Trader Joe's: A grocery store. A culture. A DESTINATION. I don't work for TJ's, I am simply a customer who loves the store, the products, & the experience.
This blog was a year-long project. In 2015 I reviewed 1 TJ's product EVERY SINGLE DAY. I visited lots of TJ's stores around the country, and when the year ended I couldn't stop. I still post often (though not daily) & I welcome your comments on the products & reviews.
Showing posts with label Indy Fringe Festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indy Fringe Festival. Show all posts
This was a HEALTHY PURCHASE during our Indy Fringe
craziness. We grabbed on one of our
trips to the lovely Indy Trader Joe’s, then ended up tossing it in a bag one
afternoon as we ran out to see shows. We
ate it while sitting outside between shows – actually, I ate it then… David was handing out postcards of his show
(an act which we call “carding”) to people in line for other shows, trying to
convince them that HIS was the show they should not miss. Not to worry, I saved him some salad to eat
after his carding!
David in a shot from the delicate and dangerous TIGHT ROPE scene! :)
On first bite I was afraid that the dressing was too
sweet, but it wasn’t. The couscous also
looked, how shall I say, too plentiful, but I was wrong on that count,
too! The couscous (of the Israeli variety)
was lovely! It was plump and cold and a
very nice contrast to the other ingredients.
The lettuce was nice and crunchy and it was good to eat on a hot summer
day. The toasted pecans were also a nice
addition.
Here is the salad in our cart - see the Israeli Cousous? Yum.
David said, “It is lovely. The crisp, crunchy lettuce is offset by the smooth
but meaty body of the chicken and couscous.
And it is all united by the smooth but flavorful salad dressing, which
is sweet but not too sweet.”
This is a very fair price for a crisp, fresh, healthy salad that you don't have to make yourself
We both recommend this as one of the grab and go lunch
choices at Trader Joe’s.
Oh boy, this is a fun review!!! This is the first review that comes with a
VIDEO and an original SONG about the product (ok, it is about one ingredient in
the product, but it is an awesome song!)!
Let me back up.
We saw this Uncured Bacon Ganache Bar at our local Trader
Joe’s (Clarendon, VA). It sounded
good. A TJ’s employee told us it was
good. And as we were deciding if we
should invest in it or not, another person grabbed one. So all signs seemed to be pointing to GET
IT! So we did.
They had a display of these up by the check out line. Can you say, "Impulse purchase??" anyone?
But we did not eat it right away. We had lots of other chocolate stuff to eat,
it was a big bar, and I think deep down we wondered if it might taste yucky…
So I brought it to Indy with us! I had to be oh so careful with it while
traveling – you don’t want something as fancy as this bar to melt so it had to have
special treatment!
Ganache. Bacon. What could go wrong?
But the bar traveled just fine and last night after midnight,
near the end of a 2 week long theatre festival, I pulled that sucker out at the
beer tent. I offered it to several
performers and one awesome photographer and asked them to help me review
it. Here is what happened:
Jeff the Clown: The texture and the after taste are the best
parts… Overall, this is a NOVELTY
chocolate bar.
Jeff, at the beer tent, looking a bit blurry.
Les the Solo Storyteller,
also a vegetarian who I did not think would try this product because, well,
BACON: Woah! You can TASTE the bacon. There were BURSTS of bacon. This was not
worth giving up my vegetarianism. I am
gonna go RIGHT BACK to being a vegetarian now.
(I offered him another square of the chocolate). Well sure, I will have another square. THEN
I will go right back to being a vegetarian.
This is a NOVELTY chocolate bar.
Les gave up his vegetarian ways for a short time to help test this chocolate bar - what a trooper.
Daniel the Photographer
– There is a DISAPPOINTING lack of bacon in this chocolate bar. This NEEDS MORE bacon. And what the *&$% is “ganache”?? Is it “panache” with a “g”?? It is “panache” gone bad?? The dark chocolate itself is a quality
chocolate.
I ran into Daniel today (after he tested this chocolate bar last night) and he is STILL bitter about the lack of bacon.
David, my partner
and a Solo Performer – WOAH, that is TERRIBLE. I mean, the chocolate is great. The ganoche is lovely. But what the hellll is going on with the
BACON?? The actual chocolate part is
very good though.
It sounded so good when we were at Trader Joe's...
Let’s take a quick break from
REVIEWS here to listen to an original song performed by Jeff the Clown and his
co-conspirator Anna, also a clown.
Sadly, Anna could not taste the chocolate bar because she cannot eat
dairy. L But she still agreed to sing this awesome
song for us. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFxGs22NZlU
Neil, a Hybrid Musician and Actor – Ummm…. Huh… There
was a good bit of bacon at first, but now I am not so sure… It could use MORE bacon. Little bacon depth charges (this insightful line
was applauded by many at the table). There
is not enough BACON and this sort of thing really needs to be a BACON
EXPERIENCE.
Neil seriously considering the taste of this product...
Laura, a Clown
– I would say that the caramel doesn’t know whether or not it is meant to be
SALTY. I don’t think they conched the chocolate
right… (Again, applause from the fellow
performers for her fancy foodie words.) The
texture is a little brittle. But I love
chocolate. I didn’t like the COLOR of
the inside. (Editor’s note – it was very
dark outside, I am not sure anyone could accurately see the color of the inside
J ). This is a sad excuse for chocolate covered
bacon.
Greg, a Hybrid Musician
– I was AWARE of the bacon. There was a
brief moment of smokiness but it didn’t go anywhere. It is kind of like “meh” dark chocolate. I mean, it is fine, but it doesn’t GO
anywhere… Overall it is not there. It’s not REPULSIVE. I mean, it’s a fine thing to eat. But…
Greg and Laura use foodie terms to describe their experience with this chocolate bar
And finally me,
the director of a show, a sign language interpreter and the writer behind this
blog – NOT ENOUGH BACON. The chocolate
is too brittle. It is very messy to
break into pieces to share and eat. It’s
all a bit bitter, too. If the label says
BACON, I want me some BACON. This chocolate
bar is just a tease. It goes in the same category as the Fireworks Chocolate Bar
I reviewed on day 210 of this blog – fun for a novelty or to give people a tiny
chunk, but not a bar I would ever want to just sit down and eat.
Everyone thought this bar deserved around a 3
rating. Well, Greg thought perhaps a
2.75, and I was tempted to go that low, too.
But I think the general consensus was 3, so that is what I will give
it.
This cheese is DECADENT!
It is the sort of cheese you
would expect to find in a little case in some super fancy schmancy wine shop –
only it is AT TRADER JOE’S! And instead
of being a bazillion dollars, it is $9.99 a pound. That means our chunk which was plenty big
(almost half a pound) came in for under $5.
$9.99 per pound
Brie with MUSHROOMS? I'm in.
Remember how I recently explained that we are in the
middle of the Indianapolis Fringe Festival, and that traditionally Fringe
artists eat crap the entire time of the Fringe?
Well we are mixing that up a bit this Fringe, and so we showed up at the
beer tent with this cheese, a Stilton (to be reviewed soon), some crackers
(also deserving of a review forthcoming), and a bottle of wine. Trust me, this cheese was a change of pace
from your “normal Fringe Festival food”.
We shared with a few artists and later asked them to tell
us what they thought of it. Two performers
from the Fourth Wall, a hybrid music group, replied. Hilary said, “I’m terrible at describing food! Greg will be better”. Gee, thanks Hilary!
Greg is playing accordian. Oh - and that is Hilary playing upside-down flute... You can learn more about their group at
But she was right, Greg was good. Here is a foodie and here is what he had to
say about this cheese, “The mushroom Brie had a nice mushroom flavor. Good earthiness without being over powering
like some truffle cheeses (see – I told you he was a foodie! He has other truffle cheese in his head to compare this to!). The cheese itself was somewhat lacking in
character, but its’ luxurious creaminess was an excellent backdrop for the
savory mushrooms.”
Damn. Drop the
mic. He needs to be a food critic, no?
This is a damn fine cheese
I would disagree with him slightly in that I do not think
the cheese lacked in character, but hey, everyone has their own opinion.
I left this out on the counter for the evening to warm
up. It was lovely and spreadable. It would be ah-frickin’-mazing on a fresh
baguette. The mushrooms are sooooo good
in this!
I am glad we discovered this one at the Trader Joe’s in
Indianapolis. We will certainly get it
again – both for us to chow down on and to serve to guests.
If you have read other
beer reviews on this blog, you know that I in no way profess to be a beer
guru. I am not a beer snob. I know almost nothing about beer. But when I travel to a new city and go to a
new Trader Joe’s, I always check and see if they have local beer and/or wine.
Well, when I asked about
local wine at the Trader Joe’s in Indianapolis, not one but TWO employees
basically steered me away from it. They
both were clear to say that the local wine is SWEET, and the particular
varieties that TJ’s carries are the really sweet ones, which apparently are the
ones the locals like. But we are not
locals… So I trusted their “unspoken
advice” to skip the wine and went over to the beer section.
Local beer!!
Unlike our beer experience
in Chicago where they would only sell us a six pack (it was the law – the store
people were totally kind about it but couldn’t break the law, of course), the
guys in Indy were more than happy to sell us however many beers we wanted! So we chose 3 different local beers and one
local cider.
Rail Splitter IPA
This review is about Rail
Splitter IPA. Uncharacteristically for
me, I am drinking it without food and at 6:30 pm. We normally don’t bust out the alcohol until
there is a plate of food in front of us and that usually happens sometime after
9:30 pm. But we are at a Fringe Festival
(see http://indyfringe.org/fringe15/little-business-big-top
and that means schedules are NUTTY and life is turned on it’s head. So, here I am post-show drinking this
IPA! (I directed a show in the festival,
my partner David’s “A Little Business at the Big Top”! It’s great, if I do say so myself, but of
course I am a tad bit biased…).
"A Little Business at the Big Top" - coming soon to a theatre near you! (That is, if you live near a theatre in Indianapolis or Cincinnati...)
Back to the beer.
Yes! This is good!
If you like IPA and you live in the Indiana area you should try this for
sure. We learned from TJ’s employees
that on the TV show “Parks and Rec”, which took place in Pawnee, Indiana, a fictitious
town, they always drank Rail Splitter beer!
As non-Hoosiers* we never noticed that, but I guess the locals really dig
it (as would I if I had a local connection!).
Here is an article I found recapping the awesome (and certainly missed) TV
show” Parks and Rec” - http://www.indianapolismonthly.com/arts-culture/parks-recreation-recap-one-last-ride/
David’s take is that this
is not a “day drankin’” beer but would be good with stilton cheese!”. Note – this is the second time lately in
reviews that David has said “day drankin’”.
I think this is because a place we drive by often has it on their
marquee and it makes us giggle.
Anyway, try this
beer. It is good.
*I do not know what a
Hoosier is… I do not think I should need
to Google this. If people here call
themselves something, I want them to tell me what that something means, ya
know? So far I have asked two people and
they didn’t really know, they said something like, “It means a person from
Indiana…”. Yeah, but WHAT IS A
HOOSIER? Like, why is a person from
Indiana called that?
