Day 240 - Marinated Olive Duo with Lemon and Herbs

I have some fun news to share!!!

This project (reviewing one Trader Joe’s product per day every single day of 2015) began (obviously) on January 1, 2015.  Since that date, we have shopped in Trader Joe’s stores in 10 states and one district – in a total of 16 cities.  I have sent each and every one of the stores (except Dublin, Ohio, I have not written them yet but I will soon!!) a letter and a few of the business cards for this blog.  I also sent a letter to corporate.  Only the corporate office had written me back.  Of course, I was thrilled about the letter from corporate (I wrote about it and showed the letter on day 121).

Well guess what?  Another store wrote back!  Our closest Trader Joe’s is in Clarendon, VA and Rebekah from that store wrote me!  Look, she loves the blog!  J

   

WOW!  The Clarendon, VA TJ's wrote me back! 

She wrote on a Trader Joe’s greeting card – how appropriate (reviewed on day 10 http://traderjoes365.blogspot.com/2015/01/day-10-greeting-cards.html  ).  She mentions that her store has some beers not available at Bailey’s (which is our usual go-to store, even though Clarendon is closer…  We were customers at Bailey’s before they built the Clarendon store, plus parking is usually easier at Bailey’s.  But we really like the Clarendon store, too!)  We will go in and introduce ourselves and pick up some of the beer soon.

And guess what else?  REBEKAH INCLUDED A TJ’S GIFT CARD!  Wow!  So cool.  I am not sure how much it is worth because I have not taken it into a store yet.  But I shall. 

So that was very exciting for me.  The card came while I was out of town (at a stressful event) and my partner David opened it for me and read it to me over the phone.  What a treat!  Thanks Rebekah.

ALSO very exciting is this big news:  we finally found GREAT OLIVES at Trader Joe’s!  I was beginning to think it could not be done.  Oh but it can (and was) done.  With much success!

New product - Marinated Olive Duo...  Ahhh, music to my ears.

Here are the olives we tried from TJ’s before finding these gems:

Picholine Olives (day 32) 

http://traderjoes365.blogspot.com/2015/02/day-32-picholine-olives.html

Jumbo Pitted Greek Kalamata Olives (day 192)

http://traderjoes365.blogspot.com/2015/07/day-192-greek-kalamata-olives-jumbo.html

Lucques Olives (day 76) 

http://traderjoes365.blogspot.com/2015/03/day-76-lucques-olives.html

The only olives we tried before and were happy with (not thrilled with, but happy enough) were the Jumbo Pitted Greek Kalamatas. 

But THESE NEW OLIVES beat those hands down.  These are on par with the olives we buy at the “olive bar” at another store!  These olives are the bomb!!!

Having been bitten before, I was nervous to invest in more Trader Joe’s olives.  But the $1.79 we spent on these puppies was money WELL SPENT, trust me.  Here is what we thought of them:

Marinated Olive Duo with Lemon and Herbs- Kalamata and Chalkidika (we hadn’t heard of this one) Olives from Greece

Me:  The packaging is a fail for me.  You have to cut open the vacuum sealed plastic bag and have a Tupperware-like container ready to decant the olives into.  I wish they came in some sort of re-sealable packaging.  And the current packaging is not even recyclable – boo. 

David decanting from the odd packing into fake Tupperware

But the taste of the olives is a-frickin’-mazing.  The green ones are for sure the best ones I have ever had from Trader Joe’s.  The purple/black ones are also very, very good.  They have a lemony and herb flavor.  Delicious!  They have pits, so be careful of your teeth when you bite into them, but I personally prefer olives with pits. 

David tries out a green one

The price, $1.79, is also super reasonable.  These olives are a WIN!  I just wish the packaging was better.  If it was, they would get a perfect 5 star rating from me.

David:  the green olives are meaty and delightful. The black ones are soft but flavorful.  In both cases they are so tasty that you want to keep sucking on the pit (Susan adds – that’s what she said…). 

This is the package you are looking for - go get some!

I would not ding them for the packaging as it is perhaps energy efficient and good for mother earth.  Perhaps the point is that you need to not put these in a Tupperware container, but instead put them in a BOWL and eat them all that night with some wine.  (Susan adds here – that would be like the time David ate a whole bag of Cheetos and vomited…  I think eating the whole package of these olives would be tooooo much in one night.)  David counters that he meant having FRIENDS over to share the olives and wine.   These are the perfect olives to set out in a bowl and eat before dinner while sipping wine. 

Price – $1.79

Rating – 4.75

Day 192 - Greek Kalamata Olives (Jumbo Pitted)

As clearly explained earlier in this blog, WE LOVE OLIVES.  Love them in an unnatural, unhealthy way perhaps.  Love them so much so that we have several special dishes to display olives at parties, even though we rarely have parties…  Olives.  Ahhhhh olives…  We eat them on their own – naked little olives devoured piece by piece.  We eat them over pasta – ahhhh pasta with olives.  We eat them in salads.

The point is – WE LIKE OLIVES, ok?

And, if you have read the previous Trader Joe’s olive reviews here (days 32 and 76), we have not found an olive we are happy with at TJ’s yet.  But did we give up??  No we did not.  We got BACK ON THE HORSE and invested in yet another jar of TJ’s olives – this time Greek Jumbo Pitted Kalamatas.

This is the jar - attempt number 3 to find a palatable Trader Joe's olive....

We had them in a salad.  Four olives for me, four for David.  It was a delicate little salad – mixed greens, tiny baby carrots, the kalamatas, balsamic vinegar, EVOO, and freshly ground salt.  Seems like a fair way to judge this olive, no?

Here are the olives presented in a salad.

And the verdict is in.

This is the best Trader Joe’s olive we have had.  Not the best OLIVE we have had, mind you, but the best one from TJ’s.  Although we both said something like, “It is a KALAMATA, how badly can it be screwed up???”, we had to give it a thumbs up.

First impressions – too mushy.  But then again, it is PITTED.  We normally eat olives with PITS.  I feel like if TJ’s just left these pits in, this would be a better olive.  I know, I know, it is probably some liability thing and a lawyer in California told them it is too dangerous to have pits – someone might break a tooth or choke.  I say ADD A DISCLAIMER TO THE PACKAGE, leaves those pits in, and serve up better olives!

But despite the mush factor, the taste is pretty good.  It is meaty, it is salty, it is kalamata.

So overall – will this be our olive of choice???  No. But is it worth keeping a jar in the fridge in case we run out of olives from the olive bar (of another grocery store)??  YES.

Price- I believe these were $2.99

Rating - 4

Day 32 - Picholine Olives

We do not normally buy olives at Trader Joe’s because we REALLLLY like olives.  I mean, we seriously tried to “smuggle” olives over the border with us one time and Customs guys took them L.  So we like to buy them in bulk at grocery stores and get a variety – kalamata, oil cured Moroccan, tasty, tasty, tasty!!  And sadly, Trader Joe’s does not have an “olive bar” to let you scoop up your own gems.  (Note to management if any of you read this:  GET AN OLIVE BAR!)

But my partner noticed this new item, Picholine Olives, on an end cap of the store and put them in the cart.  He was intrigued by the jar which proclaimed that these particular olives were oh-so-rare and fancy.  It even says, and I quote, “These are special little olives”. 

Picholine Olive jar

My take:  they aren’t bad, but they aren’t fabulous.  They are smooth and buttery, but do not have a lot of TASTE.  And if you are gonna eat an olive, you want TASTE!  They would get lost in a salad (IMHO) because they are so bland.  So we have been eating them just alone – nibbling on them out of the jar.

Nibbling in the kitchen

If I decide, we won’t get these again.  But if David tosses them in the cart, I won’t complain (NOTE – I JUST ASKED DAVID FOR HIS RATING AS I WAS WRITING THIS AND HE SAYS “4”…).  To me, they are just “meh”.

NOTE - THEY DO HAVE PITS, which is how we like them, but will be weird to you if you normally buy olives without pits.  :)

Price - $1.99

Rating – 2.5