My hands down favorite Trader Joe’s item is Vegetable Birds’ Nests. They are kinda hard to describe, but are a variety of veggies breaded and molded into little circular discs. You just bake them in the oven for like 20 minutes and then dip them in the included soy dipping sauce. Mmmmmm…
Those are fabulous! I put them in my toaster oven. They fit perfectly there.
For those having a difficult time imagining it and have had Japanese food before, it’s basically vegetable tempura.
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LifeOnWry**, thanks for the tip. I think I’ll head over there today and pick some of those up.
Oh, drat…Just found out today that they have discontinued my favorite little multi grain sesame pretzel nuggets.
I am consoling myself with their ribeye steak! 
I miss Trader Joe’s. They are fun to shop at, but not worth going to Ann Arbor for (60 min. north).
California, especially Orange Co., has some of the most expensive grocery prices I’ve ever seen. I just shake my head when I visit my dad in Dana Point.
My take on the store: if you get out of there without spending $100, you either shop there regularly, or you are really disciplined.
See, this is just weird. Some people are claiming the place is expensive, while others (myself included) find it surprisingly cheap. I wonder if TJ’s prices aren’t pretty standard from store-to-store, and our perception depends on our local grocery chains. Everything is relative?
I hit Trader Joe’s maybe once a month for the fun extras I like (I grocery-shop weekly) and I routinely walk out of there with three or four bags full of stuff, and have never spent more than $60 there. Now, I don’t buy meat, and I only buy a bottle of wine every so often, but still, that doesn’t seem like an awful lot of money.
I spend about that much, or less. Yep, always 3 or 4 bags. I could see spending $100 or more for holidays or parties, but not the rest of the time.
Explain to me how TJ is not the Hippie Yuppie store for the suburban parent who wants to feel like a Friend of the Earth. I get this vibe constantly from this store.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
Seriously, though, a lot of their stuff is organic and hippie-yuppie-friend-of-the-earth friendly, but I’m not sure why that’s a bad thing?
Max: Not to tread on anyone’s toes, but…The way I cook the tenderloin is to let it cook for five minutes on one side, and then the other. It’s okay if it’s still a bit pink inside as long as it’s not red. Those who object to pinkness can, of course, cook it a bit longer. I think the ribeyes would be the same…?
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What he said.
Second that. Which reminds me that I need to get more, as we just finished the bag I had in the freezer Sunday night. In fact, our dinner Sunday night was heavy on Trader Joe’s stuff – also had some TJ’s frozen lamb chops that were better than I’d expected when my wife suggested getting them. Not a big fan of frozen steaks and meat products in general, except for certain things, but these weren’t bad. I do better myself, but for something that went from in the box to on the table in less than 20 minutes, they were certainly better than a lot I’ve had. We also had a bottle of the Two-Buck Chuck Shiraz (which costs about $2.50 in Atlanta because of Georgia’s absurd alcohol distribution laws) because my wife wanted to try it out. Not going to become one of my favorites, but drinkable. I did notice on our most recent trip that they have the Bonny Doon Cardinal Zin zinfandel (the one with the Ralph Steadman-designed label) and the Bonny Doon Pac Rim Riesling, which are among my favorites, cheaper than most other places in Atlanta. Didn’t buy either, as I’m well-stocked on the former and only buy the Riesling when I’m cooking Asian, but it’s nice to know I don’t have to travel out of my way to get them anymore.
I love shepherd’s pie, and the TJ’s frozen ones aren’t too bad. My wife likes the single-serving frozen eggplant parmesan and spinach lasagnas for lunches at home when the two older kids are at school and it’s just her and the 3-year-old.
OTOH, Trader Joe’s just started opening stores in the Atlanta area in the last six months or so, and the two stores we go to are almost always crowded with folks for whom it’s still a novelty, or folks who’ve lived elsewhere and become TJ’s fans and haven’t had a fix in a long time. With three small kids in tow in stores that are crowded and not particularly large, it’s a bit nervous-making.
The thing about Trader Joe’s is what NOT to get, though those things are few.
Don’t bother with their bagels. They’re terrible. In fact, their breads are pretty bad in general. Go to the bagel shop next door.
It’s got a little of that vibe. I won’t deny. The food is a little more “natural”. But, the products are typically different from the grocery store, so I don’t think that people are of the mindset, “I’m above the grocery store” but rather, “I get stuff here I can’t get at the grocery store.”
Anyway, we only go there for frozen meats. We call it “going fishing”, and every coouple of months, we go to Trader Joes, and buy about $100 worth of frozen fish, beef, chicken and lamb. Mostly fish.
They sell a TON of wild caught fish. And, it’s typically a couple bucks cheaper than the “fresh” stuff at the grocery store. . .“fresh” at the grocery store usually meaning that it was frozen once, but has been thawed for days, as opposed to the TJ’s fish which doesn’t get thawed until the day I eat it.
Their steaks are good. Their lamb is Australian, and good, and cheaper than the grocery store.
We’ll buy 2# bags of frozen shrimp.
Oh, yeah, we also get these things there called “Mochi”. They’re little bits of ice cream, surrounded by a flavorless gelatine. One is a perfect size for after dinner dessert.
Some of it is. The rack I got was from Australia, but the leg was from the U.S.
I’m not a health food nut, though I’ll sometimes choose organic food ‘just because’. So Trader Joe’s is where I go to get things I can’t get at a supermarket. I mentioned the salads earlier. I’ve never seen the same variety at a supermarket. Their non-frozen burritos are good too. A bit high in Calories, but I’ve never seen most of the combinations they have at a supermarket. The French Roast coffee is really good, and cheap. The Volcano is better, and only costs like $6/lb. Last time I checked at the market, good coffee was like $9/lb. I’ve never seen Greek-style yoghurt anywhere but TJ’s.
I’m one who finds prices resonable. The nuts and dried fruit seem to be less expensive than elsewhere, and I’ve already mentioned the coffee. Where a large store carries an item similar to one carried by TJ’s, I often prefer TJ’s brand. (Exceptions are mayonaise – I like Best Foods (Hellman’s to those in the East) – and peanut butter.)
Well, if you’ve been there, you’ve seen the Excursions pull up with the DVD players going in the back, and the “I have nothing better to do than go to the gym and get my hair and nails done” mom gets out and proves how earth-friendly she is by buying organic frozen dinners. It’s just such a veneer to me that I don’t even like going in the store.
Oh. Yeah, I see my fair share of those. Our Trader Joe’s is in a shopping center that has a Pottery Barn, a Coldwater Creek and an Aveda salon, so it defiitely attracts the reasonably affluent Stepford Wives. But then so does Jewel (Albertson’s) cuz, well, we have a lot of those out here.
You’ll be happy to know, though, that there’s still some real hippies (like me) in there 
My Trader Joe’s is in the very ritziest, yuppiest part of town, and for that reason many of my friends won’t even think of going there. They assume that it is just too, too trendy. I probably wouldn’t have gone in there if I hadn’t learned about it on the SDMB. But because of what I learned here, I’ve been shopping there since the day it opened. Since I’m on a severe budget, I rarely spend more than $25 at a time, but I could easily spend more to stock up. And I make sure that I tell all my friends about the great prices when they ask why I shop there.
The prices on cheese alone makes me return…but not if I were just getting the basic cheddar and cojack and Swiss…that I buy elsewhere. But I do a lot of cooking and baking with more exotic ingredients for the concert receptions I cater. I needed Gruyere for a recipe. The cheapest I could find in the regular grocery stores was about $12.99 a pound…one store even had a price comparison sign with their competitor’s price of $14.99. Way too expensive for a recipe 'm just trying out. But Trader Joe’s had the cheese for $8.99 a pound…much more reasonable. And nuts…don’t get me started on the nuts! And then there are the sundried tomatoes, the eggplant caponata, the fire-roasted red and yellow peppers…so much cheaper than even our local cheap discount grocery, Marc’s. I wish they carried more spices, since their prices are great, but for those I generally go to the WestSide Market and buy loose spices…$1.75 for an ounce, whch is huge…sometimes the grocery store charges $4.99 for a smaller container of say, coriander or cardamom . But I always buy my vanilla for baking at TJ’s…much cheaper than anywhere else.
Mochi is the glutenous rice that surrounds the ice cream. And it does have a flavor, but it’s delicate enough that the ice cream overwhelms it especially since the mochi is cold.
You can sometimes find fresh mochi at your local oriental markets: there they will usually be filled with red bean paste, or sometimes mung bean paste, or rarely some other flavored substance. And sometimes they’ll carry the mochi ice cream as well, but I’ve found the further away from the West coast you get the harder it is to find any mochi.
Dang, now I wants me some fresh mochi.
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Wasabi mayonaise.
To DIE for!
Watch out!!!
From that link. . .
Jesus, I didn’t know I was taking my life into my hands. That stuff is sticky, but they coat it with a lot of flour. Once your hands take off some of the flour, though, it’s definitely very sticky.
“How’d he die?”
“Choked on mochi”
“Mochi choked?”
“Hai”
I just got back from my first Trader Joe’s visit - as a direct result of this thread. I’m in love.
I couldn’t afford to go crazy but I came away with 2 lbs. of ground beef, a bag of apples, a box of peanut butter granola bars (I ate one on the way home) and a bottle of Shiraz (for $3.39+tax) and my bill was just a little over $10. That’s very impressive to me since I went to the one in Crocker Park, and I’ve never imagined I could afford to shop at Crocker Park!