I’m a big fan of their orange chicken, potstickers, and teriyaki bbq chicken (yeah okay, so I like Asian food, whatever). I’m also a huge fan of their chocolate covered raisins and honey sesame walnuts. Delicious.
You know, charitable Trader Joe’s donations to the Trader Joe’s impoverished are a great kindness.
Total yogurt. Full-fat Greek yogurt is the best.
I love many of the products there.
I particularly adore their frozen peaches. Perfect after a minute in the microwave on a hot day. Plus the quality is much better than what I found in my local ShopRite. Also good are their cheeses including the smoked gouda, feta and cheddar (and not very expensive), the French lemonade, the wonderful piroshkies, the canned Bolognese sauce, the stoned wheat crackers, the midnight chocolate cake, the frozen corn, the frozen pea pods, the high quality frozen fish like tuna, the salsa and a few dozen other items. I am generally satisfied with about 90% of what we try.
I can’t leave the store without spending at least $100. My latest favorite find were mini China cookies with a shortbread base and a dab of fudge on top. Wonderful!
Chocolate caramel d’leche (sp?) balls: Heavenly adictive little chocolates.
Pre cooked Carnitas: Good Carnitas, easy to microwave for almost instant burittos.
Pure Cranbery Juice: Cheapest available unsweetened cran juice: Perfect for cosmos
And some bad points
I would say the fresh produce is overpriced. But then again we have good farmers markets and independant produce stores here to measure them against.
The normal sour cream is not made propperly (uses gum and crap like that) whilst the organic is a bit pricey.
The frozen french onion soup though still nice has been downgraded in quality twice. It originally came out made with beef stock and gruyere cheese. Later they changed it to vegitarian stock. And later again they changed it to non-specific cheese.
They seem to do that with other thinds as well. Downgrading the ingredients without much modifying the packaging. They used to have real chocolate truffles (ie made with cream butter and chocolate and very little else) they are now made with hydroginated oil and other similar crap.
The other big problem with TJ’s is that they are poor at keeping items in stock. A favourite item can be off the shelves for several weeks before it is resupplied.
God those carnitas rock! less than a minute in the microwave and they taste pretty good.
And most locations have recipe files, usually including whatever is being “sampled” that day.
There is a Trader Joe’s Tortilla Soup recipe from the Mission Viejo store that I will try to find. It’s main ingredients are the precooked carnitas, the roasted garlic salsa, heavy cream and a couple of other things. Fantastic.
