You may have heard of this super popular “recipe” if you can call it that, which is all over the internet. It makes a healthy snack or dessert. Basically there are actually two ingredients: chia seeds and almond milk (or whatever “milk” you want). Here ya go.
RECIPE: CHIA SEED PUDDING
In a glass or small jar, put about 2 tablespoon of TJ’s chia seeds. Next add about 1/2 cup of any kind of milk beverage (like almond milk). Give it a little stir. There are no rules that you must use almond milk, just use whatever you like best. Me, I alternate all the time between OAT, ALMOND or SOY MILK depending on my mood. Option: Add a bit of honey or any of your preferred sweetener (agave, maple syrup) and stir that in. While optional it does add some flavor and if you have kids you must use something like that. All you do now is wait for it to thicken so put it in the fridge and let the mixture sit in the fridge for at least about 30-60 minutes but it sets up best if you let it sit for 8-12 hours or overnight. When ready to serve put some fruit on top, or even something crunchy like Granola.
Chia seed pudding is super easy to make and of course very healthy. Now there is no rule that you can’t have use more ingredients and include a few other things. I usually mix in some yogurt or kefir too with the oat milk and sometimes add a few dried fruits like dried cranberries in. Basically figure about 1/2 cup of liquid to about 2 tablespoon of the chia seeds. If that is too thick (or not thick enough) adjust with more or less chia seeds until you get the consistency you, or your kids, prefer. This is a great snack.
Wow, this is terrific. I loved it on first bite. This may be one of Trader Joe’s best New Products, maybe even a Top Ten. You will find this stuff mentioned all over Instagram, TikTok and Reddit. This spread takes TJ’s well loved, super popular Unexpected Cheddar cheese and adds things like butter and whey to make what is a hard cheddar into a spreadable pub cheese. It takes the amazing Unexpected Cheddar and manages to turn it up to 11. Trader Joe’s says: “Our supplier combines our crumbly Unexpected Cheddar with salted butter and whey to create a superbly savory, creamy Cheese Spread that’s ready to enhance sandwiches and glorify grazing boards with the simple flick of a knife. Spread this pub-style cheese on a Raisin Rosemary Crisp, and you’ve got one classy snack on your hands. You might also add it to an appetizer of puff pastry topped with chopped figs to bring out its subtle fruity notes. No matter how you use it, it’s guaranteed to be a real crowd-cheeser.” (ok a groan for the bad pun)
Search around you you’ll find pictures using this spread to make the trendy fancy “cheese boards” which are all the rage on Instagram. Here’s TJ’s idea to make one with this spread, nuts and honey
Remove cheese spread from refrigerator 30 minutes prior to assembly to help soften.
To a medium-sized cutting board, use a butter knife or spoon to spread the unexpected cheddar over the entire board, leaving a small outer rim exposed. Use your utensil to make swooping motions as you spread to help create nooks and crannies.
Top with chopped pecans, thyme leaves, and a drizzle of honey.
This flavor is the one I’m now seeing of TJ’s yummy “bread cheese“. This “pizza seasoned bread cheese” is quite good, even perhaps dangerously so! Just grilling it with some halved cherry tomatoes, basically I came up with kind of a “deconstructed pizza”. Served the cheese and grilled tomatoes with some toasted bread with a little EVOO over everything. A sprig of fresh basil completed the picture. What’s not to like? All the flavor and fun of pizza in five minutes. Eat it while it’s still all gooey and melt-y. I would say a package made roughly two portions. I’d go with “sauté” and not microwave as grilling it will brown it more and so be better that way.
INGREDIENTS: All Natural Chicken, Sea Salt, Oregano, Basil, Vinegar Powder, Garlic powder, Onion powder, Rosemary, Black Pepper, Parsley
They’re a fairly new product from Trader Joe’s which when I first saw them, certainly looked interesting enough to try out and review. Fresh, not frozen meatballs in the refrigerated section which are vacumn packed. These are “seasoned, fully cooked chicken meatballs” made from “all natural, minimally processed chicken”. They’re Gluten Free as they are just meat with no binder (more on this later). Vacuum packed and can stay at least a week or more in the fridge (or freeze for longer).
These make a super easy Protein and are very convenient to have in the fridge. They can make an easy dinner, fast. Ingredients are simply chicken plus seasonings. I find them pretty tasty if just the tiniest bit rubbery (unfairly compared to my own homemade meatballs). I think they would be even better if they had a little bit of binder (bread crumbs eggs, veggies or the like). If you’ve ever made meatballs you know they will come out best with some binder in them. There I would be careful not too cook these too much – as they are already cooked. However I do suggest you be sure to brown them. Browning them until they get golden brown did improve the taste. Therefore I would suggest dont just nuke these, brown them up on top of the stove in a nonstick or seasoned pan. I use the “Stove Top” method mentioned on the package, browning with butter and/or olive oil. I sometime cut them in half, or quartered or sliced up as that increases the surface area for browning. If you want them whole that’s fine too just turn them to get all sides brown before serving. When they are golden brown, turn off the heat, toss a tablespoon of water or stock, or lemon juice in and cover the pan immediately to let them steam a bit which will soften them. A sprinkle of lemon juice perked them up nicely. Before cooking them I like to sprnkle them with either Smoked Paprika or AJIKA blend which helps browning even more, plus adds nice flavors. These will be good with some sauce of your choosing… Sriracha Mayo or Garlic Dip mixed with lemon juice… Or even just some ketchup and/or mayo….Magnifique Sauce. Your favorite BBQ sauce. Sweet Chili sauce… Basically any sauce you like will work and improve these.
Here is a one way I’ve served them. Cut into halves, browned up and put on top of a bed of lentils that I had made a few days before. Another way was in a Wrap on a flour tortilla.
Grilled Chicken Meatballs on a bed of lentilsSliced and grilled, then served on warm flour tortilla with avocado and Magnifique Sauce. Added lettuce then wrapped up.
These can easily become dinner along with some sides, say rice or potatoes, or pasta and a veggie. I think these might match well with any one of TJ’ssimmer sauces(Thai or Indian). You could brown them, add sauce, simmer a few minutes and serve. Maybe toss in some frozen green beans or peas in the sauce as well? Serve on top of rice or noodles or pasta. Or just with pita or Naan? What about making these Italian style? Brown and add your favorite jar of tomato sauce. Toss them with pasta and you have an easy dinner. Or maybe brown them, slice up, and put them into a pita with some lettuce and some sauce? Or just serve them sliced up on top of a salad? So you might find these a handy thing to have in your fridge. TJ’s Chicken Meatballs are $3.99 for 12 oz. with about 16 meatballs in the package. Figure maybe 4 per person/portion? 4 meatballs have 16 gr of protein with 150 calories!
Now on the other hand with just a little effort you can make your own chicken meatballs! No really, it’s pretty easy. While these are very convenient of course, your own homemade ones will be way better.
RECIPE – HOMEMADE CHICKEN MEATBALLS: Take a package of Trader Joe’s fresh ground chicken ($3.99 $4.49 a pound). Put meat in a bowl. Mix in one egg, 2 tablespoons milk, 1/4 cup seasoned bread crumbs or Panko… Salt Pepper (Optional seasonings) even better with some chopped scallions, parsley, cilantro, garlic. Add a tablespoon of AJIJKA spice or Smoked Paprika. Mix ingredients thoroughly. Put in fridge for 1/2 hr to firm up. Form (using wet hands) into small meatballs. Flatten them for patties (more surface area to brown). Put into a nonstick pan with butter and/or olive oil. Sprinkle on Smoked Paprika. Cook 4 minutes per side, turning till browned. Deglaze pan with 1 tbl water, lemon juice, add butter and pour pan sauce over chicken.
(my Homemade grilled Asian style chicken patties with grilled rice)
Here’s another new Korean/Asian item from Trader Joe’s. These rice cakes are flat oval disks made from sticky rice, so are very chewy and soft. These kind of rice cakes are a typical ingredient in many Asian cuisines, Chinese, Korean others. In Chinese cooking these rice cakes are known as “nian gao”. If you fry them, they get a little crispy, which is how I like them best and the way I would suggest you try to make them. The bag has just rice cakes (no sauce) so you will add your own stuff. You can use these to make a stir fried dish with vegetables and a protein. There is a basic stir fry recipe on the bag (“Stir Fried Rice Cakes with Vegetables” which you could expand upon with adding a protein (say chicken, shrimp, pork or baked tofu.) Tip: of course do add garlic which this recipe omits (?!) You could come up with a Korean stir fry variation by adding some Kimchi or Gochujang and pork or chicken. The other thing you can do with these is add them to a soup (like a Wonton and Chicken Soup) in which case, no need to fry them up. The rice cakes are $3.29 (16 oz). They’re are in the Asian frozen area. These are a “Product of Korea”. While not quite as good as ones I buy in say at H-Mart in a pinch these will do and easy to buy. VEGAN, GLUTEN FREE
I think there’s something about buying a living plant against cut flowers or trees that won’t last. So instead of buying a wreath to hang on the door, which will just last a few weeks, this live ivy plant trained into a wreath shape will keep going all year round, as long as you water it. So while you can’t hang it on your door of course you could put this wreath shaped plant in a window with it’s blinking lights, or perhaps on a table as the centerpiece for a holiday decoration. The ones I saw at TJ’s the other day looked very healthy to me. Ivy can last forever if you take care of it. Could even be a Gift? Come with a little bag which has a short sting with about a dozen small white LED lights (takes 3 AA batteries). You can save this LED light string and use it over and over again, like I have. $12.99
TJ’s has these little Grump trees for sale again right now for Xmas. They are cute and a pretty good deal for just $9.99. These can make a funny gift…. But wait, why”Grump” Tree? I’m guessing it’s for copyright reasons. TJ’s doesn’t want to say Grinch less they get sued by the Dr. Seuss estate. However they can get away with saying Grump and we all get the reference to The Grinch by it’s design (a clever idea just wrapping the tree to a point). If you don’t feel like laying out a ton of money for a Christmas tree ($50-150?) maybe you could get away with a little Grump tree and dress it up really nice with a lot of decorations… And it will last. If you take care of it, it will grow and grow and maybe you can use it for a few years. “Will eventually grow into a large tree. Keep well watered.”
I was glad to see these pantry ready packs of (vacuum packed) fresh (cooked, ready to use) noodles in Trader Joe’s NEW ITEMS area recently. I think sometime in the past Trader Joe’s sold some kind of fresh Asian noodle but none I can recall for a few years. Trader Joe’s “Thai Wheat Noodles” are a pretty typical Asian style noodle. Think maybe “Udon”? These can be used for any kind of Asian noodle dish. These noodles are as much Chinese or Japanese as they are Thai, they’re just a typical Asian wheat noodle though the box does say Product of Thailand hence the name I guess. They’re $2.99 a pack (21 oz). They come in 3 individual bags of about 1 portion each, ready to use in a recipe. Each bag has about 7 ounces of noodles. To me that seems a little bit of a skimpy portion, and I wish these had just a bit more, even one more ounce to make 8 ounces which would be a more decent portion. I found one bag will make a portion for one for a finished noodle dish factoring in other added stuff. So I definitely suggest you “beef it up” and add stuff: veggies, proteins, etc. For one dish I made with these (see pic I had a few pieces of cooked chicken tenderloins in my fridge so I topped it with the chicken plus a lot of scallions and slivered cucumbers. I basically used the recipe they have on the box for “Sesame Scallion Noodles”and added to it. TIP: Right out of the package you will find the noodles are really stuck together into an almost impenetrable brick. To get them unstuck and loose I really had to work at them using chopsticks and tongs when I added the liquid sauce ingredients; it was not easy to get them loosened up. So I experimented the next time I made them with pouring on hot/boiling water first. Use very hot or just boiled water, rinsing them in a bowl or a colander. I used my fingers/chopsticks/tongs to get them as unstuck as possible, bit by bit. Then rinsed them in cold water and drained them. That worked better to prep them before adding them to the dish so suggest this for your prep. Place drained noodles a bowl and give them just a drizzle of oil over them and mix while you get your other ingredients ready to stir fry. Note that these are already cooked so don’t cook too much or they might get mushy.
You can of course also use these noodles in any stir fried dish of your own choosing. Some other ideas for toppings would be some grilled pork (Cha Siu?), grilled shrimp, or go simple with just a fried egg on top with some Gojujang or other sauce. I would say these wheat noodles are basically the same as a Japanese “Udon” noodle – so you could use them in Japanese cooking, say to make a “YAKIUDON“. I did a kind of YAKI UDON with these and it worked fine. The box’s recipe for “SESAME SCALLION NOODLES” worked fairly well too when I made it. TIP: The recipe on the box is for just one package so double or triple the recipe if you are making more than one or you will not have enough sauce. The recipe on the box is a good basic recipe that you can modify. I added a heaping tablespoon of crunchy peanut butter to it, to make it “Thai”. I also used a little Bomba to spice it up. These noodles are handy and not bad at about a buck a portion, even if they don’t match up to the fresh noodles (not vacumn packed) you can find at any Asian grocery. One more thing I just thought of, you could say add these to Trader Joe’s GINGER MISO soup and come up with a noodle version of that! I hope TJ’s keeps these around so check them out so they see they are selling! I would buy these again.
We’ve tested these out in our kitchen and are finding them to be pretty useful. They seem to me like those orange “Chamois” cloths you get at a dollar store. But as my “dollar store” has now gone up to being a $1.29 and up store, these Trader Joe’s viscose cloths are convenient to buy and are not out of line price at $2.99 for two cloths in the package (though I wish they were a little bigger). We’re mainly using them for kitchen counters and the like. These cleaning cloths are strong and quite absorbent. They do absorb a lot even when wet. You just wring them out till damp and they absorb a ton of liquid again. These are useful and “eco”, saving some paper towel use. I would buy these again.
Trader Joe’s Fish Nuggets are tasty and these taste like a real battered piece of fish. They are perfect for making fish tacos for one thing. The first ingredient is Alaskan Pollack. Don’t confuse this item (“Fish Nuggets”) with TJ’s “Fish Sticks”which are terrible, way inferior to these at a dollar less. I used these nuggets to make Fish Tacos for dinner the other night. BTW I didn’t bake these as it says on the package. I sauteed them in a cast iron pan till they were crispy on both sides.
We really enjoyed these when we made them into fish tacos. The popular TJ’s Fish Tacos recipe is easy to make. You take a package of these, Corn Tortillas (which I think will taste better than flour ones) and top with crunchy slaw made with the Cole Slaw Mix, some Greek Yogurt, and lime juice. Optional but nice would be some ripe avocado and your favorite hot sauce. I would recommend TJ’s Green Dragon and/or Peri-Peri hot sauce as being a good match with fish tacos.
TJ’s BATTERED FISH NUGGETS are now $5.99 for a 1 lb package. The other thing these might be good for is an English style Fish & Chips with some french fries?
“These tantalizing tacos combine the tart, tangy, and savory flavors of fresh Lime juice and crispy Battered Fish Nuggets with a mix of soft, crunchy, and creamy textures, courtesy of our Corn Tortillas, Organic Broccoli Slaw, and Plain Greek Whole Milk Yogurt. Endlessly customizable with your favorite hot sauce, salsa, or crema, one batch of these can feed a family of four and even more, depending on your hunger level.”
FISH TACOS
TJ’s Battered Fish Nuggets
TJ’s Plain Greek Whole Milk Yogurt
1 Lime
TJ’s Organic Broccoli Slaw or Cole Slaw Mix
TJ’s Corn Tortillas
Add yogurt and lime juice to the slaw mix; let sit a 1/2 hour to marinate. Cook up the fish till golden brown and put two pieces into a warm corn tortilla and top with slaw and a few drops of salsa or hot sauce.
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