“What’s the scoop? We’ve captured the spirit of strawberry season in an ice cream carton. Each rich, velvety spoonful of this cheerful pink treat is studded with strawberries and bursting with fruit forward flavor”
RAVE
What Trader Joe’s has to say about this Super Premium STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM:
“… our product developer spent months tinkering with the recipe to ensure it delivered the ideal balance of creamy, velvety goodness and bright, fruit-forward personality of Strawberry season. The Ice Cream’s cheerful pink color comes courtesy of fruit & vegetable juices (unlike others found elsewhere colored with artificial ingredients)”
I’ve been reading about how good this new Strawberry Ice Cream was and really wanted to try it. So I go to buy it at my Trader Joe’ only to see NONE left. Oh No!? Already all SOLD OUT?! Bummer!
Fortunately, an employee saw yours truly and another guy both looking in the case for it, and asked if we wanted some. My new friend and I almost shouted. Yes! Please! She said some just came in the back, and she would bring it to us. Our lucky day! Very popular item it seems.
So how is it? Here’s my honest review of TJ’s new strawberry ice cream. Honestly I can see why this is so popular, as actually is as good as it’s reputation. It really has a wonderful strawberry flavor in every bite. You see little bits of strawberries in the ice cream. It’s just so tasty and yummy. It’s another of those Trader Joe’s products that you take a bite of and have to force yourself to stop. I put the remaining half pint it back in the freezer for the next day.
BTW “Super Premium” refers to the amount of “overrun” (or air) in ice cream.
“The Super Premium designation on this Ice Cream is a particular point of pride—to achieve it, an ice cream must have less than 50% overrun. Overrun refers to the amount of air whipped into the ice cream during the churning process – lower overrun equals richer, denser ice cream. We can’t reveal the exact percentage of overrun in this pint, but we can guarantee it’s significantly less than 50%!” – TJ
If you love strawberry ice cream, this is one you have to try. I am giving this ice cream a big thumbs up.
Trader Joe’s Romano Caesar Dressing is a vegetarian take on the classic Caeser. This does not contain anchovies but has got a lot of other other ingredients like Romano cheese, olive oil, garlic and spices plus mustard, Worcestershire, lemon and capers, to compensate and provide Umani.
You can use it as well as a marinade for chicken, fish or most anything. About $3 for a 12 oz bottle.
My very picky wife liked this dressing and she doesn’t like a lot of TJ’s dressings.
Want to use this to make a Caesar Salad? Get some Romaine, tear or cut up in to pieces. Add some CROUTONS. Pour on some dressing. Toss. Done! Unless you want options of adding perhaps some lightly cooked eggs or maybe some chicken to make it into a full meal.
I would buy this again.
PS – there’s nothing preventing one to add a few smashed anchovies to this to make it into a classic Caesar dressing.
As the name say, these are mozzarella shaped into little balls, or pearls. I made them into a Caprese salad along with cherry tomatoes and fresh basil, plus balsamic and olive oil. They are pretty good for salads and the like. Or for tossing into a pasta dish. You can also take these and marinate them with garlic and oil. About $4.29 for a pound. I do think though that I prefer the large mozzarella logs as I think that cheese is a bit softer. I can cut those into any size piece I want. These are cute though and they can be made into marinated mozzarella pearls which people love.
Delightfully chewy rice dough exterior with interior of sweet ice cream infused with black sesame seeds.
Trader Joe’s recently released Black Sesame Mochi, a new frozen dessert featuring a black sesame-infused ice cream filling encased in a chewy mochi shell. The mochi is reportedly quite popular, with many finding the nutty and slightly savory flavor of the black sesame to be a unique and enjoyable addition to their dessert options.
The internet seems to be going crazy about these, for good reason. They are terrific. Many are saying Trader Joe’s new: BLACK SESAME MOCHI may be the best product they released in Summer 2025.
Inside the chewy, yummy mochi rice wrapper you find the ice cream filling, with the delicious, unique flavor of black sesame seeds (known in Japanese as “kuro goma”).
We tasted these and we all just loved the flavor of the black sesame. This is just a great dessert or snack. You are supposed to wait three minutes so they slightly defrost to get to the perfect texture and flavor. Waiting is the hardest part…
“Our supplier infuses an ice-cream base of milk, cream, and cane sugar with a paste made from roasted, finely-ground Black Sesame seeds. This paste not only lends a rich gray-black hue, but also brings that characteristic nuttiness with a hint of savory to contrast with the flavor of the frozen sweet-cream. Surrounded by a rice-dough wrapper which has also been given the Black Sesame- seed treatment, the resulting couple-bite-sized frozen treat is intriguingly tasty, and an instant conversation starter during your dinner-party dessert course.” – Trader Joe’s
For $2.99 you can buy their excellent of cottage cheese in a one pound container.
But for only a dollar more, you will get twice as much. The big container has two pounds. That works out to about two dollars a pound instead of three dollars a pound for the smaller tub. Two dollars a pound is an amazing deal.
12 grams of protein per 1/2 cup!
All which is why I now only buy the big tub (32 oz) of cottage cheese. It just a way better deal economically, so my suggestion is buy the big one. One way or another it will get used. It is good for at least a month if not more. More ideas for using cottage cheese are below.
(UPDATE! They just raised the price from $3.99 to $4.29 Argh!$#@!!)
Update 2 (Oct 2025) Just about a month after that increase I see they raised the price again!!! It went up to $4.49. I can’t help thinking someone at Trader Joe’s read my first post and decided to up the price on us! Argh#!##%
BTW I understand people are now using it for Smoothies!
I was surprised to see these at Trader Joe’s. Frankly they looked more to me like like eggs you might find at Whole Foods or your local Farmer’s Market. But I bet those would charge somewhere between 8 and 10 dollars for these, not six bucks.
They say: “Laid by heirloom chickens living in a free range, open air environment. Especially excellent for omelettes”. I didn’t try them yet as these are Medium sized and I tend towards buying Extra Large eggs but these do look really interesting and quite gourmet. Said to have a very deep colored rich amber yolk.
By the way, my limited city-boy understanding of why eggs are white, brown or a color like these is that its related to the breed of the chicken who made them. In simple terms white chickens lay white eggs, while brown chickens lay brown eggs, etc. Besides brown and white, some breeds also lay blue or green eggs, like Araucanas, due to other pigments.
Trader Joe’s Free Range Heirloom Fresh Blue and Brown eggs (medium) $5.99/dozen
Brown or white, all eggs are equal nutritionally if the chickens are fed the same diet. My wife says brown eggs are “better” than white ones but thats not quite the case.
“To herald the coming of summer, we’re offering Wildberry Cheesecake Ice Cream, featuring the vibrance of wild berries and bits of cheesecake. That’s right: in addition to a dreamy, sweet-cream ice cream base, you’ll find a generous mixed berry swirl (made with blueberries, elderberry juice concentrate, and a blend of raspberry, strawberry & blackberry purees) and tender bits of classic cheesecake.” – Trader Joe’s
Apparently Trader Joe’s had this two years ago, then it vanished. It’s finally made a come back. Someone on Reddit called this a “hidden gem”.
This lists first three ingredient as “cream, milk, cane sugar…” Yes this is actually Ice Cream. Not “ice cream style frozen dessert” . Just compare this to the fake-y tasting “Gelato Style Frozen Dessert” I reviewed. That stuff had coconut oil as the third ingredient. Here the ingredient list here reads like what you expect when you buy ice cream. If you like cheesecake, and see it, I would give it a try. I really liked it.
INGREDIENTS include : Cream, milk, cane sugar, cheesecake pieces…mixed berry swirl with blueberry, raspberry, blackberry, elderberry…
I was on the check out line, next to the ice cream case, and a worker was putting these in the case. There wasn’t even a sign for this ice cream yet but I was intrigued at the name of it. I asked him if he tried it and he said, yes he did and loved it.
So I got one to try. My honest review? Soo good; this is a delicious ice cream that tastes exactly like it’s name. It actually has little pieces of cheese cake in the ice cream mixed with swirls of berry. I found this on target. As good as something Ben and Jerry’s would come out with. It’s a delicious summer treat.
We enjoyed this for July 4th and to make it even more special I added fresh blueberries on top which of course made it even better with fresh fruit.
One thing to note though. As it got softer, and melted together, the important texture of the cheese cake pieces vanished, so try to eat this while it is still pretty cold.
If you are looking for regular sliced bread from Trader Joe’s for sandwiches or what have you, and want to get one that’s whole wheat, this is a yet another nutritious bread option that Trader Joe’s offers. “HARVEST WHOLE WHEAT” is made from whole wheat flour and lightly sweetened with honey. It has a soft crumb and a pleasant, wholesome flavor of whole wheat.
100 calories/slice, 5 gr of Protein, 3 gr of Fiber.
Trader Joe’s HARVEST WHOLE WHEAT BREAD is a light brown color from the whole wheat. It has regular slices, not too thick nor too thin (16 per loaf). It’s soft but not too soft. It has a little bit of texture to it. The ingredient list is short and simple with whole wheat flour as the first ingredient. Its a healthy choice but it doesn’t taste “too healthy” if you know what I mean. Even picky kids may like it. Its quite tasty, both toasted and As Is.
This is perfect to make sandwiches with. It won’t fall apart easily. It was really good toasted which is one way I like it.
Peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat coming right up.
It’s one of the most affordable bread options at Trader Joe’s at (now) $2.99 (was 2.49 not long ago) This will beat most supermarket similar breads for price, value and quality.
HARVEST WHOLE WHEAT BREAD$2.99, 24 oz loaf (1 1/2 lbs, 680 gr)
Do you need a few ideas for Healthy Snack options for shopping at Trader Joe’s?
Here are just a few ideas….
Fruits and Veggies: A great snack could be say, fresh apples sliced up.
One favorite snack for me is some sliced APPLE with some PEANUT BUTTER. A classic combination providing fiber, healthy fats, and protein. Besides apples I like bananas and peanut butter. As well as cut up sticks of vegetables (carrot, celery or jicama sticks) All these things are great snacks on their own but get some protein from nut butters. Besides peanut butter, there are other nut butters too, such as almond butter. My favorite peanut butter at Trader Joe’s? Crunchy salted with the blue label. The one with honey one us also good.
Now I would just buy an apples and cut them up. However Trader Joe’s does sell some “pre-cut” fruits and veggies for convenience. Personally I never buy these type of items. It’s not a big deal to cut up an apple for me. The moment you cut any fruit or veggie up it starts to oxidize and deteriorate. And you pay a lot more for someone to do that work.
Nuts or Trail Mix; these are great snacks (in moderation) Trail Mix: Trader Joe’s offers a variety of mixes with nuts, seeds, and dried fruits. Raw, Unsalted, Untoasted Nuts: A simple and healthy snack. Dark Chocolate-Covered Almonds: A delicious way to get antioxidants and healthy fats. Finally the fantastic TRAIL MIX CRACKERS
Cut up some Vegetable Sticks such as carrots or celery and pair them with some HUMMUS or some other lower fat dip. How about that new Roasted Tomato LABNEH?
For chips, I think the PLANTAIN CHIPS are kind of better than potato or other chips
Protein Snacks: Any Cheese or cheese sticks, string cheese, hard cooked peeled eggs, chomps turkey sticks….
Other Healthy Options:
Organic Popcorn with Extra Virgin Olive Oil: A whole-grain, antioxidant-rich snack.
Grainless Granola: A crunchy blend of nuts, seeds, and dried coconut. Puffins Cereal (Peanut Butter flavor): A fun and healthy way to enjoy cereal. Low-Fat Greek Yogurt: Pair with berries and a touch of honey for a healthy and protein-packed snack. Piquant Popcorn: A top snack for weight loss. Norwegian Crisp Bread: A versatile base for avocado and other toppings. Bamba Peanut Snacks: A high-volume, low-calorie option. Plantain Chips: A healthier alternative to potato chips. Lentil and Chickpea Crisps: A flavorful and healthy snack. Oven-Baked Cheese Bites: A high-protein option. Trek Mix Handfuls: A portable and nonperishable snack. Hummus: A creamy blend of chickpeas, tahini, and olive oil. They have some hummus snacks that come with crackers for easy snacking.
With just a little prep work and some baggies, you can make snack packages. Good luck!
“What do you need to make the perfect summer salad? Fresh, peppery greens? Aromatic herbs? Zesty, citrus flavors? Some resoundingly delicious crunch? How about a salad that ticks all those boxes? Trader Joe’s Lemony Arugula Basil Salad Kit gives you all the tools necessary to create a superlatively summer-y salad, complete with leafy arugula, shredded Parmesan cheese, crunchy carrots and roasted almonds, and a stunningly citric, wholly herbaceous, basil lemon vinaigrette dressing.” (TJ)
I know a lot of people seem to love this salad kit. It’s one of the more popular ones at Trader Joe’s. Personally I am a fan of eating arugula, raw in a salad. I like it’s slightly peppery bite. I buy a package of Trader Joe’s arugula frequently as my salad base. My wife on the other hand, prefers to eat arugula cooked. To each his own.
This salad kit makes getting an arugula salad together super easy. Just toss it in a bowl and add the dressing. Arugula and shaved pieces of carrot plus almonds and grated Parmesan cheese. The dressing is something everybody says is very tasty, with some folks wishing that Trader Joe’s sold the dressing in a bottle.
The salad matches well with other things, such as grilled chicken or salmon, served hot or cold.
Say on some crazy hot day like today where it is 95 and just thinking about cooking will make you sweat, how about using this KIT to make an easy dinner with zero cooking? Just dump the salad in a bowl, and add a can of that delicious new SKIPJACK TUNA on top. Voila! Dinner. Easy peasy.
Trader Joe’s Rants & Raves (mostly raves, a few rants) 
Recent Comments