Day 284 - Blueberry Kefir

I have a friend who loooooves kefir.  I don’t think she reads this blog, so I doubt she will see this.  J  But she told me about kefir.  Her kids like it a lot, too.  I had never had it, and since this friend also likes KOMBUCHA, to be honest with you I was skeptical to take any sort of food/drink advice from her… 

But then one night we were in Trader Joe’s and met Cecilia, the remarkably knowledgeable, friendly, and professional sample lady I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.  Well Cecilia went down a litany of products that she thought we “just had to try!!” and blueberry kefir was mentioned.  She must’ve seen my nose wrinkle up slightly at the mention of it, so she walked herself right over to the dairy department, grabbed a bottle of it, and cracked it open to share!  Cecilia was going to make a kefir fan out of me if I liked it or not!

Nice container

And she did!  I drank a little paper sample cup of the stuff and liked it!  Which led to BUYING a bottle of it.  Seeeeee how effective the sampling program is???*

Hard decision - strawberry or blueberry???

Anyway, I decided that for THIS product I would do (drum roll….) the FIRST EVER BI-COASTAL SKYPE VIDEO REVIEW!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Les and I pre-Skype review - getting our Kefirs ready!!!

My friend Les Kurkendahl and I only get to see each other in the summer – he is a touring performer and so is David.  So sometimes Les, David, and I all end up in the same city at the same time, and that is fun!  

Here is a cute photo of Les

Les likes Trader Joe’s, so we worked and worked to find a time when he and I were both home (him in L.A. and me in D.C.) to Skype and review blueberry kefir.  Here is how that went:

I must clarify that in the Skype review I incorrectly stated to find this product in the produce department.  That is wrong – it is with dairy.

And I forgot to mention YOP!  “Yop!” was a drink in Paris that we loved.  It came in little bottles and it tasted like liquid yogurt.  Meeeeaning – maybe I HAD DRUNK KEFIR A LONG TIME AGO AND DIDN’T KNOW IT!  I bet Yop! was kefir!  We could never find anything really like it in America but now we have.  J

Hey - it's NEW!

*If you do not know this already, you can sample ANYTHING in Trader Joe’s – well, any pre-cooked thing.  Just ASK!  They will OPEN it for you and share!!  They WANT you to try stuff.  Cuz look what happens when you do – you might buy it!!!  (Note – they are NOT going to open a raw hunk of beef and cook it up for you, so don’t ask.  But in store personalized tastes are what got me hooked on Partially Popped Popcorn!  read review here    And that is totally what got me to buy this blueberry kefir!

Price – $2.99

Rating – 4.5

Day 274 - Peanut Butter and Jelly with Nonfat Greek Yogurt

Look, I thought this product sounded disgusting.  I wasn’t gonna try it.  I like yogurt.  I like peanut butter.  (OK, I dislike jelly…)  But the thought of those flavors TOGETHER sounds inedible to me!

You have to admit this sounds gross...

I don’t want to purposely buy anything to eat and review during this year long blog that I know I will hate.  That’s not fair.  And I only have 365 reviews in total to do, ya know.  So this was one new Trader Joe’s item I was prepared to leave on the shelf.

Until…

Until one of my Facebook friends, Peter Marino said something like THIS WAS HIS NEWEST FAVORITE FOOD EVER.  I had to ask if he was being sarcastic or serious (cuz with him it is hard to tell sometimes).  He said he was being HONEST, that he adores this stuff.

Not a bad price, but is it a BAD TASTE???

Welllllllllllllllllllll……  If LANCE likes it, I wanna try it!  Lance is Peter’s character in his solo show “Late with Lance”.  We saw it this summer at the Orlando Fringe Festival and it was great.  Cracked.  Us.  Up.  You should really check out his site and watch the preview clip here:  Lance Show Preview   So if Lance is in, I am in baby!  Throw some of that crap, errr, yogurt in my cart!

When I opened the container I was really surprised.  It didn’t look at all like I expected.  Because the name is PEANUT BUTTER and JELLY WITH Greek Yogurt I thought it would be actual real live swirls or chunks of peanut butter and jelly in or on top of the yogurt.  Nope.  It is just a mixed up yogurt that smells like peanut butter. 

Does this look appetizing to you?

When I TASTED it I was disgusted.  Bleck-a-rama!  Lance HOW can that be your favorite food???  Yogurt is good, but this stuff….  Ewwwwww.  The flavors do NOT go together.  I disliked it so much that I realized I needed to do the FIRST EVER Trader Joe’s 365 VIDEO REVIEW and record David tasting it the first time.  Honestly, I thought he would despise it and maybe even spit it out all over the table (which I would find hilarious).  So I grabbed the camera and forced him to eat some.  Here is how it went:

WHAT THE HELL?  HE LIKES IT????  David!!!!  You are on LANCE’S side here???

This is one freaky, gross product.  I can only imagine 7 year old boys liking it.  Well, 7 year old boys and Lance and David.

David gave it a 3.75, I give it a 2.5.  It is not for me – so Lance and David have at it! 

Price – .99

Rating – 3 (average of David’s way over the top rating and my very generous rating, If Lance rated it it would probably have a 5….)

Day 246 - Shredded Parmesan

We normally buy a CHUNK of parmesan and shred it ourselves.  But I thought I would try something new this time, thought I would go the “lazy route” and buy some pre-shredded cheese.  After all, I need products to review, right?

12 Oz bag of freshly shredded parmesan

I really like parmesan.  And this was a good tasting one.  It was just a weird SIZE in my opinion.  The shreds were not big enough to munch on as chunks, yet were too big to throw on top of pasta and call it a day… 

  

The bits were just too BIG... Here they are on top of macaroni pasta (recently reviewed) and garden tomatoes

I guess the ideal use for this cheese would be on top of homemade PIZZA.  That way it would melt and, as so many people like to say, size wouldn’t matter.

We did find another use for it – we put it in homemade pesto.  Once a year we celebrate PESTO DAY by harvesting all of the pesto out of our garden, borrowing a food processor, and going crazy making pesto.  We put cheese in some of it and leave some of it “naked”.  So we used this shredded parmesan for that and it seems fine.

After midnight - the end of a very long PESTO DAY!  22 sealed bags of fresh pesto!

 Overall, an okay cheese.  I prefer to cut and shred my own so I can get the size I want, so I don’t think I will be investing in this one again. 

Price – $5.49

Rating – 3.5

Day 245 - Fage Greek Yogurt

Greek yogurt is the bomb. 

Man, I have been reviewing a lot of GREEK items lately, haven’t I?  I never realized how much Greek food we consume – yogurt, olives, that recent bizarre cheese spiral (reviewed on day 212 

http://traderjoes365.blogspot.com/2015/07/day-213-5-cheese-greek-spiral.html ), tzatzaki (reviewed on day 129 http://traderjoes365.blogspot.com/2015/05/day-129-tzatziki.html ), and one of my favorite cheeses FETA (reviewed on day 232 http://traderjoes365.blogspot.com/2015/08/day-232-authentic-greek-feta-in-brine.html ).

  

Fage Greek Yogurt (2%) (but 100% tasty)

But man, if you like yogurt, you really need to try Fage Greek Yogurt.  It tastes more sitting on an outdoor patio having breakfast in Koufonisia than any other Greek yogurt I have had.

Yummy - Fage toped with loads of pomegranate seeds

I like it with pomegranate seeds (reviewed on day http://traderjoes365.blogspot.com/2015/01/day-12-pomegranate-seeds.html but if you are cooler than me you can buy a whole pomegranate and get your own seeds out).  It is also good with peaches or nectargines cut up in it.  And look – here it is with just plain HONEY on it (from a new bottle we just opened that will be reviewed soon!). 

Fage drizzled with honey....

You can also use Greek yogurt in smoothies or recipes.  We buy the one with the most fat we can find (2%) but if you are not into fat you can buy the lower fat one. 

So by this point in the review you must understand that this particular Greek yogurt is really good (you can compare it to my review of Trader Joe’s brand Greek yogurt that came out the very first week of this blog on day 6 - http://traderjoes365.blogspot.com/2015/01/day-6-greek-yogurt.html ).  But here is the kicker:

On a shopping price comparison trip FAGE YOGURT WAS A WHOLE BUCK CHEAPER AT TRADER JOE’S THAN A NEARBY SAFEWAY GROCERY STORE.  A dollar!!!  For the exact same product.

Rip Off ALERT - if you want to spend an extra dollar on the same product,
make sure to get it at Safeway instead of Trader Joe's

Either Safeway is royally ripping shoppers off, or Trader Joe’s is being ultra kind.  Either way – you know where I am going to grab my yogurt!

P.S. – the container tells you how to pronounce this brand.  It is pronounced Fa-Yeh! (exclamation point theirs – they obviously are as excited about their yogurt as I am).

Price – $3.59

Rating – 4.75

Bonus photo for anyone who scrolled down this far!  Me snorkeling in Greece in 2007!

Day 234 - Triple Cream Brie with Mushrooms

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 

https://www.facebook.com/TheFourthWallEnsemble?fref=ts

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. 

This cheese is a winner.

Price - $9.99 per pound

Rating – 4.75

Day 232 - Authentic Greek Feta in Brine

 I’ve said it before and I will say it again – I am not ashamed.

I LOVE ME SOME FETA.

I am home alone – I had to come home and work a few days and leave my main man in Indianapolis.  So tonight I decided to splurge and treat myself with some really nice feta.

Here is the packaging for this fancy feta

At least, what I presumed would be nice feta.  I fell for the “it’s expensive so it must be good” trick (I like to think I do not usually fall for that…).  The feta we normally purchase at Trader Joe’s is $2.99 for 8 oz.  This feta was $6.49 for 10.5 oz – see – comparatively it was PRICEY!  (You can see the review of our normal TJ’s feta on day 105 of this blog.)

What the hell- put it on a credit card!

So this afternoon I was craving feta.  I neeeeeeeeeeeeded feta.  And really, as far as cravings go, if you are going to crave something, I think FETA is a mighty healthy craving, don’t you?  So I went straight to Trader Joe’s in Clarendon, VA to hook myself up!

Now, earlier in the day I was stuck in traffic.  Like, BAD Washington DC traffic.  So I had time to hear the news on NPR not once but two or three times.  So I kept hearing about the Prime Minister of Greece resigning today.  And you know, Greece is in a boat load of financial trouble.  That poor country is a messy mess!  So I guess what I am saying is, yes, I splurged and spent way more on feta than a girl needs to spend, but it was AUTHENTIC GREEK FETA from GREEEEEEEECE for heaven’s sake!  And if anyone needs my money, it is Greece, right?  So there.  Not only did I satisfy my craving, I helped out an entire economy with my purchase.  (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

David taking the plunge in Koufonisia, Greece (2007)

Me swimming in Koufonisia, Greece - isn't the water beautiful???

So, was my splurge on this feta worth it?

Uh-huh.

This cheese is amazing!  It is a kick ass feta.  It comes in brine, which seems to ensure it is not dry and blecky like some fetas are.  However, the brine also means it can be MESSY, as evidenced by when I tried to pick it up after “closing” it (oops, it was not closed) to read the bottom of the container…  I splashed brine all over the counter. 

It has 2 chunks of feta in it - here I stood them up for you to see

This is what it is like when you open the tub

The thing I need to ding the rating on a bit for this product is the packaging.  It is super hard to OPEN.  You pull off a little hard plastic bit, then theoretically you can pull the lid off.  Maybe it is because I currently have long nails and need to cut them, but I had a really hard time getting the lid off.  I resorted to jamming a fork around until I could squeeze it open a bit.  And of course the whole time I was trying to rip the lid off, I was afraid the lid would POP off and give me a brine shower.

This totally satisfied my craving for feta.  Ahhhhh....  

I am glad I splurged.  Greece needs our help – go buy this feta.  J  Just be really careful opening and closing it. 

Price - $6.49

Rating – 4.75

Day 183 - Greek Honey Yogurt

I felt a bit PUNKED when I opened up this yogurt.  I thought it was yogurt WITH honey.  I pictured some nice, thick, golden Greek honey swirled around the top.  So when I peeled back the foil and saw NAKED yogurt, I recalculated my imagined picture and thought, “Oh, perhaps the honey is somehow on the BOTTOM of the cup…”.

Would YOU assume it had honey swirls??

Nope.  No swirls (or even blobs) of honey to be found.

Apparently this is honey FLAVORED yogurt, not honey IN/ON it yogurt.  Maybe if I had read the name more carefully I would have understood that?  Not sure.  But it was a disappointment to me.

We normally buy plain Greek yogurt (reviewed waaaaaaaaaaay back on day 6 of this blog).  Sometimes I add things to mine – honey, fruit, nuts, sometimes even (gasp I know) sugar on top (something I learned in France with Petite Suisse). 

So on this honey yogurt today I added pear and blackberries.  And those fruits were better than the actual yogurt.  It has a tart taste to it, not honey-ish at all.  It was not quite white so I am assuming the slight tinge of off-white is the honey mixed in?  It was very, very, smooth – almost too smooth, fake-y smooth.  I was tempted to spread some honey on top after I tasted it and wasn’t all that happy but that seemed like a rip off – why spread HONEY on HONEY YOGURT, right?

Next time I will stick with the Fage yogurt that is on the shelf under this poopy honey one.

This won’t be my choice for any more breakfasts.  I guess if you like flavored (mildly flavored) yogurts you might dig this one, but it’s not for me.

Price – $1.29

Rating – 2.5

Day 166 - Marinated Celigene Mozzarella Cheese

We recently were at a NEW TO US Trader Joe’s (in Fairfax, VA, a very nice store!).  

Hey!  Fairfax, VA Trader Joe's!

While there we decided to pick up supplies to make a tasty summer appetizer that we had recently at a TJ’s in Florida – tiny tomatoes with mozzarella on them!  We already had balsamic at home (Trader Joe’s, of course, to be reviewed later in this blog), and we hoped the basil we planted would be big enough for us to cut a bit off to top the dish off.   This is the mozzarella we chose:

Marinated Celigene (or is it Ciliegine?) Mozzarella Cheese

Now, there have been two previous mozzarella cheeses reviewed in this blog – one was our our regular one “the chub” reviewed on day 17 (4 stars).  The other one was one that we tried for our big TJ’s dinner party, reviewed on day 125 (which I personally gave a total of 1.75 stars to, but because it was a dinner party review I had to factor in reviews of the other guests and begrudgingly use the average of all reviews which brought it up to a 3…).  Normally we serve mozzarella over TJ’s kumatoes (reviewed on day 5 – 4 stars), and in the summer we serve it over tomatoes we grown in the garden.  But this time our home grown tomatoes were not ready to be eaten yet, and the taste test we did in Florida using the cherry tomato variety was yummy, so we went with what we saw – Marzano Tomatoes (sorry to be so confusing – I will review those small tomatoes soon!).

In any event, this review is about the tiny mozzarella balls!  First off, my partner David is the one who prepared this dish and he reports the container was very, very hard to open.  The size of the balls is good – he is quite obsessive so he cut some in thirds and some in fourths, but I reckon if you wanted to you could simply cut them down the middle and call it a day.  The sign said the cheese is marinating in “salted water” but David swears, “There’s somethin’ oily going on…”.  (The label of the actual product lists canola and Extra Virgin Olive Oil…  Maybe the signage at TJ’s was wrong?  When I look at the photos now I see that the SIGN spelled the cheese Ciliegine and the package spells it Celigene…  Maybe the incorrect sign was placed above these containers but we did not see any other containers nearby?  Who knows…)

The taste is pretty good.  It is not as great as the chub mozzarella, but way better than the stinky day 125 mozzarella.  The biggest problem by FAR with this dish was the inability of the teeny tiny tomatoes and mozzarella to hold enough balsamic vinegar!  There just was not enough surface area.

Isn't it PRETTY?  Turns out we did have enough basil, yippee!!

This cheese is not bad, but the convenience of having the tiny portions does not beat the tastiness of the chub cheese.

Price - $3.49

Rating – 3.5

Day 125 - Mozzarella Cheese

YUCK! 

We love cheese, and we like us some mozzarella.  In fact, I reviewed the Trader Joe’s Mozzarella Chub on day 17 of this blog, and it got a very solid 4 stars.  So when we were hosting our Trader Joe’s dinner party last night and wanted to put together a nice salad, we immediately thought of using some fresh mozzarella.  But since we had 6 people at the table instead of our usual 2, we picked up a larger package of the cheese, thinking it would taste just as delicious as the little chub we normally buy. 

YUCK

Wrong, wrong, wrong.  This was plain yucky.  It was hard, rubbery, sort of off-white-ish, and tasteless.  It didn’t taste “fresh” at all – it was as “fresh” as the processed orange American cheese slices in plastic wrappers.  My first clue was that when I opened the package, there was noooo liquid, where as with the normal small one we buy it gushes out.  The receipt says it was “Whole Milk”, which is what I think the little one is, too, so I do not know why this bigger one was so lousy.

I later went back to Trader Joe’s to see what the heck was different about this bigger package.  It turns out it is “low moisture”.  Apparently that makes a huge difference in the world of mozzarella!  We MUCH prefer the cutie patootie little 8 oz squishy chub you see pictured on day 17 (for $3.29).  If that is not big enough to serve everyone you are having over for dinner, but 2 of those!!  

This is the one you DO NOT want

And this is the GOOD ONE 

Do not be duped into buying this bigger, low moisture one.  We later used the rest of this hard chunk of mozzarella to make a pizza, and it was better suited for THAT use than to serve fresh.  But still, not a great product.

Trust me, it did NOT taste nearly as good as it looks in this photo

If I were going to rate this myself, I would give it a 1.75.   But since it was at the Trader Joe’s dinner party, I will now peek at what the guests wrote and average the ratings together for the final rating.  Here are the comments:

-          “Excellent character”

-          “Pleasant  texture, good saltiness”

-          “Slightly aged, tasty, nice combination with tomatoes”

-          “A bit tough”

-          “It is firm to the point of rubbery-ness, but does have some mozzarella-ish taste, and probably would due for melting on a pizza”

And once again, this product is lucky to have a TEAM reviewing it instead of just me, because instead of my rating of a 1.75, it is getting much higher.

Price - $4.99

Rating – 3

Day 105 - Feta

Feta is a staple in our house.  It often tops our salads.  It jumps in our omelets.  And it graces our pasta dishes.  Feta, feta, FETA!

So we have tried feta from a variety of stores.  Oh, we have tried pre-crumbled feta, we have tried huge-o hunks o’ feta, and we have tried this Trader Joe’s Feta. 

Guess which one is normally in our fridge??  YOU GOT IT – THIS TRADER JOE’S ONE!

LOOK FOR THIS PACKAGE!

Why?  Because it is just about perfect.  It is hard enough to stay together without disintegrating into feta dust when you cut it.  It is TASTY.  It is not too dry (many pre-crumbled ones are super dry, yucko).  It is YUMMY.  It is cut-able.  It is DELICIOUS!  All of that PLUS it is very reasonably priced!

Cheaper than you will find at other stores!  And TASTIER!

Did I mention how good it is???  Really, the only “issue” with it is the packaging.  Like the Trader Joe’s Mozzarella Chub (reviewed on day 17 of this blog), once you open this feta package you have to figure out somewhere to store it.  Trust me, you are gonna get feta goo/juice everywhere if you try and leave it in the package it came in.  My solution; cut the feta package open, have a plastic container with lid ready, and plop that puppy in there.  That’s much easier than trying to get it in and out of a Ziploc baggie. 

Feta in action - on a salad!  (Also pictured are Trader Joe's beets (will be reviewed on this blog), Trader Joe's chick peas (also to be reviewed) and Trader Joe's avocados (reviewed on day 18 of this blog)

If you like feta, try this one.  It is a winner.

Price – $2.99

Rating – 4.75

Day 101 - Belletoile Triple Cream Brie (cheese)

If you like BRIE, go for this.  It is such a good price, and it is delicious!  Get a fresh baguette and SMEAR this on.  Wait, you COULD get a fresh baguette (soon to be reviewed on this blog), put on a thick layer of Kerrygold butter (reviewed on day 49 of this bog), THEN smear this Triple Cream Brie on it…  Oh man my mouth is watering just THINKING about this…

There are several bries at Trader Joe's, this one is really good

I am sure you could make an awesome sauce with this brie, too, but when we get it we normally devour it all on fresh bread (or crackers if we are out of bread). 

Not a bad price- you would pay much more at other stores

Yum - BRIE

Triple Cream Brie rocks – get it!

Here is a hunk of Belletoile Triple Cream Brie on my picnic lunch plate!  SPRING has sprung - picnic!!!!

Price- $8.99

Rating – 4.25

Day 87 - Spanish Cheese Tapas Sampler

We first saw this adorable little package in a Trader Joe’s in California and we were so jealous!  “What??  Sweet little cheeses??  Why, we do not have THAT in the metro DC area!!” we whined.

How wrong we were!  We do INDEED have the Spanish Cheese Tapas Sampler at our local Trader Joe’s.  It is a package of 3 perfectly sized (5.29 oz total) little chunks of cheese – Iberico, Cabra Al Vino, and Manchego cheeses to be precise. 

Delightful concept, bland result

The only problem ISSSS, see, the cheese do not have much FLAVOR…  So, while they are delightful to look at and seem like they would be so quaint to serve to guests with some of those funky little ceramic cheese labels, I would prefer they actually TASTE good, too…  See where I am going with this?  They are just b-l-a-n-d.   Maybe they are SUPPOSED to be that way, I am no Spanish cheese expert!  But, for my taste, they do not have enough taste (see how clever that was?  I used “taste” twice there!).

In the end, I guess I would rather do the hard work myself and buy three separate cheeses that each had a little zip or zing to them and forego the simplicity of this little (bland) package. 

P.S. - Embarrassing postscript to this review:  It was not until after I had written this and we has almost finished all of these cheeses that we realized, oops, each cute little wedge is already SLICED!  We had been cutting bits off unnecessarily - the cutting is done for you (not in the direction we normally slice cheese, which is why we did not notice I guess).  

Price – $3.99

Rating – 3

Day 64 - Eggs

We are a household of TWO humans.  We do not eat many eggs.  Hence, sometimes our eggs “egg-spire” before we get through them all (see what I did there??).

Enter Trader Joe’s eggs.  They have the expiration date stamped RIGHT ON THE EGG. 

“What???” I hear you say.  “Impossible!”

But no!  Think about it, if a brand (ok I will say it, Eggland’s Best) can stamp it’s NAME on each and every egg, why can’t someone stamp an EXPIRATION date on each egg???  Trader Joe’s has gone and done it, folks!

Check it out - DATES on each egg!  So cool.

And before you can raise your hand and ask, “Why, if I may ask, would one want eggs to have expiration dates stamped on them??  The date is on the carton – isn’t that good enough??”.  Oh no my naïve little friend, it is not.  J  And you obviously didn’t watch the same “60 Minutes” (or some other such “news expose” show) where they showed (gasp!) egg producers just plopping old expired eggs in new cartons…  Ewwww.

Oh, but my partner David saw that show, and though he will drink milk at least 5 days after it has technically expired, he remembers that documentary and insists on Trader Joe’s date stamped eggs. 

You can trust that these eggs are still good!

In my mind, eggs are eggs.  But it does make you feel like you are not getting egg-spired ones (I did it again!) when each fragile shell is dated.

Price – $1.99

Rating – 5 (if my man is happy, I am happy.  End of story.)

Day 49 - Kerrygold Butter

In our family, we eat BUTTER.  Not margarine.  Not “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”.  NO.  Pure, unadulterated, full of fat BUTTER.  Burp.

We buy TWO KINDS of butter.  One for cooking/baking – that would be the “butter in a stick” formulation (reviewed in this blog on day 27).  But then we buy BUTTER FOR EATING.  Oh yeah…  Butter for putting on bread, on rice, butter for when you want to TASTE THE BUTTER.

This is some GOOD BUTTER

And Kerrygold is what we buy.  If you have never tried real European butter – you need to.  Oh man, is it good!!!  They know what they are doing over there.  They are not trying to curb fats, or be calorie conscious, or make the eater more healthy.  No – they make delicious, genuine, honest to God BUTTER.  We leave our Kerrygold out on the counter in a butter dish and serve it room temperature.  There is nothing like real butter on your morning toast or oatmeal.

So now that you know how I feel about BUTTER, let me just say that Kerrygold is one of our favorites and one of the few non-store brand products that Trader Joe’s sells, and I am thankful they do!!!  At Trader Joe’s we pay $3.19.  At Whole Foods (aka “Whole Paycheck”) the same exact package of butter would cost us $3.69.  If I popped into Safeway I would have to fork over $3.99 for it.  And heaven forbid we pick it up at the Giant Grocery Store, where we would have to invest $4.99 in the same butter!!!! 

If you want to pay way too much, go to Giant

Rip off alert at Safeway

I will keep slathering on Kerrygold until my doctor tells me to quit.  J 

Price - $3.19 (crazy cheap for this much goodness in a foil package)
Rating – 4.75

Day 27 - Salted Butter Quarters

OK, confession:  I do not normally buy “store brand” stuff at stores other than Trader Joe’s.  I mean, like, if I am in Shoppers Food Warehouse, I will plop down the extra dime (or quarter…) for the well-known label – the one I have seen on TV and in coupons.  I KNOW this is “conditioning” by the huge companies, and I KNOW I should save money and purchase the plain label, store brand product, but 9 times out of 10, Heinz canned tomatoes will jump in my cart instead of plain label.  (And yes, I know that sometimes the store label brand is the same exact product that is inside the fancy brand can, just with a different label…)   I am a bit embarrassed to admit all of that, but it is true! 

But here’s the thing – at Trader Joe’s, a vast majority of the products are THEIR STORE BRAND.  And they are fabulous.  Equal to or better than the famous brands we buy because we see them on TV and because our mothers bought them and fed them to us when we were growing up.  I buy them, I like them, and I am happy.  J

BUTTER!

So that sets the stage for this butter (salted butter quarters).  If I were at Safeway or Shoppers Food Warehouse, I would not buy the plain label brand.  I would spend more and buy Land O’ Lakes butter.  But at Trader Joe’s I am perfectly happy to buy store brand butter!  And it is yummy.  And works well in all the same things I use butter for – on bread, for baking, to top veggies, etc (though, honestly, our “toast butter” is a different butter, which I will review soon!).  This butter is good.  It is on par with Land O’ Lakes.   Heck, this butter is even made from cows who were not treated with BST.  If you, too, avoid store brand things, just start by trying this butter.  You won’t notice a difference.  J 

  

Turns out, this price is insanely cheap!

Side note – this blog is not about recipes, coupons, or penny pinching techniques.  But I am a curious person.  So I just looked up what the same size package (16 oz) of salted butter quarters would be at my local Safeway if we bought Land O Lakes.  HOLY SMOKES - $6.09!!!  MORE THAN DOUBLE what we paid at Trader Joe’s!!!   So not only is it yummy, it is CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP. 

Price – $2.99

Rating – 3.75