Day 365 - FINAL OFFICIAL DAY and review of Blason de Bourgogne Brut Reserve Crement de Bourgogne Burgundy

THIS IS IT!!  I can seriously say, I DID IT.  365 days.  1 product EVERY.  SINGLE.  DAY.  A whole year!  Wheeeeeeeeeeee!!

Let’s look at a few stats:

·         I took at least 1,850 photos for this project. I say “at least” because I do not have an exact count.  I tried to keep them organized in a folder but sometimes life just got too out of control, so some are thrown about in other places on my laptop.  Many of them were featured in the blog, some were total duds and never saw the light of day, until now…  J

Florida Lager - scary in the store for some reason, but never reviewed...

"Scary Clown" wine - never reviewed

English Breakfast Tea - never reviewed

·         Each entry took an average of 45 – 50 minutes to write (I think).  If we add all of those together, I spent around 304 hours this year writing this blog.  That is ALMOST THIRTEEN FULL DAYS (if I worked round the clock) just to WRITE the blog (not counting taking photos, cooking, tasting…)

·         55 guest reviewers participated (counting each guest reviewer only once even if they tasted on more than one day)

Guest reviewer Elizabeth

·         Of the 55 guest reviewers, at least 8 of them were complete strangers before I asked them to participate  J

·         One review was in ASL see it here

·         I reviewed 29 wines (that is almost a full month of wine!) (30 wines if you count today's review!!)

Wine is Fine

·         One review was via Skype see it here

·         35 products got coveted 5 star reviews!

·         Only 2 products got 0 star reviews – Cranberry Juice (here) and Pumpkin Scones (here )

Poopy Pumpkin Scones

·         The blog keeps a running tally of the 10 most popular posts.  I am proud that as of the moment I am writing that list is really varied!  It contains 1 pasta, 1 fish, 3 toiletry items, 1 snack food, 3 wines, and one chocolate!!  The bottom 1 or 2 entries change frequently.

·         The entry with the most views BY FAR is the one about Head to Toe Moisturizing Balm.  It sucked as a product (1.5 stars) but people must really like that review cuz it has 1,843 views.  J  You can see it here:  here.

For some reason this review is super popular

·         We visited 24 Trader Joe’s stores this year

OMAHA Trader Joe's

·         We visited Trader Joe’s stores in 11 states (plus one District) this year

·         Of all of those visits, only one store (Clarendon, VA) and TJ’s corporate replied to letter I sent to each one (except Jacksonville Beach – your letter is coming)

·         I met one reader in person this year – Ttrockwood, in Chelsea, NYC (see her here)

·         I did reusable bag and honey exchanges with 2 other readers this year (a 3^rd was tentatively scheduled but cancelled due to circumstances beyond our control).

A reader SENT me these!!!  So nice!!!

·         I gave away around 120 business cards for the blog (I am not a great marketer…).

·         One review featured a video of an original song about bacon

• And final stat - as of this morning, the blog has surpassed 75,000 total hits!!!

And now, with n further ado, drum roll please…  May I present, with a couple of tears, the FINAL REVIEW for this year long Trader Joe’s 365 review project!!!

I decided to close out this amazing project with a bang - well, with a BUBBLY!!!  We went to Trader Joe's to get a champagne to have a double celebration:  making it through the year of reviews, and NEW YEAR’S EVE!! 

David making his fancy pants hoity toity face with our "champagne" purchase

Only, we ran into a slight glitch...  The blog technically finishes TODAY, December 31, 2015, and New Year’s doesn't really happen until MIDNIGHT, making it January 1, 2016...  I couldn't wait until midnight to pop open the bubbly to review, because then I would have missed a day on the blog!

So we did the only sensible thing - WE MOVED NEW YEAR'S UP A NIGHT!  Yes siree, we celebrated New Year’s (and the blog) last night!!  (Of course we will celebrate AGAIN tonight, but for you, gentle reader, we will sacrifice and celebrate twice...) 

BREAK OUT THE BUBBLY - it's faux New Year's Eve!!

The "champagne" we chose has to have quotation marks around it, because in actuality it is a sparkling wine and not a champagne (which can only come from a specific region in France).  But hey, champagne without quotation marks was out of our budget, and maybe it is out of yours too, so we got this sparkling wine which I shall refer to as "champagne".  

After a day at the beach and an evening of putting together an Ikea Stuva (see here - who says it is just for a kid's bedroom? It screams "kitchen storage unit" to me!!) we busted out the "champagne" (Blason de Bourgogne Brut Reserve Crement de Bourgogne Burgundy) with our friend Kathy. 

Beach kindness - David "saving" a jelly fish/man o' war (he was a tiny bit alive but still floated back to the sand.
RIP little fella)

Wheee - THE BEACH!!!!

David feeding his buddies

Here is what we all thought:

Kathy - "This is light and refreshing.  It is quite nice.  I don't really know much about champagne, so I can't compare it.  So I am not comparing it to anything else, I am just taking it on its own face value.  I would give it a 4.5."

Nothing says fancy like plastic flutes.

David - "I like this better than many fancy champagnes that I have drunk.  (Editor’s note:  I think David must have drunk fancy champagnes in a former life before he was reincarnated as himself, cuz I have been hanging out with him for quite a few years now and “fancy champagnes” are not normally on his list of drinks…)   I think it is tasty in the sense that it is, as my wife says when she is referring to me, FRUITY!  And it has a lot of taste and it tastes like WINE, which is better than CHAMPAGNE, which usually to me just tastes like bubbles and effervescence, which I am sure is what it is supposed to do, but I like WINE.  So there ya go.  I will give this a 4.75."

The fancier the people are, the higher the pinky is raised.  Proven fact.  :)

Me – I like champagne.  I don’t normally have it often, and now I realize that probably what I have drunk before at places that tell me they are serving me champagne is really “champagne” (sparkling wine like this is).   I mean, if they just put it in a fancy glass and tell you it is champagne you go with it, right? 

I like this TJ’s “champagne” better than many champagnes or “champagnes” I have been served in the past because this seems lighter, fruitier, and not soooo dry.  Sometimes champagne/”champagne” has a weird thing where you are more thirsty after you drink it than before you drank it!  It is just so dryyyyy.  But this one doesn’t feel like that, and I enjoyed it. 

This “champagne” was a nice celebratory way to ring in the “New Year”.  I GIVE IT A 5.  (But I have to admit that the 5 is as much (perhaps more even more so) for the completion of this project as it is for the taste of this particular drink. 

After hearing my rating of a 5, David changed his to a 5, too! And after hearing David raise HIS score, Kathy raised HERS, too.  J  So in the end it was unanimous – A FIVE FOR THE “CHAMPAGNE” AND A FIVE FOR THE BLOG!!!  J

A TOAST TO TRADER JOE’S!  AND TO THE NEW YEAR!!!

TO TRADER JOE'S!!!!

Price – $9.99

Rating - 5

Thank you again for reading this year.  I will post infrequent reviews from this point forward, probably mostly TJ’s products that we find that we adore or make us gag.  J

But I would love to keep in contact with you and perhaps inspire you to spread some kindness with my NEW PROJECT – Kindness Activist.  Find it here:

·         Blog – KindnessActivist.blogspot.com

·         Facebook – Kindness Activist

·         Email – kindnessactivist@gmail.com

·         Twitter – @kindactivist, Kindness Activist, pw Kindness Activist 1

See you on the new kindness blog.  And in the meantime, keep shopping at Trader Joe’s!!!!  (And if you happen to see David and I shopping at a TJ’s, pleeeeease come over and say hi!!)

New year, new project :)

Day 364 - Chocolate Raspberry Tamales and WHAT I HAVE LEARNED from this blog

Here are a few things I have learned from this year long Trader Joe’s reviews project:

• Even commitment phobics can manage to commit to something hard if they try.

• Talking to strangers in grocery stores is fun (I actually knew this before this project, but this tooootally reinforced it for me).

• People are seriously nutso for Trader Joe’s – I didn’t realize how huge a “thing” TJ’s was when I started!  I chose TJ’s as my “theme” for the project because we liked to shop there, we needed groceries, and it seemed “do-able”.  But throughout the course of the year I have seen what a CRAZE Trader Joe’s is!!  Guys, there are other review blogs (I have tried not to read many of them because I didn’t want them to influence my writing/opinions, plus I was already devoting enough of my time to a grocery store and didn’t need “homework” reading on top of it all!).  But seriously, like, there are a lot of people writing about Trader Joe’s online.  And get this – some people apparently TAPE THEMSELVES BRINGING HOME THEIR TJ’S STUFF!  I have not watched any of those videos, but since I am nearly done here and since they are out there online, I think we should check one out now.  Are you in?  I am gonna Google and post one here, get ready…HOLY SHIT GUYS, people are obsessed!!!  I am so glad I didn’t look at these before!  Hahahaha!  Look, this is a shorter video than many of them!!  "Haul" video  I am perhaps 1/1000^th of a percentage as into Trader Joe’s as these people who videotape their purchases are…  They even have a FACEBOOK GROUP if you wanna join, it is called “Trader Joe’s and Other Groceries Hauls”.  It looks like it is a “closed group” so you need to ask to join, but you will have almost 1,300 friends in there if you do.  Hahaha – oh my.

• Trader Joe’s has great employees.  I think I knew this fact before I started writing the blog, but it was reinforced by the many, many people who work at TJ’s that we met throughout the year.

Amy in Indy

Rebekah in Clarendon

The dancing parking lot guy at U Street in DC

• Trader Joe’s treats their distribution centers as if they were Fort Knox.  There is a HUUUUGE one in Daytona Beach, Florida and I thought I would easily be able to go in and have a little tour.  I mean, we have toured several factories and always enjoyed ourselves.  But not a TJ’s distro center.  When I asked my local TJ’s manager if she could “hook me up” she gave me a phone number to call but warned me that it was highly unlikely…  I called several times.  It was BUSY.  Busy, as in, didn’t even roll to voicemail.  Busy.  So we drove out there.  It is HUMUNGOUS.  Two huge buildings.  Huge buildings that are not visitor friendly. But the security guard talked to us and was really nice J. 

Daytona Beach, FL Trader Joe's Distribution Center

It is ultra super duper TOP secret!!

We FOUND the distribution center (now if only we could get a tour...)

• People you meet online are fun.  I have never really talked with strangers online before.  I never dated online.  I only accept Facebook friend requests from people I know in “real life”.  So this blog was really my first experience of connecting with virtual strangers, and I loved it!  

We got to meet Ttrockwood in person, but I feel like I know many more of you "virtually", too!   

• I am not the only person who decided to do one thing every single day of 2015 (see yesterday’s blog for info on a Washington Post article).

• Many cities who do not have Trader Joe’s stores have ONLINE PETITIONS trying to convince corporate to build one in their area.  Again, another factoid I had no idea about until getting involved here.

• I have secretly done two other things every single day of 2014 AND 2015, but I haven’t completed the 2014 ones because I HATE ENDINGS (see yesterday’s blog…) and I haven’t completed the 2015 one because ALL MY TIME HAS BEEN SPENT ON THIS TRADER JOE’S PROJECT!  However, now that I am finishing up here I hope to finish those other 2 projects, too! 

• And finally, a project of this scope takes way more time, energy, and focus than I ever dreamed it would.  Seriously waaaay more. 

So now you know some of the things I learned, now let’s get to the second to the last review of the year!

Snap!  Look what we found at the Jacksonville Beach, FL store - CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY TAMALES!

Chocolate and Raspberry Tamales.  This is a rather kinky product that someone mentioned we should try, so we squeezed it in before the year finished.  Our friend Kathy is visiting us and after we picked her up at the Orlando airport we popped into the Winterpark, FL store.  It was fun to watch her reactions – Trader Joes’s is new to her J.  After we came back to the Cottage of Cheese (the Florida house) last night we were having sooooo much fun talking, laughing, and eating that I FORGOT to make and serve the chocolate raspberry tamales like I had planned!  So that could mean only one thing:  CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY TAMALES FOR BREAKFAST TODAY!  Hey, a reviewer has gotta do what a reviewer has gotta do!!  David and I have been known to dine on cupcakes or cake for breakfast, but Kathy is not that sort of girl, so the concept was a bit “off” to her.  J  She agreed to take a bite and be a guest reviewer though!  So here is how it went down:

Here it is before I unwrapped it - pretty!

David:  “As a dessert, which is how this is intended, I could see this if it was covered in a nice kind of custard-y sauce to kind of mellow it out.  But just eating it on its own – the first thing that strikes you is, wow, this is unpleasant…  And then you try and figure out, is that because of the RASPBERRY-ness or the CHOCOLATE-ness…  And then you hang in there…  You stay with it…  You chew it…  And eventually you go, you know, the raspberry-ness is raspberry!  You can’t blame a snake for being a snake!  It is a good raspberry.  The raspberry is OK.  I think it is the chocolate that I find not so good…  And it is very rich, not rich…  Really deeeeep, dark, chocolate.  And it is so….  It is kinda like puttin’ a spoon into a Hershey’s Cacao box and stuffin’ it in your mouth.  It is kinda too much without the…  It makes me feel like there might be some CAROB goin’ on.  You know that thing that is trying too hard, saying, “Maybe I’m chocolate”.  But it could be that it is just such INTENSE chocolate.  That might be it – it is just really INTENSE and I guess I wasn’t ready for it.  But I have to say that the 2^nd and 3^rd bites, when it was less warm and less gelatinous, nicer.  Would I buy this again?  Probably not.  Would I eat this again if this were in front of me??  Probably so (editor’s note – that is good to hear, because we all shared ONE and there are THREE more to eat in the freezer…).  Overall I would give this a 3.”

David eating his first bite of tamale - he was not so impressed in the beginning....

Kathy:  “I had the same reaction as David to the raspberries.  That was the first thing that I was aware of was the RASPBERRIES, and I was like, yeah, I don’t think so…  They were really tart.  And then I got to where I kind of, yeah, that’s good!  It is good that there are raspberries in there and they are actual raspberries.  You can taste them!  So that is probably a good thing.  But it was kind of, a little bit intense right off the bat. 

For me, the CHOCOLATEYNESS is great.  But it is something about the texture…  Like, chocolate raspberry CAKE – WONDERFUL.  Chocolate raspberry BRULEE – WONDERFUL.  But this – I don’t know what it was trying to be…  Chocolate and raspberry I don’t think were INTENDED to be in a tamale…  So that is where – chocolate is GOOD.  Raspberry is GOOD.  But the VENUE, the VEHICLE in which they were featured – NOT SO GOOD.  Something about the texture…  It should either be a CAKE or something FUDGY.  This was some weird in-between that didn’t really make sense for my mouth.  I give this a 2.5.”

Kathy has chosen to remain anonymous, this mermaid puppet I got for Christmas is standing in for her.  

Me:  we do not eat tamales of any kind very often, and I liked that this came wrapped up (tamale style).  To me it felt like a little package, a GIFT as it were!  It was fun to cook (I steamed it) and unwrap it.  And putting chocolate in a tamale to me is innovative and creative.  I like that it is something NEW.  (Kathy had to interrupt me here and exclaim, “Yeah!!!  But that’s like, “Nobody has ever done a hamburger where the BUN is 2 pieces of fried chicken, so let’s do THAT!!!”.  And this same conversation we are having is what they had before deciding to do THAT and it was not a good idea.  It’s like – TAMALES are good, CHOCOLATE is good, RASPBERRIES are good.  That does NOT mean you need to put them all together!!!!”.)  Apparently Kathy is not on board with the inventiveness factor here J.

Here it is all unwrapped

Kathy is counting calories using an app called Calorie King ($4.99 to download) and her take on it is that this tamale is “not worthy of the calories”.  One thing I do agree with Kathy on is that the texture is WEIRD.  But it is a tamale- like texture, it is just weird to have it with a chocolate taste.  But they nailed getting the appropriate texture for the tamale venue, but the question is “how appropriate is that texture for the chocolate taste”.

The molten chocolate when it is heated I liked.  I think this would be nice with a custard drizzled on top, whipped cream, or even a Greek yogurt…  Kathy suggests béchamel sauce or crème fraiche but I had to point out that her calorie app may have literally exploded at the addition of those decadent ingredients.  I personally think all of those ideas would help this product but I would not recommend putting a chocolate or fudge sauce on it, it is chocolatey enough without that.

Works out to a buck a tamale - cheap dessert

Unwrapping this tamale was like a present on a plate.  But it was kind of like the present your Aunt from Iowa gives you and she doesn’t know you very well.  It was nice to have a GIFT, but maybe a piece of cheesecake would have been even better.  As Kathy says, “It was cool to have this once.”  Because of my failing to serve this as a DESSERT and having to instead make it for a BREAKFAST, I am going to bump up the average score by half a point because I feel this would have been better received if not served in the morning.  I give these tamales a 3.

I just want to make sure you knew we didn't ONLY eat chocolate for breakfast!
We picked this papaya from the tree and ATE IT - yummy!

Price – $3.99

Rating (average of 3 raters, with half a point added for my timing faux pas) - 3

Please check out my new project starting in 2016:  KINDNESS ACTIVIST.  You can find it here:

Blog:  KindnessActivist.blogspot.com

Facebook:  Kindness Activist

Twitter:  @kindactivist

Email:  kindnessactivist@gmail.com

See you on the KIND SIDE!

Day 363 - European Cookie Collection and ANNOUNCEMENT OF NEW PROJECT!

I HATE ENDINGS.

I hate them!!

Sure, I know most people dislike “goodbyes” and don’t like it when they eat the last bite of their ice cream sundae.  But I seriously have an aversion to endings.  Examples:

·         It is December 28^th.  David and I have not opened a single Christmas gift from one another yet.  Long into the New Year some of these gifts will remain in their pristine wrapping and eventually join the big pile of other “unopened gifts” at the Big Yellow House.

This photo is NOT taken before Christmas...  This is 3 days AFTER Christmas.

•  Remember when everyone was raving about the ending of “Breaking Bad”?  Yeah – we have    not watched the conclusion yet.  In fact, just this month we started in on the last season.  We have a couple left.  We will stretch them out…  (Same held true for another show we loved, “House”.  Everyone else knew what happened to Gregory House at the end about two years before we did.  Quite literally.)

·         I get sad at the beginning of every autumn.  I really like autumn, mind you, but I am sad because of the ending of summer…

This is the view out our kitchen window every fall - our neighbor's tree is gorgeous, yet still the season makes me sad.  Summer ENDS...

I am sure there are many more examples in my life of things that I put off ENDING.

To be clear, ending things is not the same as FINISHING things.  Finishing allows you to check the item off your “to do” list.  Finishing can be satisfying.  ENDING is different – ending is somehow much more final than a simple finish.  Ending means that thing/event/season is over.  Ending brings with it a sense of finality and often a tinge of sadness.

And so this project is nearly ending.

It is day 363 of 365.  To be honest, when I had this crazy idea and began it, I didn’t really know if I could do it.  You may not realize it, but committing to do something every single day is huge, at least for me it is!  Sure, you do things like brush your teeth every day, and most of us cook every day.   But to me those are not commitments, those are just LIFE.  This blog, these reviews, these were a commitment.  And for a commitment phobic such as myself, a huge commitment!

Have I told you that we lived together for 12 years before getting married?  Yeah, we BOTH dislike commitments...

As you may have noticed if you looked back to the start of this project, at the beginning my entries were more perfunctory – shop, photograph the product, eat it, and review it.  But as the year went on and I got more and more “into” the blog, I started to sort of share my life with you all.  That was a new experience for me, and sometimes it was a bit scary to be vulnerable, but most of the time I really loved sharing photos of details with you of “real life” stuff, not just Trader Joe’s things. 

So today is not the very last day of the project.  But I feel like I have to sort of brace myself, get myself ready, for the end, which is why I am taking time to write this today. 

Here’s the deal:  I feel like I enjoyed this project because for the first time in my life really, I had a clear beginning, middle, and end to something.  I knew exactly how many days were going to be committed to this.  Trust me, there were times when I thought I was in way over my head, but knowing the finish date kept a light at the end of the tunnel. 

And now as the days have wound down I have been getting sad, but at the same time a little piece of me is happy.  And thrilled.  Thrilled that in just a couple of days I will be able to say “I DID IT!!”.  When I started this I had no idea that “365” things were a trend.  Did you know that it is sort of “hip” now to do something every day??  I didn’t, until my sister-in-law told me about an article in the Washington Post last month where they interviewed other “every day of 2015” people.  One guy is eating a taco every day (I am glad I am not him).  One woman is making a different tiny chair every day!!  The article was interesting for me – I could relate to a lot of what the other people were saying.  (You can read it here )  

Thank you to everyone who has been commenting, “DON’T STOP BLOGGING!” and “You know you are not gonna stop, you are in too deep now…”.  Your comments have made me smile and also made me proud. 

I must stop.  I can’t write everyday anymore.  Each entry takes me on average 45 – 50 minutes to compose and upload, and that is after already spending time shopping, cooking, tasting, and photographing stuff.  I have LOVED this project, it has been such a motivation for me this year, but it has also taken a lot of my time and more importantly, my creative energy.  I promise that I will write PERIODIC reviews and post them here – like, when we run into something at Trader Joe’s that we adore (or makes us gag J ).  But I can’t commit to doing it every day.

BUT (as PeeWee Herman says, “Everyone I know has a big butt…”) – BUT – I am starting a new journey. 

In thinking about this whole Trader Joe’s adventure, one thing became clear to me – if I am putting something out there into the world – I want it to have a PURPOSE.  Sure, this blog has the purpose of informing people about stuff at TJ’s, and perhaps a “sub-purpose” (is that a word?) to entertain and make people laugh.  And maybe this is the stuff that is supposed to get talked over with a therapist J but I think I am looking for a higher purpose at this point.

So I have decided to be a KINDNESS ACTIVIST. 

Do you want to be a kindness activist, too?

“A HUH???” you might be thinking.  A KINDNESS ACTIVIST.  I am going to write about kindness.  Not “random acts of kindness”, but intentional, purposeful kindness.  And not hoity toity kindness on the religious scale, but everyday kindness that we all give and witness.

I just think I would like to spread a little kindness.  I recently realized that kindness is a heck of a lot like peanut butter, it needs to be SPREAD.  So I hope to encourage people to SPREAD the hell out of it!!

Oh it’s still gonna be irreverent.  It’s still gonna be silly.  And it’s still gonna involve the adventures of Susan and David.  But I hope it will involve the adventures of others, too. 

Wanna join?  I hope you will.  I have loved “getting to know” you through your comments this year.  I am in the process of setting up the Kindness Activist stuff (guys – there are going to be BUTTONS – I mean that is some serious stuff, eh – real-life-pin-to-your-shirt-or-backpack BUTTONS!!).  I am not committing to writing every day, but I am committing to being an activist.  And committing to encouraging others to be activists alongside me.

Let’s do it!!!!  Here are the details:

•  Blog:  KindnessActivist.blogspot.com (link here )
• Facebook:  Kindness Activist
• Twitter:  @kindactivist
• Email:  kindnessactivist@gmail.com

(I am trying to get tech savvy here – wish me luck!)

Please comment here or send me an email at the address above to nominate someone you know as a kindness activist.  And I hope it is YOU – you can totally share with me things YOU did out of kindness!  I would love to write about them!!  (And you know you want a kindness activist button...)

Enough kindness for now, let’s get to today’s REVIEW!  

European Cookie Collection – this is a special red tin of 12 varieties of cookies from Belgium.  It is a holiday/seasonal item, meaning TJ’s only carries it for a short time, and when they are gone, they are gone (until next year during the holiday season, when hopefully they will have them again!). 

This was a flyer item AND a seasonal item - double special :)

The packaging says a serving size is 3 cookies, but if you like them do not fret – there are “around 34” servings in the big a** tin!! 

We decided to buy these cookies when a Trader Joe’s employee at the Bailey’s Crossroads, VA store pointed them out to us.  He told us that he remember another customer who bought a DOZEN TINS of them at once!  I asked if they were for gifts, but nope, he loved them so much that he was going to just store them and eat them over the year!!  (Note:  I see that our tin says it is best eaten before August 2016 so that would give us 8.5 months to eat these!  Trust me, they won’t last that long.)

Aren't they PRETTY?  One variety up in the corner spot was broken, but the rest are in perfect shape

There are 12 different cookies included here.  I have eaten TWO and I really liked them!  One was the small round one with coconut on top and it was deeelicious!  They taste like “European cookies”, but in the good sense of the word.  I say that because we have eaten some European desserts that are “all about the pretty” at the expense of the TASTE.  These cookies are just as tasty as they are lovely!

A downside for us tonight is that we are eating them in FLORIDA where it has been around 80 degrees.  We have the air conditioner set to 79 degrees, so it is not, how shall I say, cool in here.  That means the chocolate is a bit melty.  But we cannot blame the cookies for that at all!  That’s all on us. I give them a 4.75.

 A cookie display on one of my favorite plates!

David says, “I agree, these are good.  The ones that are covered with chocolate, the chocolate is kind of more overpowering than the cookie that is inside.  Not that that is BAD, but for the Philistine that I am I sometimes wonder, “What is this cookie??  Is it a sugar cookie?  Is it a shortbread cookie that I am eating on the inside??”.  But some of them have hints of something or other in them and each of them is distinct I guess.  So that’s good!

And the cookies without chocolate on them are also nice.  They are all really cruuunchy.  Not in a hard way, but in a crackly, kind of CRUNCHY way which is good.  They all feel like they’ve got a lot of BUTTER in them, which is also good.  And not underdone at all – they are perfectly done.  It’s a nice collection.  I give it a 4.5.”

We were psyched to get these

Editor’s note:  I asked David if he would buy these again next year if Trader Joe’s has them, and he said he would get them again if he was certain that he would have people to share them with.   He says, “Cuz if no one else is eatin’ ‘em, I’m EATIN’ this whole collection!!”.  Well we are going to share these, because tonight we are bringing some to a luau at the neighbor’s house!  Yes siree, nothing says “LUAU” more than European cookies covered in melting chocolate!

Price – $9.99

Rating – 4.75