Day 270 - Inner Peas

They are reasonably priced,
but do they TASTE reasonable?

Inner Peas
The product I have been scared of

Truth be told, I have looked at this product a lot and always thought the name was fantastic.  It is just the kind of clever, witty name Trader Joe’s products are famous for.  These names usually get my attention.  Unfortunately, I had a bad experience with another fun-named product whose packaging looks eerily similar to Inner Peas, and that experience has haunted me and kept me away from putting Inner Peas in my shopping cart.  My friend Heidi and I got Embrace Your Inner Bean, these crappy bean things, in TJ’s in Overland Park, KS.  As you will see if you read the review, the product got 1 star.  (Read the Embrace Your Inner Bean review here )  We hated the bean crud (well she liked it better than I did) and only liked it to lift up and deliver tzatzaki from the tub to our mouths…  After that experience I vowed to never buy the seemingly “matching set” product to Embrace Your Inner Bean - these Inner Peas.

However, last Saturday night when we were in our local TJ’s and made friends with another shopper, Wendy, she raaaaved about Inner Peas.  She was buying 2 or 3 bags of them and said they are one of her favorites, that they were AMAZING and ADDICTIVE and that she has turned several friends on to them.  Wellllllll, Wendy seemed super fun, and sweet, so I figured “If Wendy likes ‘em, I have to put aside my bias and at least TRY them”.  So I got a bag.

Can you sense my unease???  Check out my POPE SHIRT!  I made it for going to the Pope Parade in DC the same day that I bought this snack.  Some people at the parade asked where I got it - they wanted to buy one like it.  :)

And I tried them.  Are you happy now Wendy, I TRIED THEM!  J

I opened the bag on a night that David was not home because I KNEW he would not be a fan of these.  And when I took one out of the bag, I was frightened…  Yes, they looked like peas.  But they looked like freeze dried peas.  Hard, soul-less, lifeless peas…  I tried one.

Here is a single solitary Inner Pea(s).

Not very pea-y.  More of like a cross between cardboard and Styrofoam.  I WILL say they are a touch better than Embrace Your Inner Bean, but that ain’t really sayin’ much.  I cannot imagine sitting down and just munching on these suckers right out of the bag.  And I also cannot imagine what I would PAIR them with to improve upon the taste.  (And honestly, should I have to PAIR something to “improve the taste”??  Shouldn’t it just be good when I take it out of the bag?)

I think these are a pretty hot seller at Trader Joe’s, so obviously other people like them.  It may be more of a texture issue than a taste issue with me on this one.   I only ate like five of these things (the bag says the serving size is a whopping 22!) and I have the rest of the bag to go.  I cannot imagine eating those really, so I think I will force David to try one.  Perhaps I will blindfold him and give him one!  YES – a plot has been hatched.  I will write the rest of this review after I do a “blind taste test” with him!

BLIND TASTE TEST ABOUT TO BEGIN!!

David:  (blindfolded, eating one Inner Pea) “It’s like a marriage of… Styrofoam and peas…  Yes.  It tastes a little bit of peas.  (Crunch, crunch, crunch)

Tasting Inner Pea(s) number one...

Susan:  “Do you want another one?”

David:  “Yea, it’s not really all that bad.  (Crunched 2 more)  They have enough salt and enough flavor to be tasty and more-ish, it is just that “peas” is not really a flavor that I tend to crave as much as CHEESE, even though they share a vowel sound.  But it is a nice change of pace in the Cheeto zone.  I would give this a 3.5.”

He wanted MORE!

HEY Mikey he LIKED 'em!!!

WELL THERE YOU HAVE IT FOLKS, GUESS I KNOW WHAT I AM GONNA DO WITH THE REST OF THIS BAG!  FEED THEM TO DAVID!

Price – $1.49

Rating – (average of my 2 and David’s 3.5) – 2.75

Day 263 - Milk Chocolate Truffle Bar

What a bizarre shopping experience tonight!  Just as we were pulling into our parking spot in the TJ’s Bailey’s Crossroads parking lot I got a text from our sister-in-law Joan saying, “We are at Trader Joe’s, what should we get?”.  I texted back asking “WHICH TJ’S ARE YOU AT??  We are going into one right now!”.  But before she could read the text and reply I had found her down an aisle of the same store we were going to!  Yippee – shopping buddies!  Joan doesn’t like to grocery shop.  Greg (her husband, my brother-in-law) normally does their shopping.  They were both there tonight.  And David was with me.  It was a little family reunion by the meat section of Trader Joe’s!

Joan and Greg attended our Trader Joe’s Dinner Party back in April, where every item served, from appetizers to wine to bubbly water to dessert, was from Trader Joe’s.  It was a fun evening!  And now that we were shopping with them tonight we realize that we need to have ANOTHER Trader Joe’s dinner party!  Who’s in???

This is the table full of ingredients before the Trader JOe's dinner Party in April

Anyway, I walked around the store with Joan pointing out stuff that we like (and a few things I recommended she avoid…) while David and Greg chatted.  The items in Joan’s cart piled up pretty quickly!  J  I am glad she took our advice and is trying the bacon we love (reviewed on day 242 http://traderjoes365.blogspot.com/2015/08/day-242-uncured-black-forest-bacon.html ).  Actually, while we were raving about the bacon to Greg and Joan a woman was listening and put some in her cart, too!  I hope everyone likes it as much as we do.

When they checked out with their food they must have gotten to talking to the nice cashier (Courtney) and SOMEHOW gotten hooked up with a free chocolate bar!  Joan came rushing back to find us, saying we could all taste test a candy bar!  Well you didn’t have to ask us twice – we followed her to the front.

David loves chocolate

David picked out a bar we had not tried before – an organic Milk Chocolate Truffle bar.  The turquoise packaging is really pretty, don’t you think?  They said we could take it home to do the taste test, but we were having so much fun, plus we had met a really sweet, cool lady (Wendy) in the frozen food aisle and we wanted to share it with her, so we busted it open right in the store!  Here is what we thought:

Pretty packaging

Wendy:  (She ate hers as the cashier was ringing up her purchases) – “It is smooth and very chocolate-y.  I give it a 3. See you here at the same store next Saturday night so we can have fun shopping again, right?”

 (Wendy showed me the chocolate bars in a box that are her particular favorite, and also recommended we try Inner Peas (which I have been scared to try since I gagged on a product I think is similar, Embrace Your Inner Bean, on day 62…  Review here:  http://traderjoes365.blogspot.com/2015/03/day-62-embrace-your-inner-bean.html ).  But hey, if our new friend Wendy recommends Inner Peas, I am gonna try Inner Peas!

Here we are in the store before trying the chocolate bar (Wendy is not pictured - cuz she TOOK the picture!)

Greg:  Ah – it has a dark chocolate truffle layer inside!  That is what makes it truffle - a ribbon in the middle.  It has a slight bitterness.  It is not my favorite chocolate.  I gave it a 2.

Joan:  I give it a 2.

David:  it is pleasant.  It has a nice filling.  It is sweet, not as creamy as some, but chocolate-y.  The squares are nice and attractive.  It has a good, firm crispness in the bite.  I give it a 4.5

Susan:  It is kind of hard…  I like the little “Trader Joe’s” written on the squares.  It is good, but I don’t want to marry it or anything.  I would eat it again though.  I would give it a 3.25.

Here is the shelf David chose from

So to get the final rating here I will average all of our scores.  And to reiterate – this bar was eaten, reviewed, and scored while still standing in Trader Joe’s.  J  Ahhh what a fun Saturday night.

Price – $1.99

Rating (average of 5 tasters) – 3

Day 62 - Embrace Your Inner Bean

My friend Heidi got these "Embrace Your Inner Bean" snacks on a shopping trip we recently went on together to the Overland Park, KS Trader Joe’s.  We were hungry, so when we jumped in the car we opened them and dug in.

No bueno.

They LOOK cute, don't they?  

The TEXTURE is the biggest problem with this little snack stick.  It is too Styrofoam-y.  They feel like little sticks of Styrofoam dipped in some spices.  But not MANY spices, because they really don’t taste much.  They just feel weird on your tongue.

What we figured out they ARE good for is to serve as little (quasi) edible chopsticks to dip into tzatziki and lift it to your mouth!!  We just kept piling on the tzatziki and shoveling it in with these “Delightfully Crunchy Baked Black Bean Snacks” (the package’s words, not mine).  The package says a serving size is “about 22” little black bean snacks – I can’t imagine eating that much Styrofoam. 

22 pieces of these would be a LOT to ingest...  They are not big, but they are a weird texture...

Overall impression – skip the black bean snacks and just get the tzatziki.  J

Price - $1.49

Rating – 1