Panilonco Carmenere

                                                                              I.  Did.  It.

            This silly little blog, this fun, crazy “hobby”, has hit half a million views!!!!!

I was traveling last week for work.  As I left town, I was a couple hundred hits shy of the exciting 500,000 mark.  I knew it would happen while I was on the road, and I wanted to write about it as it occurred, but see above, I was WORKING, and at a super hard assignment as well.  So, even though I wanted to sit down, write, and celebrate, I had to focus, people!  Priorities, ya know?

But I am home now – so let’s par-tay!!

HALF A MILLION HITS!

I know that some bloggers have a bazillion times more views than I do, but I bet you none of them are as happy about it as I am with this half a million! 

OK, now that the celebrating is out of the way, we should probably review something, eh?  How about a wine, I haven’t reviewed a wine in a while. 

Panilonco Carmenere (2016 Reserve)  

This is a red wine from Chile.  We bought it because it is a Carmenere, and David likes to put on what he thinks is a Chilean accent and say that name loudly (much like he likes to stroll around the kitchen spouting, “montepulciano d'abruzzo” – you don’t know how many glasses of montepulciano d'abruzzo we have drunk in restaurants just so he can say the name…).  Anyway, here is what he thought of this Panilonco Carmenere:

I should add a sound file here so you can hear the name of this wine
roll off of David's tongue...

“This wine is bold and full flavored like a Cabernet Sauvignon, but kind of rough around the edges.  It doesn’t taste like turpentine, but it is not a wine that fancy French aristocrats drink while sitting around a café table.  This is a wine that is drunk by Chilean cowboys, and that’s alright!  I give it a 4.25.”

We have actually had this wine before, but I don’t think we reviewed it.  So, first things first – the LABEL is not pretty.  As we all know, first impressions count, and this wine is not one that immediately attracts the eye on the shelf.  Lucky for us, the name attracted David, so into our cart it went.

As for me, I think this is a nice red!  I really, really like it.  it is not pretentious.  It is not fruity.  It is a little bit peppery, maybe with a hint of black cherry.  Simply put, this is just a RED WINE.  We drank it with TJ’s Southwestern Chopped Salad (recently reviewed here), TJ’s pasta, TJ’s Just Sauce Turkey Bolognese (a staple in our freezer and the very first TJ’s product I ever reviewed back on January 1, 2015 here), and the TJ’s olives that I adore (reviewed here).  This wine was a really good fit with the meal.  I want to get more bottles of this one, especially now that we are switching over to red wines for the winter season. 

A nice, sturdy, reliable red.  

This win, at $5.99, is also very well priced.  And, like David said, it is not pretentious.  We went through a bunch of quasi-official wine snob reviewer sounding descriptions for what we tasted: sawdust, black pepper, cigar…  Obviously, we are not wine experts, so we checked the back label to see what the winery thought we should be tasting:  “Deep colored, concentrated and attractive nose, with notes of blackberries and mint.  The spicy flavors combines (TYPO – oops, note to label maker, that should be “combine”) with the silky tannins and the toasted vanilla from the barrel.  Delicious on its own, this wine is the perfect partner for Italian cuisine and spicy courses.”

I think this is really a good red table wine.  If you come over for dinner this winter at the Big Yellow House this may well be on offer.  I agree with David on the score – 4.25.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for helping me hit this milestone!  See ya at the 1,000,000 mark!  Until then, keep drinking wine (and shopping at Trader Joe’s)!

Bonus jumping photo - the one where David jumped so high he is almost out of frame :)

Price:  $5.99

Rating:  4.25

Giant Chalkidiki Olives

I saw this jar of Chalkidiki Olives arrive at Trader Joe’s displayed near the holiday items.  

These olives are the pits.  :)  Not really.  Actually, these olives HAVE pits...

The sight of them reminded me of David’s great find last year – the Giant Greek Olives (review here ) which he adored so much that he stocked up on huge ass jars of them as if he were an end of the world prepper.  He still has one jar left!  The jar of Giant Chalkidikis (do you think if I type that word enough times I might actually learn how to spell it?) that I picked up this year is 17.6 oz (as opposed to David’s favorites last year which are 21.16 oz).  The olives DO have pits (which is how we like them, but I feel the need to warn you of this fact cuz I don’t want you to eagerly bite into one and bust your tooth J ). 

David hoarding olives - December 2015

When I saw these Giant Chalkidikis in the store, I thought they they might be the same olives as David’s beloveds and that just the packaging might have changed, but when I got them home and compared them I see that they are a different color.  The size of the olives and pits are about the same, so perhaps they are the same variety of olive, just processed differently?  Being only an olive FAN and not an olive EXPERT I cannot know for sure. 

A tale of two olives

To me, both varieties have the same “meaty” quality, but the Giant Chalkidikis seem to have a bit more FLAVOR.  I also prefer the color of these new ones, as the Giant Greek Olives are always a bit of a scary green hue to me…  Overall, I like these Giant Chalkidikis just as much as I like the Giant Greeks.  They are certainly priced right – the jar is only $2.29, which is really cheap compared to the olives that we often buy at the “olive bars” at other grocery stores.

David:  “These are very good.  I think they are almost as good as the GIANT COLOSSAL GREEK OLIVES.  I mean, I still say those big round jar ones are the “king”, but these guys are great.  They are an excellent green olive.  They are colossal…  I think the flesh comes away from the pit a little bit more easily than the kind of colossal green olives you get at other grocery stores.  They are fleshy.  They are well behaved.  And they are tasty!  What’s not to like??!”

New year, new olives.  Same discerning palate.

 David and I had a big debate over what to SCORE these olives.  For me, I decided I would give them a tying score to last year’s Giant Greek Olives.  David was unsure if he should also make his numbers a tie, or if these olives should get a teeny tiny bit lower number…  Rating things is hard work, folks!!!  It is an awesome responsibility!!  After trying several more olives (which I do believe was a ploy to be able to gorge on olives…) David decide that he would give these Giant Chalkidikis the same score he gave the Giant Greek Olives.

In the end, this olive is a big winner.

Overall, we recommend you get some.  And eat ‘em.

Price:  $2.29

Rating:  5

Blizzard and MARINATED OLIVE DUO IS BACK!

Quick check-in today with 2 big bits of news:

1.     THE BLIZZARD OF THE CENTURY IS COMING TO DC!!!!  (OK, it is gonna snow…  Like, seriously, it might be a lot of snow this time!  Oh I hope, hope, hope so!!!  Usually when they predict snow here we get, like, 6 flakes of it but everything closes.  This time they are talking double digits folks!  I say BRING IT ON!!!  I keep getting texts alerting me that my community will soon be under a BLIZZARD WARNING.  Doesn’t it just sound so thrilling???  So of course, everyone and all of their cousins are grocery shopping.  You can’t make it through 2 or 3 days stuck at home without bread, right???  And you must have rolls and rolls of TOILET PAPER or you are sure to perish!!  Well, we just got back to Arlington a couple of days ago and hadn’t really grocery shopped yet to get all of the basics.  So we needed veggies, fruit, butter, eggs, milk, etc.  That was one of my “to do”s yesterday.  Apparently around 4.8 million other people also really needed to go to Trader Joe’s!  It was crazy crowded.  Of course, we thought that was fun, but not everyone was in a giggly mood.  They were out of lots of stuff, including bananas and eggs.  HOWEVER will people survive without BANANAS for 2 days???  J

Maybe you can't see exactly HOW LONG the lines were, but you have to trust me here,
they were the longest we have ever seen at our local Trader Joe's!

      Still related to the snow but not to TJ’s, we went to a movie last night at the Japan Information and Cultural Center in DC last night (part of the Japanese Embassy, they show great Japanese films for free!).  JICC is 4.8 miles from our house.  It took us 7 minutes to drive there.  The same drive in reverse to come home took us 2 hours and 35 minutes!!!!!  The roads were icy and then about an inch of snow fell.  Cars were slippin’ and slidin’ and it was a messy mess!  A cool part was when we were stuck in front of the Einstein Statue for a while and got to see him covered in snow. 

A snowy Al as seen from our car stuck in a massive traffic jam.  Go Al!

Anyway, that was not even the REAL STORM yet – imagine what is going to happen if
this blizzard really hits!  Let’s just say, this part of the country is not really prepared to handle
snow…

2.        The other bit of big news – LOOK WHAT IS BACK!!!!!  

WHEEE - REALLY GREAT (and cheap) OLIVES!!

      Yeah baby, the infamous Marinated Olive Duo!!!!!!  I love this product and was sad that it was    

      only sold temporarily!  You can see the review of it here:  marinated olive duo review  Signage

      indicated that these were one of the GREATEST HITS OF 2015!  Oh yeah, I’ll say!  Go get some

      before they foolishly take them off the shelves again!

A "Greatest Hits of 2015" item - I TOLD you they were a winner!!  :)

STAY WARM EVERYBODY!!

Day 356 - Quartet of Greek Olives

FIRST, AN ANNOUNCEMENT – the blog hit 70,000 views (year to date) this morning!!!!!!!!!!  I was quietly hoping that might happen before the big finish (I say “quietly” but on the home front I was not quiet about it, “David, if I had 526 views today, do you think I will have enough to get 70,000 by year end???” etc., etc., etc.  Just ask David.  Wait, don’t ask him, please.  I have asked him enough times.

HOLY KAMOLY!!!!!!

But all of my asking WORKED!  Thank you so much for reading along this year.  Seriously, I thought I was writing these for myself really, maybe a couple friends or family members.  Never did I imagine this little project would escalate to 70,000 hits (before Christmas even!!).

I was (ok, am...) a little excited.

This morning we got up at 5:30 AM and drove an hour to Washington Oaks Garden State Park and watched the sunrise for a Winter Solstice Celebration.  Not being morning people, getting up that early was quite the accomplishment (especially considering we could have slept 1.5 hours longer and walked a block and a half in our jammies to the beach at our house and had our own private sunrise solstice event, then crawled back in bed J ).  But it was a lovely way to start the day, and when we got back to the car (and to my phone) I checked stats and that’s when I got the good news.  So my winter started off great – sunrise and 70,000. 

Sunrise Solstice - happy winter everyone!

Today’s review is of a holiday product that we found on the shelves – Quartet of Greek Olives.  I purchased it because, of course, we are olive lovers.  Also, because TJ’s seemed to have a thing with “quartets” this holiday season – we also have the Quartet of Nuts (yet to be reviewed) and the names of the two products made me think of Christmas carols (sung by quartets, of course…).

This is the box

 The Quartet of Greek Olives contains 4 varieties (hence the “quartet-ness”) of olives with pits:

·         Amfissa

·         Kalamon

·         Sundried Kalamon

·         Marinated Chalkidiki

Each variety of olive comes in its own vacuum packed 180 gram bag.  The fours bags are then put into a quaint little box.  The box says the olives are prepared exclusively for Trader Joe’s and that these were the most delicious varieties and preparations that they could find across Greece.

He looks sort of "stunned" but he was actually excited...  I think this is in the Omaha, Nebraska Trader Joe's

Here is David’s review:  “I celebrate any opportunity to broaden the palate of the olive consumer, so I think this is a nice idea.  Actually, some of them I am not so fond of, and some of them I do like very much.  I think that much like going to see theatre at a Fringe Festival*, you have to be willing to go see some things that you end up not liking in order to be able to catch the whole breadth of the art form. 

I had to include a photo of this adorable olive dish - it says "Take Olive Me".  Too cute, eh?

So, I would say my least favorite is the sundried kalamon. – although if I WERE going to enjoy it, I can picture enjoying it in some sort of a creamy cheese sort of environment, like perhaps a spanakopita cheesy pastry thing, or maybe with a chevre.  Because the sundried kalamon olive itself tends to be kind of dry and dries out your mouth.  I have not tried the regular kalamon yet.  The marinated chalkidiki is freaky deaky!!!  It has a nice hotness to it,yet it is a green olive so it is lush and meaty.  I like it, although I prefer the AMFISSA.  It is a green olive that is meaty, fleshy, and comes away from the stone nicely.  It is just your standard easy eatin’ olive.

I give the Quartet of Greek Olives a 4.25.”

And here is my review:  I agree with David on the dryness of the sundried kalamon.  I did NOT like that olive.  When you first put it in your mouth you notice the texture is a little bit weird.  But after it has been in your mouth for, like, half a second, you realize it has somehow magically sucked all the spit out of your mouth!  It is really quite bizarre.  I have never really experience anything like that before…  It is hard to describe!  It didn’t seem to suck the spit out of my TONGUE, it sucked the spit out of the inside of my GUMS (the part that is under your tongue).  The dryness made it difficult to even CHEW the olives.  I tried 3 or 4 of them, hoping the first one was just a dud or something, but they were all the same.  I have no idea why this came to mind, but it is almost like there is ALUM in these…  But how do I even know what ALUM tastes like???  I dunno…  It is bizarre.  Even just writing about it now is making my mouth dry out just thinking about it! 

However, I am in LOVE with the marinated chalkidiki olives!  I think if someone filled up a big bowl of those and placed it in front of me with a tag that said “dinner” I could just eat those and be happy.  They are really, really, really good!  And come to think of it, Trader Joe's served this olive up in a DUET this summer!!!!  I reviewed it here .  I think they need to keep these marinated chalkidikis year round.  

I also like the amfissa olives in this quartet, the ones David loves so much.  We have not tried the regular kalamon yet.

I like the packaging of these – that each is in its own little bag.  When we buy olives at the “olive bar” at a grocery store near our house, I like to keep the varieties separate, so I appreciate that TJ’s kept them like that.  One disadvantage of the packaging is that if you do not plan to eat them all in one sitting you need to find a way to STORE them.  I have put them in plastic containers, but if you had little glass jars those would be good, too. 

Here are the little individually sealed bags.  Cool!

We bought one box and I opened and ate the marinated chalkidikis.  Then I worried because we were out of the really delicious ones!  So I bought a second box.  Remember that these are a holiday item and once they are gone from the shelves this month they will be gone until next year (and not everything comes back every year, but I hope these do, are you listening TJ’s corporate??). 

David would like to add, “If you are the kind of person who thinks of olives as the  marinated green things in the jars, or black olives, or those shriveled black ones, you need to recognize that you are basically one of those people that thinks is an apple is a Red Delicious.  There is a WORLD out there of apples/olives:  like the Russet, and the Gala, and the Cox’s Orange Pippin…  These are some of the olives that are available to you!  So I would recommend branching out just to have the experience so that you can see what you might like more or less.”

This is an olive.

So, even though I would prefer this box to be a TRIO than a QUARTET since neither of us like one of the varieties included, I am not at all disappointed that we sprung for these and invested in two boxes.  We recommend we go grab a box before your TJ’s runs out of them.

Five bucks for this many tasty olives is a bargain.

I agree with David on the score – 4.25.

Price – $4.99

Rating – 4.25

 *Fringe Festivals:  David mentioned “Fringe Festivals” above.  They are festivals of plays, often unjuried, where artists can perform their work in a supportive environment.  We travel to Fringe Festivals with 2 solo shows that David performs (“7 ( x 1 ) Samurai” and “A Little Business at the Big Top”) and we really like the fringe atmosphere.  You can learn more about Fringe Festivals in general here and see a clip of David’s “Samurai” piece here    .  Let me know what you think of it!!  J

Bonus sunrise photo for anyone still reading.  :)

Day 346 - Giant Greek Green Olives

So MO, a Trader Joe’s Bailey’s Crossroads employee, has really caused a problem in our house.

Mo was working at the sample station the other night when we were in the store.  He was serving something, I can’t even remember what, but in talking to him he asked if we had tried the new olives yet.  Nope, we hadn’t.  We had looked at them, but the jar is SO LARGE that it just seemed like too big of a commitment to get one. 

So Mo opens a jar.  And David eats an olive.

 

At our store these are on an end cap - a section of "new products".  Looks like they are also a Flyer Item this month.

Thanks Mo, we now have FOUR BIG JARS of these huge ass green olives at our house J. 

This is David after Mo gave him a taste of these olives.  Yeah, he was excited.
And look - he has new glasses!

We bought one jar that night.  We stopped and talked to another employee after the olives were in our cart already and he saw them and said something about having bought MULTIPLE jars to save them (they are seasonal and TJ’s won’t have them for long).  Well, that got David to thinking…  So when we were shopping tonight, 3 more jars were purchased.

I mean heck, they are OLIVES.  They are SEALED.  It is not like they are gonna go off!  We will store the unopened ones in the basement where it stays pretty cool.  And David will be a happy man while he has these “in stock” at home. 

Here is David when we went back and he purchased THREE MORE JARS...

The label says “Gigantic, meaty, fresh tasting olives (with pits)”.  That is a good summary. 

Here is my review – these olives are HUGE.  The jar itself is big (1 lb 5 oz), but really the jar has to be big because the olives inside are so large.  The first thing you notice (after you get over the size of these suckers) is the color.  They almost seem an unnatural shade of green.  They have sea salt, but they are some of the least salty olives I have ever had.  The least salty, but the most meaty.  These are seriously meaty, folks. 

They are soft but not at all mushy.  They are very good, but not my favorite olives in the entire world.  I like them, but would I stock up on 4 jars if it was just me I was feeding?  Probably not.  I would get one jar, maybe 2.  I would rate them a 4.25.

I served them (in my fancy olive dishes) the other night at a birthday party dinner.

Now here is what David, who is in love with these olives and might just marry them if he were not already hooked up with me, says about them:  “Soft.  Fleshy.  Ample.  Delicious.  Only slightly salty, and yet still very flavorful.  This was advertised by the guy at TJ’s (editor’s note:  see above, it was Mo) as the best olive he had ever tasted, and I would have to concur. 

Each olive is, of course, different and delightful in its own way, like children.  But when eating this olive one is filled only with the impression that one is eating the best olive ever made.  And, that can’t be true, because there is a whole jar full of olives just like it!!!   I GIVE THESE A 5.”

See??  I told you he loves these.  He actually tricked me into bringing him the open jars of olives before he would give me his reviewing, saying he “needed” to eat another one to be able to tell me his opinion.  Yeah, right, you just wanted another olive, dude.

Price - $6.99 (which at first seemed pricey to us, but when you consider how many olives you get and compare the price to other olives it is actually cheap)

Rating – oh hell…  I was going to average the two ratings together, but David loves these so much I think I should just use HIS rating – THEY GET A 5 J

P.S. – Thanks Mo!!!  You are a super employee.  Your smile, chat with us, and willingness to give us a taste let us discover something we wouldn’t have otherwise bought.  And David is certainly thankful to have found these olives.

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 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