Day 350 - Wine Country Chicken Salad with Cranberries and Pecans

A few days ago a review reader commented and said that this WINE COUNTRY CHICKEN SALAD was one of her very favorite products at Trader Joe’s and said that I needed to review it.  So off we went to the Alexandria, Virginia Trader Joe's to pick some up!  (Note:  I am not always that fast at picking up on product suggestions, but chicken salad sounded so good when it was mentioned…)

You suggest it, I go buy it, eat it, and review it!  Yes m'aam/sir!  

Before I write the review, I must share a quote my dad likes to say.  None of us really understand why he says it or even what it really means, but for some reason it is a traditional quote of his.  Here goes (cover your ears/eyes if you are easily offended):  “You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit.”

Yup.  That’s my dad.

My dad and I when I recently visited him in Omaha.

As for as this chicken salad from TJ’s goes, it turns out it was a great reader recommendation!  We both liked it.  Ingredients listed include:  chicken, mayonnaise, dried cranberries, pecans, yogurt, pineapple juice, honey, celery, and more.  When I looked at the salad I thought the cranberries were RAISINS (before reading the ingredients). 

Nice little plastic tub of yummy.

David says, “This is good.  This is a nice salad.  It has large chunks of white meat chicken which are nicely balanced with the cranberries and pecans.  There is enough celery to give it crunch.  There are little black bits in it, too, maybe poppy seeds?  And it is all tied together with a nice, loose liquid-y dressing of some kind.  If it were me I would have gone with a more mayonnaise-y type thing.  But this is definitely nice.  It is somewhat sweet.  I would give it a 4.25.”

As for me, I typically like my chicken salad “bland” – i.e. without raisins, grapes, and other “fancy crap” in it.  Normally I say just give me chicken, mayo (with no foo foo stuff in it) and let me have at it.  Someone in my childhood used to make “foo foo” chicken salad and I never really liked it and the look of this one brought back memories of that yucky chicken salad from my childhood (chicken salad flashbacks!!).  So this product could have been a big fail for me, but…  It was not!

Deeeelicious!

I first had it on a toasted mini TJ’s bagel topped with this chicken salad and avocado.  It was DELICIOUS!  Very good!  It totally hit the spot.  It was not TOO anything – not too sweet, not too mayonnaise-y, not too runny…  It is really a great chicken salad!

It was messy, but I can’t fault it for that.  The chicken chunks are big but not overpoweringly so – they are manageable.  The only thing I would say could be improved about this product is the LID:  it was difficult to get off. 

Not cheap, but really good.

We later had the remaining chicken salad in a lettuce salad (and ate some by the forkful right out of the plastic tub).  Anyway we served it, it tasted really yummy. 

I would give this a 4.75.   

Price - $4.99

Rating (average of 2 raters) - 4.5

Day 348 - Gnocchi al Gorgonzola

Guys, we visited ANOTHER TRADER JOE’S!  This one was remarkably close to home – when I check Google maps it is only 7.7 miles away, but we had never been there.  How embarrassing… 

We went to the ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA Trader Joe’s.  We had gone to The Little Theatre of Alexandria to see their production of “A Christmas Carol” (note:  we had seen another production of the same show the night before at Ford’s Theatre, and a production of “The Nutcracker” the night before THAT!  Christmas, Christmas time is here!!).  After the show we really wanted a Mega Crunchy Salad with a Bite (very recently reviewed here - http://traderjoes365.blogspot.com/2015/12/day-342-mega-crunchy-salad-with-bite.html ) so we stopped into TJ’s.  Sadly, they were out of that salad L.  But it was a fun chance to check out our 23^rd Trader Joe’s for the year. 

Look - another Trader Joe's visited!  #23 for the year.  (And look - I got new boots!)

The Alexandria store was nice.  We visited on a Sunday evening and it was very quiet and calm.  The main aisle of the store near the registers is really wide and uncluttered, which was cool.  We met a great employee in the wine section named David (he would have to be nice with a name like David, right??).  He helped us pick out a bubbly wine for New Year’s (we are heading to Florida where the nearest TJ’s is 90 minutes away so we were THINKING AHEAD!).   He walked us through the difference between actual champagne (which is pricey, even at TJ’s) and bubbly wine.  I will let you decide which of those we chose (look, you know we live on a budget, so spoiler alert, we are drinking BUBBLY WINE for New Year’s J ). 

He also talked about wines that get “corked” (sounds sorta nasty, doesn’t it???) and suspected the bad bottle we had of Grand Reserve Meritage that we hated (the worst wine we reviewed - it got only a 1/2 star:  wine that tasted like petrol reviewed here ) had indeed been “corked”.  He was just finishing up doing a tasting that included a Grand Reserve Pinot Noir and, though I was nervous to get back on the Grand Reserve band wagon, we tried it and liked it.  Color us the proud owners of a bottle of that, too.

It says "Amazing as a side!" right on the sign, yet we ignored that.

Now, onto a review.  This is for Gnocchi al Gorgonzola, which we did not purchase at the Alexandria location.  You can either heat this on the stove top or the microwave, but both methods take 7 minutes.  Weird, nuking stuff is normally faster.  The bag has 3 servings.  Some of the ingredients listed include:  Emmental, gorgonzola, hard grating cheese (wonder what variety that is??), and nutmeg. 

David – “These gnocchi are nice, they have a very good taste.  The sauce is nice but this dish needs to have MORE SAUCE.  More sauce, and more “cheese-ness” – more gorgonzola in the cheese tastiness.  For that reason I give it a 3.5.”

Find these in the frozen department.  The GNOCCHI, not David.  Usually you can find David with me.
I just noticed that David is getting photo bombed in this shot.

I agree with part of what David said.  I like the TEXTURE and the TASTE of the gnocchi.  I think, quantity wise, there was enough sauce, I just don’t think it has enough taste.  It needs to be more cheesy. 

This is how it looks when you dump it in your pan - the cheese blobs are sorta gross looking

I think this would be a better side dish than a main dish.  The sign mentioned that and we foolishly ignored the advice.  J  It definitely needs green veggies or something else with it to give it a taste counterpoint.  Without that it is too bland.  We had it with asparagus and shredded Brussels sprouts (reviewed here -  http://traderjoes365.blogspot.com/2015/05/day-123-shaved-brussels-sprouts.html   - I cooked them differently this time and did not do the recipe on the package as I did in that review.  This time I just made them with olive oil and lemon juice and they were much nicer).

See, it looks tastier after it is cooked.

I agree with David’s score of 3.5.  This tastes like a winter dish.  It is heavy.  This would be good to eat if you were out skiing all day and came in for a hot meal.  Or, say, if you were a LUMBERJACK and had been out chopping wood (in your flannel shirt) all day. 

Price – $2.99

Rating – 3.5