Day 340 - Autumnal Harvest Pasta Sauce

First of all, I am so excited because TODAY I get to meet one of the readers of this blog!!!! TTrockwood often comments on posts, and because we are going to New York City (where TTrockwood lives) we arranged a MEET UP!  Guess where???  :)  Duh - AT A TRADER JOE'S, of course!  I will report on our meeting soon!

In the meantime, here is a review of Autumnal Harvest Pasta Sauce.

Look - it is tomato based but made with PUMPKIN and BUTTERNUT SQUASH!

David: “It’s ok.  it is like general tomato sauce but more squash-y.  It gives some flavor to the pasta, but pretty much you gotta like the taste of PASTA cuz there’s not a lotta taste in it.  I give it a 3.5.”

Editor’s note:  I suspect someone is cranky.  Look – he barely said anything!  He is rarely this quiet or downbeat about a food item. 

Here is David at a happier moment - talking with the ASK ME MAN at Clarendon Trader Joe's!  There was a super long line and he was standing at the end of it to show people where to go.  Doesn't he look kind?  He was.  :)

Me:  I like this pasta sauce.  It is light and CREAMY.  To me it is not too tomato-y. I don’t really taste the squash in it, but I like that it lets the flavor of the pasta to come through. 

It is also a pretty color.  It is not as red as some tomato sauces.  I think this is really nice.  It is not too heavy.  It is not overpowering.  We served it on tubular pasta shapes and it was a good fit.  It is clean and simple.  To me, the name is right because somehow it does taste a bit like AUTUMN (if seasons can have a flavor…).   (David disagreed that it tastes like autumn, but see note above.  Can you say “cranky-pants”???)

See, isn't it a pretty color??  Served with baby brocolli and a salad.

David OD-ed on tomato sauce last month when he made an eggplant parmesan and stuffed it with tooooo much tomato sauce.  Ever since then he has been ardently anti tomato sauce.  But even HE agreed that this Autumnal Harvest Pasta Sauce is not TOO tomato-y.  I think this is a good alternative to “traditional” pasta sauces.

This is, as the name suggests, only available seasonally.  So if you want to taste autumn poured over a plate of pasta, get some soon.

Find it on the shelf with the other pasta sauces.

I give this one a 4.  I will average our two scores together below.

Price – $3.49

Rating - 3.75

Day 301 - Honeynut Squash (miniature)

This is easily the most adorable vegetable you could ever have on your plate.  They are teeny tiny itty bitty butternut-looking squash!!!!  They are so cute!!  We had never seen them before and Trader Joe’s had a couple of pretty displays of them so we grabbed one.

Opportunity Buys - LIMITED QUANTITY - go get some!

I cut the squash in half and took all the seeds out.  I put the halves in a glass baking dish and prepared each half differently.  For  David’s I put olive oil over the whole thing, salt, pepper, Kerrygold butter (review here) and brown sugar.  In my half I put olive oil all over, salt, pepper, and a special little treat – Mike’s Hot Honey (review here).  I cooked them in the oven on 350 degrees for 50 – 55 minutes.  Both halves turned out really well.

The World's Most Petite Squash

We both thought this vegetable was GREAT!  David said, “It is sweet, luscious, creamy…  It’s soft inside.  I have no complaints!  With honey or butter inside it is fabulous! What can I say??”

The hot honey half was fun – the heat of the honey had a delayed reaction so you didn’t really notice it until you were almost finished with the bite.  I liked David’s brown sugar half, too (thanks for sharing, friend).

You can't see how adorable and tiny it is here...  I served it with a side of pasta and homemade pesto
and eggplant parmesan David made the night before.  Nice combination.

These honeynut squash would be really great to serve at a Thanksgiving meal or dinner party this autumn.  Each person gets half and it makes a perfect serving!  They are pretty and look very seasonal.  I liked it so much I kept the seeds and am drying them to plant in our garden next spring. 

David is trying to be a hipster right now because his final review of these squash is “adorbs” J.  I agree – they are ADORBS.

This is a trick photo.  Doesn't the squash look freakishly HUGE? In reality, it is standing by
the world's smallest jar of  Tabasco.

I am glad that we found this little squash!  We actually have a tradition in our house of buying a regular sized squash and then leaving it on the counter forever.  We never think to cook it.  We usually have a squash on display in some stage of the decay process.  But I think these tiny ones are so cute we would remember to cook ‘em!  A regular sized squash it is just too much for two people.  One HALF of a regular sized squash is enough for two people.  So with these Honeynut Mini Cutie Patooties, cut one in half, cook, and in a two person household everyone gets a perfect sized serving in its own little nature made serving dish!

These are seasonal so get them NOW at Trader Joe’s because they will not have them very long.   Two thumbs up!

Price – .99 (so only .50 cents per serving!!)

Rating - 5

Day 151 - Punjab Eggplant

Trader Joe’s makes these “Indian Fare” dishes that are perfect to have on hand.  They come in small boxes so are easy to store in the cupboard, are super easy to cook (we just put the foil-like pouch in boiling water while we are cooking whatever we are going to serve with the Indian dish), and are a perfect size for 2 servings.  We always have at least one of these packages in our cupboard for easy dinners.

These are sort of  hidden on the bottom shelf at our Trader Joe's, but worth crouching down to get

Tonight’s dinner was this Punjab Eggplant served over TJ’s Basmati Rice (to be reviewed soon) with sides of yellow squash, a fried chicken finger (which David was craving) and broccoli.  It was a really good combination.

Tasty, cheap, fast and easy dinner

The Punjab Eggplant is a tiny bit spicy, which we like.  It is super saucy which makes it nice over rice.  And it is filling.  Oh, and did I mention, it is CHEAP, too? 

So to recap:  easy, cheap, tasty, and saucy!  All good things!

Grab one of each of the Indian Fare dishes off the shelf at Trader Joe’s and try them out.  Find your favorite and keep it on hand for nights that you just don’t feel like cooking (or nights when you want something saucy!).

Price – $1.99

Rating – 4.25

Day 99 - Butternut Squash Risotto

Yawn.  This is a pretty boring dish.  It isn’t BAD, but it isn’t GREAT, either.  It’s just sort of “blah”.  My partner David’s idea is to eat it with something that has some ZING – I am thinking it might help to shred some sharp cheddar cheese on top of it. 

It looks tastier on the bag photo.  There are not as many chunks of squash in real life (at least in ours there wasn't)

Find it in the frozen foods section.  It's a good price

We ate it as a main dish (needed a small meal before going out, bigger meal planned later so didn’t want to get too filled up).  As a SIDE DISH it would be better.  Be sure to have at least pepper handy, you are going to have to jazz it up somehow. 

Hmmm, more "baby food" looking in real life than on the package photo

Price –$3.79

Rating - 3