50 YEAR CELEBRATION!!!

Get.  Out.

You guys - TRADER JOE'S IS 50 YEARS OLD!!!!!!!

Celebration sign at our local Trader Joe's (they also had balloons!)

Honestly, we had no idea.  I am just so thrilled to be back in the land of TJ's (home in Virginia after a long time away), so we went to the store closest to home, in Clarendon, VA.  Look what we saw before we even got on the elevator in the parking garage:

Party at Trader Joe's??  That elevator couldn't come fast enough!!!

PARTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I tell you, Trader Joe's Clarendon knows how to party!  For starters, they have a guy named GARY who works there who is a musician and he performs!  Like, IN THE STORE!!!  We were lucky enough to see him singing one other time and it was great.  Sadly, today we were there at the wrong time, but he was setting up as we left and he gave us a sneak peek at his set list:  all songs from 1967!!!  (Get it??  50 year anniversary, songs from 50 years ago...  Gary is clever that way!!) We are going to try and go back tomorrow and see him play.

They also are having a drawing where we miiiight win a great give bag full of TJ's merch or a gift card (fingers crossed...).

Also super cool, the employees all had 50 year TJ's t-shirts.  But ULTRA COOL was Kara, who went out of her way to totally bedazzle the hell out of her shirt!

Each letter is BEDAZZELED!  Seriously, I love it.  Adorable!

She even blinged up the BACK!

Seriously, the shininess of the shirt helped with the party vibe!!!

















And guess what??  There are items on sale for .50 cents!!!  I mean, wowsa!!!

2 days only - 50 cent stuff!

 

For .50 cents each we got:

A baguette (which we are taking with us for a pre-show picnic when we see the remarkable David Sedaris perform tonight!).

Ooooh lala - a cheap baguette!

Get it while you can!

A mango.

Now that's CHEAP!

Spaghetti.

You HAVE to have spaghetti in the cupboard at all times, right?
Get some while it is on sale!

3 avocados (.50 cents each) which David was so psyched about that he juggled them.

Wheeeee!  AVOCADOS!

Corn.

And, get this, we got a dozen eggs, normally $1.29, BUT TODAY AND TOMORROW FIFTY CENTS!

Looks like we were not the only ones grabbing eggs

BARGAIN!

Now, I can't promise you that YOUR Trader Joe's will have these same items on sale.  Apparently each store is having special deals on different things.

And I certainly can't promise you the dulcet tones of Gary (cuz there is only one Gary...) or the blingy shirt of Kara (again, only one Kara...).  But I still say - YOU NEED TO GO TO YOUR TRADER JOE'S TONIGHT OR TOMORROW (August 19th and 20th, 2017) TO CELEBRATE 50 YEARS OF JOE.

Cuz you know as well as I do, that deserves a party.

Day 219 - Spaghetti (Spiga di Pugua)

Did someone say “spaghetti”??  If there was EVER a staple food that should always be in a cupboard, it would be spaghetti (or some other shape of pasta).  You can boil up some water, heat up some sauce, and have dinner on your plate in minutes! 

We make PESTO out of the basil in our garden at the end of every summer and freeze tons of it.  Then we can just unfreeze a packet and put it on pasta whenever we want something super tasty!!  So even in the middle of winter, our garden is bringing us love.  J

Pesto making 2011

Can you say "PESTO PARTY"??

 Anyway, this review is not about our pesto (which would OF COURSE get 5 stars…) it is about this TJ’s spaghetti.  It is GOOD!  At only .99 cents I also think it is a bargain.  It cooked up perfectly and was a good base for our recent garden creation:  this spaghetti, a bit of extra virgin olive oil, garlic, green and red peppers from the garden, garden tomatoes, and garden basil – served with a side of grilled egg plant straight out of the garden!!!  It takes a hearty pasta to stand up to all that garden goodness, and this one did it!!

This is the BEFORE photo of what went on our pasta...

TADA - the AFTER!!!  There is pasta under that pile of produce, trust me...

The only suggestion I have is that somehow pasta makers get better packaging.  We cannot be the only 2 person family in this country that does not use a whole bag of pasta for one meal…  Once it is opened it is kind of hard to store in the cupboard.  I do not worry about it going stale (since it is a dried product) but I put this bag back a tiny bit incorrectly in the cupboard and the next thing  you know PASTA seemed to be falling from the sky onto my head, the counter, and the floor!  It is raining dried pasta!!!!  If the bag had a little Ziploc type closure on it that could be prevented.  Something to consider, corporate office.

See - only .99 cents!

Good pasta.  Good price.  Get it.

Price - .99

Rating – 4.25

Day 201: Capellini

Look, either you LIKE capellini or you don’t.  It’s a super skinny Italian pasta.  I would say it is like angel hair.  So it is not a HEARTY type of pasta- it is delicate, quaint, and capellini-ish! 

Capellini meal 1 - served with olive oil, garlic, mushrooms, snow peas, and delicious shrimp

But if you like capellini, this is a fine one.  It is in the pasta aisle of Trader Joe’s alongside the other varieties.  I saw someone online worried that Trader Joe’s might have discontinued it, but I just called our local store to check in and make sure they still have it – Sally said indeed THEY DO. And it's pretty cheap, too.

Capellini meal 2 - served with a red sauce enhanced with onions, green peppers, and mushrooms with sides of zuchinni and snow peas

 Because it is so darn skinny it only takes 3 minutes to cook, which makes it a speedy little pasta! 

We recently served it with shrimp, olive oil and garlic for a delicate little dinner.  It is also good with pesto.  And we just had it AGAIN tonight with an Alfredo sauce (which I added mushrooms to). David really loved it and gobbled it up (well, he gobbled it slowly, he is a super slow eater).  In fact, he added butter and salt to the naked leftover capelli and gobbled that up, too.  This is a flexible pasta.

Capellini meal 3 - served with Alfredo sauce enhanced with mushrooms, fresh corn, left over Brussels Sprouts, and left over chicken (this was a "trying to clean out the fridge" meal)

I sort of wish this was a bad pasta, cuz you know I would love to write something about it being “crapellini”.  But I cannot do that.  So I won’t.  But I still got to say crapellini, so I am cool with it.

This is a good one to keep in your cupboard.

Price – $.99

Rating – 4.25

Day 178 - Spaghetti

I guess, in the grand scheme of things, pasta is pasta.  I mean, if we are talking about just a bag (or box) of dried pasta that you are gonna throw in a pot of boiling water, drain, then throw sauce over.  Oh sure, you might find some FANCIER fresh pastas, but in the dried pasta department all the brands seem pretty much the same to me.  (Maybe it is because I have a cold today and am a little bit cranky…)

Anyway, we recently served this Trader Joe’s Spaghetti at a dinner with guests.  It was fine.  It is spaghetti.  It was no better or worse than the other brands of dried pasta that we cook.  (I will say that the sauce, homemade pesto made with basil from our garden, was tasty J ).

Product of Italy, so it can't be a bad pasta, right?  :)

Here are the reviews of some of the guests who ate it (not all guests wrote reviews, I assume their take is like mine, pasta is pretty much pasta):

-          3 - “Pasta noodles could be a bit larger and less stail (I believe this means stale) but overall pretty good”(written by a kid whose parents probably usually serve fatter pasta J )

-          4 - “A basic spaghetti that goes with everything” (also written by a cute kid)

So if you want to eat pasta and you are at TJ’s, just pick up some of theirs.  It will do just fine.  My rating if I did it on my own would be a 3, but I will average that with the 2 guests who rated it to come out with a final number. 

Front porch dinner party (one of the reviewers took this photo of the adults)

P.S. – sorry this review is not that great…  I promise more inspired ones to come.  I just do not feel well.  L

Price - .99

Rating – 3.25