Oh, man, do I love Trader Joe’s. Let me count the ways. Peisporter German wine, in a green bottle. $3.99, light and fruity, I love this wine. Greek cream-top maple-flavored yogurt. I don’t know why none of you told me about this and I had to find it out for myself, but damn you. Apple Blossoms- individual itty bitty apple pies, in the frozen section. So freaking good I could just slap your mama. Organic lemonade. I started craving lemonade for the first time in my life this summer, and that stuff really hits the spot.
Those are just a few of my favorite TJ things. What are yours?
Clif Bars, non-stale, a buck apiece. Most of the TJ-specific beer, or any of the cheap white wines for that matter. Some sort of breakfast cereal that looks like tiny brown worms and costs two dollars. Garlic-flavored naan. Frozen cheesecake.
I like their spicy flaxseed tortilla chips (as a bonus, they have reasonable amounts of fiber and protein).
Cheap Atkins bars (shelf-stable emergency snax to keep in my office).
I forget what the specific name is, but in the dried-fruit section they have a mix of three different kinds of raisins which is way better than the big-name stuff.
Their marcona almonds are decent quality and about as good a price as you’re going to find.
Chocolate-covered candied ginger is my favorite candy at TJ’s. I love their creamy unsalted peanut butter, the strawberry jam, the Greek yogurt, and the hummus four-pack sampler thing. Their ground cumin is amazingly flavorful. But my favorite product, for combined flavor and nerdosity, is Avocado’s Number guacomole.
(Unless they still sell Rosencrunch and Guildenpop- I haven’t seen it lately, but that stuff was awesome.)
I’m not a big TJ’s fan but their mesquite honey is just about the only good cheap varietal honey I can easily lay my hands on that is available in the amounts I need for mead making.
Man, that is just about the only thing we’ve bought at TJ’s that the whole family considered inedible! I think I started a thread on it a while back. Led my son to comment that TJ’s could market chocolate covered nuclear waste and some people might buy it and claim it tasted good!
For me, it’s the milk and dark chocolate coated almonds. And those flaky cookies sorta shaped like a bow or a butterfly?
The pound-plus dark chocolate bars…the bags of salted nuts and dried fruits…the wines I buy other places for at least $3 more per bottle…and especially the frozen fish. I love the marinated tuna steaks!
(oooh…and the marinated frenched rack of lamb is damn good, too)
Black pepper cashews.
Raspberry juice.
Tortilla chips.
I’ll have to try some of the other stuff in this thread. But no ginger. Indian people love ginger, which makes me really weird but ugh! I can’t eat it.
It’s just peanuts and salt (if you please), for under $2 a jar. If you eat that you can’t go back to regular peanut butter without thinking “wow this tastes like sugar and hydrogenated oil!”
I love a lot of things at Trader Joe’s, but my favorites are probably the dried granny smith apple rings and packs of pomegranate seeds. I love pomegranates, hate all the work involved to get to the good part.
They have a Korean sesame marinade called “Bool Kogi”, which they sell both in a jar and packaged with beef (with the beef in the marinade so it’s nice and tender). We stopped buying it a while ago because they changed the packaging and stopped selling it as strip steaks, instead making them medallions, which are almost impossible to grill.
