Everything In Our Trader Joe’s Cart This Week

In this stage of limbo between the end of Halloween and the beginning of Thanksgiving preparations, it’s hard to always know what food to reach for. But honestly, we always just like to go back to the basics. It’s our brief moment of respite between pumpkin spice and caramel apple flavors where we can reach for food that makes us feel good that also tastes phenomenal.

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Trader Joe’s, whilst being an absolute legendary source of autumnal products, maintains a strong catalog of universally flavored foods all year long. So, when we went through the aisles of Trader Joe’s this week looking for simple, year-round flavors we had no shortage of choices. But of everything we picked up, these are five items we think you ought to know about, and what we thought of them.

Buffalo Ranch Popcorn

As we have a brief break from pumpkin spice before heading into Thanksgiving festivities and all the December flavors, we are still certainly watching a lot of football. The season is in full swing, and so are the flavors of football gatherings. Perhaps the most iconic of them all is buffalo sauce, and since there’s really no better snack for when you’re sitting in front of the TV than popcorn, this flavor combination felt like a no-brainer. Turns out, these are absolutely delicious. They properly have a nice kick of heat to them, but otherwise the primary flavor that you get is the creamy ranch notes that feel deeply savory. We might only have bought these two days ago, but the bag’s already empty.

Soft Strawberry Licorice Twists

Since we’re all out of Halloween candy, but still can’t stop the craving for a little something sweet here and there, we picked up this strawberry licorice. The flavor is very nice and similar to the strawberry gummy component to the iconic sour strips. That said, the texture is a bit tough. Maybe we just got an older bag, but they were not as soft as we were anticipating. Perhaps if they were just a bit thinner, then the stiff consistency wouldn’t be as much of an issue. The flavor was still great though, and we still happily ate the whole bag.

Grated Seasoned Parmesan Cheese

This product might have debuted in October, but we only got around to trying it just this week. Unfortunately, it’s just alright. In addition to something with a lot of flavor in and of itself, this doesn’t really have much of an impact aside from being a slightly more savory version of your standard grated parmesan cheese. It is, however, a good option if you are making something like garlic bread that has fewer ingredients outside of the cheese, and butter that you’re using. Otherwise, the nuance we thought would be so prevalent in this gets lost.

Agua de Kefir Passion Fruit Blackberry

Perhaps my favorite thing about these drinks — aside from the pleasant fizziness and perfect balance between sweet and fermented, tangy flavors — is the fact that they only use natural fruit juice in order to give it flavor. The commonplace nature of artificial flavor in things that simply do not need to be artificial flavored always gets me a bit down, so this utilizing actual blackberry juice and actual passionfruit juice has me giddy. This drink taste similar in its blackberry flavor to the Blackberry Izze, but it has a subtle and deep complexity that comes across a sweet but not overbearing. Especially as it’s paired with the tart passion fruit juice, it is incredibly balanced but not too strong to easily drink the whole thing in one go.

Balsamic Rosemary Beef Steak Tips

I really wanted to love these, especially for the fall and winter season, as an easy segue into big flavor. However, something about the overall execution wasn’t my favorite. The flavor, for starters, is very sweet. Surprisingly so, even. Not only did it desperately need salt to balance out the flavor, but the balsamic negatively impacted the structural integrity of the beef as well. I think it would be expected to assume that this acidic marinade would tenderize the beef. And to that point, it did. However, it seems to have gone a bit too far and ultimately creates a mushy experience, which is never something you really want from steak.