(On the bag…) “Sumatra is the sixth largest island in the world with volcanic mountains extending the length of Western Sumatra. Coffee on this lush island is grown on small farms, where the beans are picked, washed and pulped by hand using the wet hulling process, creating some of the most flavorful and complex beans on the planet. Our organic and fair trade Sumatra beans are carefully roasted to a medium dark level to reveal smooth earthy flavors with little to almost no acidity.”
If you are a fan of darker coffee beans you will probably like this “Fair Trade Organic Sumatra” coffee. I sure do. I’m a big fan of this coffee.
Opening up the foil bag one gets a very appealing aroma. These coffee beans smell wonderful and are roasted to what TJ’s calls “medium dark”. Dark medium?
As you know, coffee roast descriptions can vary wildly, especially Trader Joe’s it seems but to me. I would say this is just south of what some might call a French roast? The beans are dark and shiny. This is not however an Espresso roast. Nor would I call these “over roasted” myself (hard to trust even this picture, you kind of have to see beans in person really). For this coffee I think the roast works, perfectly.
You will hopefully grind up your beans just before brewing of course… and all I can tell you is when I do and open up the grinder, I get an intense, heavenly coffee smell. For me the Sumatran is an excellent coffee, one of best coffees that Trader Joe’s has in a dark roast. I think this would be especially good for espresso machine owners as well as Moka pot brewers, like yours truly now. My brewing method the last few years is using a Moka pot . I also use a little milk with this to make something like old school “cafe con leche” as this coffee really stands up to and goes well with milk. While great as is, sometimes I will make my own custom blend of light and dark beans using this Sumatran with some lighter beans like the excellent TJ’s Azmari BUNNI Afro-Latin coffee to come up with a wonderful blend of both light and dark beans from Latin, African and Asian countries. If dark roasts are not your thing.
And of course you can brew doing a drip or pour over, I still say mixing some of this into your lighter beans, will make a good and slightly more intense coffee for drip and pour over brewers.
The 13 oz bag of the Sumatra Coffee goes for $8.99. For Fair Trade beans, that’s not bad at all. For best flavor, I say best to use this up fairly quickly, say within a two weeks after opening the bag, or in a pinch freeze some. TIP: I save empty bags for doing this. PS Even darker? The other very good espresso roast beans I like that TJ’s has is the organic Five Countries Espresso. (Update: Unfortunately Discontinued!!)
Left: Organic Sumatra Right: Azmari Bunni beans (TJ’s calls Left, “medium dark” and the Right “medium”. Go figure) But both are very good!
“CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY SWIRL” (NEW PRODUCT) An excellent new addition to Trader Joe’s ice creams containing two flavors which are so perfect together, namely chocolate ice cream plus an intense raspberry sorbet, both swirled together into one super tasty treat. This stuff is so delicious. Super gourmet premium ice cream/sorbet. Its $3.99 a pint.
Trader Joe’s CHEDDAR CHEESE with Caramelized Onions – “English Farmhouse cheddar blended with sweet caramelized onions creates a nice sweet & savory balance”
This one is another excellent cheese offering at Trader Joe’s. It’s an imported farmhouse cheddar from Dorset, England that in a CUSTOMER CHOICE AWARDS won #1 in the Cheese category. Yes, that good.
Trader Joe’s says… “It’s crafted for us on an established estate, idyllically situated between the rolling Dorset Downs and the Jurassic Coast—an international world heritage site, lush with pastures. With more than 40 years of traditional cheese making experience, a famed farm on this estate transforms rich, creamy milk from local grazing herds (within a 30 mile radius) into beautiful, full-bodied farmhouse Cheddar.”
Some cheeses are overpowered by added flavors however there are some very good cheeses with flavors that are delicious. This is one. FYI, you won’t see actual pieces of onion in the cheese; they seem to have been melted / blended in, which gives it a brown tinge. The flavors of caramelized onions match perfectly with the cheddar. You know like a Ploughman’s Lunch.
It’s delicious sliced thinly just on its own., and it was delicious too tasted with fruit (apples, grapes, pear). I just love this with a slice of my favorite apples from TJ’s (ENVY). I also loved this cheese on a cracker with a bit of the Apricot Jam (you should try this!)
What about MELTED?! Any good? Yes, yes, yes! Fantasticmelted… it made a really good melted cheese sandwich and was equally good for quesadillas. An “Ultimate melted cheese sandwich” might be mixing this cheese with the superb UNEXPECTED CHEDDAR on rye bread with a little Dijon mustard. This cheese sells for $10 a pound, which is not bad for an imported premium cheddar like this. I would gladly buy this again. I think this would be great on a cheeseboard. This is a terrific cheese, and worth trying.
I make GINGER TEA (just boil ginger in water) and really like that. This tastes pretty much exactly like that. So while cheaper to make it yourself of course, my wife really liked this Ginger Drink Mix both for the convenience and taste, so she’s buying this regularly now. It’s $2.99 (7 packets). Dissolve with 12 oz water hot or cold. Product Of Thailand.
Want to make it yourself for way less ? Here’s my ginger tea “recipe”. Take about 1″ or so of fresh ginger. Slice it up and put in a pot with about 2 cups of water. Boil for 10 minutes or so. Add sugar if desired. Enjoy!
Traeder Joe’s has these cans of SMOKED PAPRIKA, which is Spanish Pimenton. Smoky, mildly sweet and flavorful. This lovely paprika is really nice in so many things and matches well with chicken, fish, shrimp and especially well with pork. I frequently make Pork Tenderloin Filets, cut into thickish slices (tournedos) coated very liberally with a lot of smoked paprika, crushed garlic and salt and pepper, for a super easy dish which takes about 5 minutes. Just sauté the “tournedos” in a good amount of Olive Oil till golden brown but still pretty rare on the inside. Remove and add a little stock, wine or even water to deglaze the pan to make a pan sauce with a few knobs of butter. Easy, fast and delicious. TJ’s SMOKED PAPRIKA is $2.49 a tin.
“Made with organic apricots! Sweet-tart, golden orange deliciousness that’s great on toast” – Trader Joe’s
An absolutely delicious apricot preserve made in Canada from organic apricots. If you are a fan of apricots and apricot jam as I am, you too will probably love this stuff as much as I do as it has the most intense apricot taste. I put some of this preserve on a slice of TJ’s rye bread toasted with butter. So yummy. Ditto, on an English Muffin. How about with peanut butter? Great combo. I put a pinch on a cracker with goat cheese. Yum. It’s wonderful with many cheeses. I am really in love with TJ’s apricot preserves, so good on practically anything it’s almost dangerous. I confess my jar became half empty pretty quickly! TJ’s Organic Apricot Preserve is a wee bit more expensive than some other jams TJ’s sells. This one goes for $4.29 for a 17.5 oz jar, however it is Organic and super premium. My only (minor) complaint is it doesn’t have enough little chunks of apricots; there are some but its mostly smooth (its very thick) but this is the tiniest complaint as I like chunky preserves. Taste-wise this stuff is wonderful. So if you like apricots, you will love this. I would buy this again, with pleasure. I am on my second jar already.
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 Trader Joe’s came out with packs of vacuum packed “fresh” noodles that you can keep in the pantry, these so called THAI WHEAT NOODLES. Heat and serve. 3 packages noodles.
These are a typical Asian style wheat noodle, something similar to Japanese “Udon”
These can be used for anykind of Asian noodle dish. So why “Thai”? I would say these are just as much Chinese or Japanese as Thai however these noodles say Product of Thailand hence the name.
They’re about $2.50 for a 3 pack (21 oz) package. The noodles are pre-cooked, ready to use.
Each bag contains about 7 ounces of noodles. Frankly the amount seems just a tiny bit skimpy to me to make one portion. I wish these had even one more ounce, that is 8 ounces instead of 7, as that would make a more decent portion per person. I found one bag will just make a meal for one as a finished noodle dish, if you factor in other added ingredients. So I definitely suggest you “beef it up” and add things, like veggies, a protein, or what have you. Or add these to a soup.
My finished noodle dish with chicken, cucumber and scallions plus sauce
An example of one dish I made with these noodles is shown (see picture above). I had a some cooked chicken breast in the fridge which I used plus scallions and cucumbers. I basically used the recipe they have on the box for “Sesame Scallion Noodles” and added things to it. This dish turned out tasty.
Note that these noodles are already cooked so you don’t want to cook them too much more, or they might get mushy.
TIP: Opening the vacuum package you will find the noodles are clumped up together into an almost impenetrable brick that is not easy to break up! You will see I’m not kidding. To get them loosened up, I really had to work at them using chopsticks and tongs when I added the liquid sauce ingredients, as they state. But it was not easy.
TIP: HOW TO LOOSEN THESE – So the next time I made them I experimented using hot/near boiling water to loosen them up which really helps. Use very hot or near boiled water, and pour it over the noodles in a bowl. Let sit for a minute. I used my chopsticks/tongs and later fingers to get them as unstuck as possible, bit by bit. When the noodles were separated I rinsed them in cold water and drained them. Doing this worked better to prep them before adding them to the dish. One reader just says they use their fingers to pry them apart but some very hot water helps. Just be gentle so you don’t break them up into little pieces.
I placed the loosened drained noodles into a bowl and gave them just a drizzle of oil, and mixed it in as this will keep them from sticking together. Then do your other ingredients as they are ready to use (say in a stir fry). You can of course also use these noodles in any soup or perhaps a stir fried dish.
Some ideas for toppings would be some grilled chicken, beef or pork (Cha Siu?), grilled shrimp, or even just a fried egg on top with some Gojujang or other sauce. I would say these wheat noodles are basically a bit similar to “Udon” (though not as good quality as them) – so you could use them in Japanese cooking, to make a “YAKIUDON“. I did a kind of YAKI UDON with these and it worked OK. The box’s recipe for “SESAME SCALLION NOODLES” worked fairly well too when I made it.
TIP: The recipe for Sesame Scallion Noodles on the box is for one pack. So you will need to double the recipe (or more) if you are making two packs of noodles, or you will not have enough sauce. The recipe on the box is actually a good basic recipe that you can modify easily. I added a heaping tablespoon of crunchy peanut butter to it, to make it a bit more “Thai”. I also used a little Bomba hot pepper to make it spicy. Or use some Chili Crunch.
These noodles are handy and not bad at about a buck a portion, even if they don’t match up to the fresh noodles like this (not vacuum packed) you can find at many Asian grocery stores. 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 (but do add more ginger).
I hope TJ’s keeps these around so check them out so they see they are selling. (update; these seem quite popular)
I would buy these again.
VEGAN
Here’s TJ’s info on them.
“Trader Joe’s Thai Wheat Noodles, a three-pack of ready-to-use noodle packets that’s as simple to eat as heat, serve, and enjoy. They’re made for us from scratch, by a supplier in Thailand, who cooks them to soft, chewy perfection, then vacuum- seals them to keep them preserved at room temperature until the very moment you need them for a soup, curry, or stir-fry” – Trader Joe’s
Nice Chinese recipe from Xaoying’s Kitchen with cabbage and noodles which you might get some ideas from. Turn on CC Subtitles for English subtitles. Note she is using uncooked noodles. These are pre-cooked so heat for less time (60 seconds?) and then rinse and season as she does.
TJ’s sells these bottles of liquid hand soaps in three different scents. This one is “Pink Pomelo Grapefruit” and it has a really nice citrus-y grapefruit smell. They also have a Lemon version, and that one says “Kitchen Hand Soap”. Not clear on why only the Lemon one would be for the kitchen / hands. Looking at the ingredients they seem more or less the same to me. My wife however specifically told me to get the her the Lemon “kitchen” version, for her in the kitchen. In fact, when I bought this Pomelo grapefruit one home for what I thought would be a nice little variety in our kitchen she looked at me like I was crazy and then told gave me a very clear “No Way” to this Grapefruit one for the kitchen. Why? It doesn’t say “Kitchen” on the label and the Lemon one does. I see the grapefruit one says it has Jojoba and Argan oils which I would think would be good for hands, no? The Lemon one doesn’t include these Argan or Jojoba oils, but then what do I know? Anyway all the 3 kinds of TJ’s hand soaps are good, make lots of lather and smell great. These go for $3.99 each for a large pump bottle (17 oz.). I would buy it again.
(Update: These seem to have sold out very quickly!)
Trader Joe’s FLOR DE SAL, like French Fleur de Sel, is a naturally harvested sea salt. This is from Portugal. It has large grains, and is good for a “finishing salt”, something you can sprinkle a few grains on top just before serving, or leave the crock on the table as I am doing. When I saw these attractive crocks, which are only five bucks, I immediately thought, “Perfect Christmas Gift”!
– TRADER JOES SAYS: “Similar to its French equivalent, Fleur de Sel, Trader Joe’s Portuguese Flor de Sal is collected by hand, from a thin layer of salt crystals that form on the surface of the sea—it’s a gentle process, unlike traditional sea salt harvesting methods that use machines. The Salt crystals are small, delicate, and flaky— the name means salt flower in Portuguese. This Salt contains more moisture than traditional sea salt. It’s preserved in a ceramic crock and topped with a cork lid, which helps protect the crystals and keep them from drying out—it’s a terrific vessel that makes this salt tremendously giftable, and also offers countless re-use options once you’ve enjoyed the contents.”
Trader Joe’s Rants & Raves (mostly raves, a few rants) 
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