What to get at Trader Joe’s
When I moved to Los Angeles it was the week of the great grocery workers strike. So I had little choice but to start shopping at Trader Joe’s. Well I quickly became hooked on the reasonable prices and more Euro-centric fare. They carried stuff I hadn’t seen in California since I left Boston.
Of course, I have my favorites. The things I just have to get every week to get by. Here’s a few of these items.
- Organic Carrot Juice — Not the regular, the organic. It’s sweeter. It’s sweeter than any carrot juice I ever tried anywhere else. And it doesn’t taste watered down like you often find at the supermarket.
- Peanut Butter Cups — Forget Reeses. You will never touch those vile things again after TJ’s Peanut Butter Cups. The chocolate is rich but not overly sweet. And the peanut butter is fresh. Not soft like from a jar, but it’s not the dried up crap you’re used to. It just tastes fresh, like they were just made at a candy store … which I guess they were. I get two boxes of these a week.
- Kettle Chips (Salt and Fresh Ground Pepper) — The king of potato chips. Thick, fresh potatoes, the right amount of salt, and ground pepper. They’re more expensive than your usual chips, but they’re more flavorful by an order of magnitude.
- Naturally Aloe Herbal Drink — Made from Aloe Vera juice, a variety of teas, Papaya, lemon, and other good stuff. If you’re feeling kind of off for one reason or another, a bottle of this will fix you right up. It’s full of natural healing agents (forget all the anti-oxidant babble – this is just plain good for you).
- Vanilla Gelato — I don’t know if it’s really made in Italy like they claim, but who cares. It’s great.
- Shrimp Scampi & Jasmine Rice — Both in the frozen section. Don’t bake the shrimp. For a single-serving meal, take half a bag of the shrimp (it has the garlic butter frozen on to it) and put into a pre-heated (high heat) small skillet. or saucepan. The butter will quickly melt off the frozen shrimp and the shrimp will simmer in the butter. When things start to look ready, take half a package of the Jasmine Rice, put in a bowl and cover, and throw it in the microwave to 90 seconds. Then empty the rice on the plate, and pour the shrimp and melted garlic butter on top. Takes like 8 minutes total.
- Walnut Swirl or Lemon Coffee Cakes — The Walnut cake is like a recipe my mother made, very traditional European style cake with butter milk and walnuts and I think some Marzipan. It’s awesome. The lemon cake is kind of like a lemon flavored pound cake, but richer. Either do well for breakfast, desert, or a late night snack.
This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
