Mango Tangerine Scented Candle

As you know if you read the post before this one, we just went to India.  It was our first visit there and I spent the whole time with eyes wide open in amazement at all there was to see, smell, taste, and do. 

And while we were there – IT WAS MANGO SEASON!  And when it is mango season in India – It.  Is.  Mango.  Season!!!  There are loads of different varieties of mangos there, and they are insanely delicious and juicy!! 

Mangos at Crawford Market in Mumbai, India

Anyway, we are now back in the US.  And of course, one of the first places we went upon our arrival was TRADER JOE’S.  I mean, one has to get fresh half and half for coffee, right???  But after we unpacked, did laundry, and caught up on a bit of sleep, we went back to TJ’s to see what was new and stock up on some fresh veggies, etc.

Guess what?  IT IS MANGO SEASON AT TRADER JOE’S, too!  I mean, boy HOWDY is it mango season!  The first thing we saw when we walked in the door of the Fairfax, Virginia TJ’s this sunny Saturday afternoon was a display of some new mango coconut popcorn (which of coooourse we bought but haven’t tried yet, review to come…).  Oh man, TJ’s has gone NUTS!!!  There is mango EVVVVERTYHING – mango WAFFLES, mango SHAVING CREAM, mango mini pies (we got those!), mango cereal (got it!), mango ice cream, mango mochi, mango margarita mix, mango, mango, MAAAAANGO!  Let’s just say, in Trader Joe’s terms, JUNE is to MANGO as OCTOBER is to PUMPKIN.  If you have ever stepped foot in a TJ’s in the autumn season you will know exactly what I mean.  They’ve gone a wee bit overboard in the mango department (one worker told us there were gonna be, like, 50 mango items in the Fearless Flyer….)

So this is my first of several MANGO product reviews!  Drum roll please….  May I present the MANGO TANGERINE SCENTED CANDLE!

Candle in a metal tin

This candle comes in a metal tin.  I like to buy metal tin candles in small sizes to throw in my toiletries bag when I travel.  They are great for helping out musty smelling hotel rooms.  This candle is 5.7 oz though, so is too big to be called a travel candle.  But I grabbed one anyway.  In fact, let’s not lie, I grabbed 3.  1 is for me and 2 are for gifts!

Had to take a little sniff in the store to make sure it smelled good...

Then I came right home and lit mine.  I mean, I needed to make sure it is a nice candle before GIFTING it, right???  Turns out, it is!  The scent is nice – strong without being too strong and not overly in your face mango.  It is a nice balance of the mango and tangerine – it smells fruity and summer-ish. 

Ahhhh, mango and tangerine scent filling up our house

The label tells me the wax is a natural coconut-soy blend and the wick is lead free cotton (which is not something I am concerned about, but if YOU are there ya have it, this is a fancy wick). 

So it is a nice scent, natural wax, metal tin, and fancy wick, all at only $3.99!!  That is a really reasonable price for a good candle if you ask me.

This is a good candle at a really good price - go get yourself (and a friend!) one

I hate even listing the price here, and I hope that the people I am gifting these to don’t feel like I am a cheapskate…  But I want You guys, the readers who I am not gifting these to, to realize how cheap they are and go grab 1 (or 2!) now while it is “mango season”.  Cuz you know how it goes; just like pumpkin time, Trader Joe’s won’t keep these around forever. 

Price - $3.99

Rating – 4.5

Day 299 - Tangerine Juice

Before I start this review, let me express my happiness and appreciation.  Another reader sent me a TJ’s bag and honey!!!!!!!!  Can you even believe it?  Peoples’ generosity really makes me smile!! 

  

LOOK!!!  Another box in the mail from a blog friend!!

This one came from Robert, a reader who also has a Trader Joe’s blog (something I didn’t know existed until I was well into this project – note to self:  Google before starting huge projects!!!).  He got me a bag from the Ashville, NC Trader Joe’s store and it is SO CUTE!  We have used it several times.  The other night our cashier, Carole, at the Clarendon VA store noticed it and loved it!  Carole had a great idea:  people should be able to buy and collect the TJ’s bags from all the states!  She said that she for one would start a collection.  Hey, it would be more useful than those Disney collectible pins, my collection of squished pennies, or some of the other things people collect, wouldn’t it??  She thought the NC bag was awesome, and so do I!  We have not tasted the honey yet, but it came in a delightful jar that made it look as if your Great Aunt Tilly made the honey for you instead of a store.  As soon as we finish one of the honeys we have open this one is next on deck!  Robert’s blog also reviews Trader Joe’s products and is very fun.  You can find it at: Exploring Trader Joe's blog

Look!!!  An adorable NC bag and a jar of HONEY!  

Robert recently reviewed TJ’s Tangerine Juice.  Here is his review that I saw, which piqued my interest in this product:  Exploring Trader Joe's Tangerine Juice review .  Tangerine juice was something I had not tried before, and Robert liked it, so I figured, “Let’s give it a go!”. 

Here's the bottle - 32 fl oz of straight tangerine juice

Ohhhh Robert, Robert, Robert…  What path did you lead me down???

OK, so at $3.29 for a 32 oz bottle, this was not a cheap drink.  It was more of a “splurge” for a bit of excitement, or a health food splurge if you will since the ingredient (singular) is just TANGERINE JUICE.  I thought this would be a nice treat.  I was wrong.

It is very BITTER.  The first drink was horrible.  Bad, bad, bad….  The second drink (this is going to sound weird I know, but I am being honest here) tasted like colonoscopy prep stuff…  If you have ever had a colonoscopy you KNOW the taste I am talking about.  I must have had orange or tangerine flavored prep one time because when the second drink of this tangerine juice hit my taste buds I had a colonoscopy flashback!  (Note:  this is not really a flashback you want to have.)  I was a bit afraid I might have to excuse myself to the bathroom if I continued to drink this juice, but I convinced myself that this was not, as my sisters and I like to call it, “Go All Nightly” (colonoscopy prep stuff).  I steeled myself to take another sip.*

Looks pretty in our juice glasses, eh?

The 3^rd and 4^th drinks got a little better.  Not GOOD mind you, but BETTER.   To me it tastes like Tang.  I don’t remember ever having Tang at our house growing up but I must have had it at a friend’s house, because this makes me think TANG!  To me, the only thing cool about Tang was the idea that actual real live astronauts up in space might have drank it.  The taste, to me, is not cool…   I wasn’t sure what the actual FLAVOR of Tang was, so I Googled it.  Consensus seemed to be that it was supposed to be ORANGE, and I was going to go along with that.  Only, in the middle of the night I had an “Aha!” moment – HEL-LO!  Tang?  T-A-N-G…  Tang.  Umm, those are the first four letters of TANGerine!  Obviously the flavor of Tang is tangerine, it is just tricky in that we pronounce it differently than you would expect!  So Tang is basically a covert astronaut drink.

First taste

Reaction....

Of this TJ’s Tangerine juice, David says, “I agree.  The taste is very bitter at the beginning.  It gets better – I guess you get used to it.  The tangerine taste itself is nice – it is very “tangerine-y”. It’s just I think they made the mistake of squeezing the tangerines a bit too hard so you get a lot of the rind taste, which is a bit bitter.”

The color of this juice is unnaturally bright orange.  It is a very pretty color!  We have a wall this color.  But I would rather see this color on a wall I guess than in my juice glass.

See, our wall is the same color!  New Year's Eve tradition - eat 12 grapes in one minute at the stroke of midnight!  (As you can see we were drinking an excellent Beaujolais Nouveau reviewed waaaaay back on day 2 of this blog!  Review here )

We both gave this juice a 2.5 rating.  The upside is that it quenches your thirst.  Then again, water can do that, too, and it is not as expensive or nearly as bitter.

If you WANT Tangerine Juice, get it at TJ's - it was much
more expensive at Safeway

Sorry Robert, we need to agree to disagree on this one.  J  It is a good example of how some things taste great to some people and “meh” to others.  But THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for the gifts!  I love them!

*Note from David:  Susan has a bit of PTSD about colonoscopy prep, so expressions of her feelings on that issue may appear larger than in your rear view mirror.

Price - $3.29

Rating – 2.5

Day 200 - Sour Gummies Ts and Js

I sort of got talked into buying this candy when I was lamenting to a Trader Joe’s employee that I needed to stock up on non-perishable, hopefully non-crushable products to bring for a month long TJ shopping hiatus.  He hooked me up with some great stuff (for example, the Chocolate Covered Almonds I reviewed yesterday!), but then he suggested these.  I wasn’t thrilled – I mean, I am an ADULT.  Do any adults like sour candies???  I mean, candies whose sole function is to be SOUR??  But the bag of shapes did fit the criteria of being easy to travel with, so I threw it in my cart.

  

Here's the bag - Sour Gummies Ts and Js (get it - Trader Joe's...)

Then, once we got to our destination, it sat unopened for the whole month, because I wasn’t eager to try them.  So now that our time here is almost finished and we are on “eat everything out of the fridge and out of the cupboard before we go” mode, I figured “it’s now or never”. 

But I came up with a brilliant idea.  Instead of reviewing with my own bias, I should have a KID review them.  But we do not have kids.  And that is where the neighbor boy Sean came into the picture!

So tonight Sean, David, and I sat at the end of the driveway at dusk and did a blind taste test.  We thought of it like a science experiment.  It was fun!  Here are the backgrounds of the reviewers:

Sean – age 12 (though first he told us he was 11, he forgot he had a birthday two weeks ago).  Resident of Ormond Beach, FL.  Likes sour candies.  Thinks Bertie Botts Beans are sorta cool, there are SOME good flavors but mostly gross ones.  Worst candy ever tried:  Warheads.  Likes rootbeer barrels and Lik-A-Stick.

David – age 62.  Mostly resident of Arlington, VA, sometimes resident of Ormond Beach, FL.  Didn’t expect to like these candies.  Likes rootbeer barrels, frozen Charleston Chew candy bars, anything chocolate, and has never tasted Lik-A-Stick.

Me – age 49.  Same residences as David.  Did NOT expect to like these.  In fact, totally does not get the trend of sour just to be sour candies.  Missed that boat.  Likes Twix, Snickers, and Rollos.  Ate Lik-A-Sticks as a kid and liked them but never once ate the actual candy stick.

Here are the Ts and Js displayed on a tiny plate, ready to be reviewed!

The test – I put candies out on a little plate that David and Sean could not see.  I then had them close their eyes and put one in their hands.  They ate them with eyes closed.  Here is how it went:

Pink candy:

Sean:  CHERRY!!  I like it!

David:  I like it a lot.  It is probably cherry, but has a bit of lemon.  It is like a gum drop.

Susan:  These really stick in your teeth.

Orange candy:

Sean:  DANG, orange is SOUR!!  Like a lemon.  (He added this later, after David mentioned watermelon – “Yeah, the first bit is watermelon, after that, lemon.”)

David:  Lemon, with a hint of watermelon at the beginning.

Susan: SOUR!!

Sean with his orange candy, not peeking, ready to taste

 White candy:

Sean:  Tangerine?

David:  Tangerine?  (I laughed here, telling him he was just copying whatever Sean guessed.)  Maybe orange?

Susan:  Not as sour.

Second White candy – this one I let them SEE before they ate it.  I was confused because, to me, the bag only has 3 COLORS but 4 FLAVORS… 

Sean:  I think the white Js and Ts are different flavors…  The white Ts are grapefruit.  The white Js are lemon.

David:  …

Susan:  …  (Sean was adamant about the letters being different flavors, I am not so sure.)

Tester David with his eyes closed

Once I showed them the flavor choices, we all agreed that the PINK ones are grapefruit.  If you eat a pink one and taste your spit as you chew, the spit is really grapefruity.  Know what I mean??  And we agreed that the orange ones are tangerine.  However, Sean felt he could see a color difference in the white ones – he swore some were “green”.  David and I could not see that for the life of us.  Perhaps you need youthful eyes…

Sean came up with a great experiment – try them with your eyes closed and your NOSE PLUGGED!  When I gave him one using those techniques he could not guess the flavor correctly.  David could not even fathom a guess under those conditions, he said it didn’t taste of a flavor but just tasted sweet, sour, and chewy.

Tester in the double blind - no eyes and no nose test

Let's try if we can't see AND can't smell!

Sean and Susan’s favorite flavor was grapefruit (Sean said “I love it!”).  David’s favorite flavor was tangerine.  Sean laid out a scale of sourness for anyone who is interested:

Most sour – lemon

2^nd most sour – lime

3^rd most sour – grapefruit

Least sour – tangerine

Sean gave each flavor a 1 – 5 rating, and then did the math to get an average overall rating of 3.25.  David was surprised he liked these candies since he didn’t expect to and gave them an overall rating of 4.5.  I thought they were not great, my favorite part was the cute T and J shapes.  I gave them an overall rating of 2.5. 

P.S. – we gave Sean the rest of the bag to take home.  He was happy.

Price – $1.99

Rating (average of 3 reviewers) – 3.5