips, I could probably go on and on about them. I’m not, of course – no one is. In all my years I’ve never met a person who’d choose unsalted over salted potato chips – nor can I imagine any reason anyone ever would, apart from coercion at gun-point. Even people with sodium concerns are more likely to skip chips altogether for a better tasting, low-salt snack then settle for tantalizing themselves with neutered versions of their beloved Lay’s or Pringles.
Would I Recommend Them: Only to people who tackle the stiffest, densest dips.
Would I Buy Them Again: Nope.
Final Synopsis: An excellent snack in a purposeless category.
Trader Joe’s Chili Spiced Pineapple
Posted: August 14, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: chile, Fruit, pineapple, Snacks, Trader Joe's 1 Comment
The torturous little bits
I picked these up based on a single wavering point of uncertainty in my soul, I love the idea of spicy, sweet pineapple chunks – but will they be too spicy? I mean, they put a chili right there, on the front of the label. That’s a bold statement. More alarmingly, by far actually, is the way that each segment of pineapple is caked in bright-red chili powder. Not dusted, not coated, but actually choked with hot-looking ground red cayenne.
The first nibble proved that my fears were, if anything, too conservative. In the first bite there was nothing but the taste of cayenne, a burning that persisted lound and strong even when the sweet taste of candied pineapple came through, and which continued on long after the morsel was eaten. I immediately freaked. My initial expectation what that there would also be a salty layer – like in delicious Mexican candy. This was no snack for children – or if ever a child was found that did like them, they would likely twist my arm up behind my back and take the rest of the bag and probably my wallet too.
The weird thing is, after a couple minutes when the pain had faded away, I went back for more, and more after that. Somehow, despite my chili wuss status, I was addicted. The pepper didn’t stop burning my lips, but somehow the sweetness and pain of it all kept bringing me back for more. I think some part of it can be attributed to the texture of the candied pineapple bits, which was both novel and pleasantly yielding, all the plastic give of dehydrated fruit, but under coating that was neither sticky nor melty. Easily as enjoyable to handle and chew as they are to actually taste.
Would I recommend them: Yes
Would I buy them again: Yes
Final Synopsis: Adult candy that bring pleasure past pain.
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