Category: Food Items (Page 6 of 26)

Oat Haus Granola Butter review

August 2, 2024 / marga / 0 Comments

This Shark Tank product tastes just like graham crackers

Since I started watching re-runs of Shark Tank on YouTube, I’ve been intrigued with trying some of the products they’ve featured. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the majority does not seem to have made a commercial success and/or are not easily available. Oat Haus Granola Butter, however, is available at Target – and while it’s $8 price was steep, I figured I’d get both the pleasure of eating it and the pleasure of reviewing it. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be true.

I like granola, and while I’m not sure what exactly I was expecting, I thought this granola butter would taste like granola. Instead, it just tasted like graham crackers mixed with oil. I’m not a huge fan of graham crackers, so this product is just not for me.

Alas, my children didn’t like it either. While they like graham crackers more than I do, they did not like the chalky, gritty texture of this granola butter. I think someone noticed this as a minus in the show as well.

The granola butter is made with oats and sunflower oil, and while it has some sort of emulsifier, it doesn’t seem to work. The can comes with a thick layer of oil on the top that you have to mix in before consuming (unless you like eating oil). Unfortunately, you have to mix it in every time.

Unfortunately, but for the few minutes I spent writing this review, this was a total waste of money.

Trader Joe’s Beef Birria Review

July 30, 2024 / marga / 0 Comments

Pretty Generic

Birria, a Mexican dish of goat or beef marinated and stewed in a sauce made with vinegar, dried chilis, garlic and herbs, is having a moment here in the US. Quesabirria tacos, tortillas filled with birria and melted cheese, are suddenly all the rage and have been added to the menus of both Mexican restaurants and taquerias all over the place, while people try to recreate them at home. It’s thus no wonder that Trader Joe’s would come up with its own, frozen beef birria.

I tried it last week and I was unimpressed. The beef just lacked flavor.

The beef comes in large boneless pieces swimming in sauce. While you have to heat it in the plastic bowl it comes in (it’s frozen, after all), you do need to transfer it to a different plate to shred it. Obviously this is still less work that making your own birria, but I’d preferred if the meat was pre-shredded. That might also have helped it draw some of the flavor from the sauce. The sauce wasn’t super flavorful either, but a bit better than the bland beef.

Now, the beef does work well if you are going to add more flavorful elements to your tacos. I didn’t have any shredded cheese at hand – and I wasn’t about to chop anything – but I added some commercial sour cream and guacamole (not usual for birria tacos) and they were better.

The 16oz dish was $8, which doesn’t seem too bad, but I wouldn’t order it again.

Ben & Jerry’s Impretzively Fudged ice cream review

July 25, 2024 / marga / 0 Comments

Salty and crunch chocolate ice cream

Impretzively Fudged is another new Ben & Jerry’s flavor destined to not last for long. The creativity of their ice cream stuff seems to have long gone down the hill and they are now just simply mixing ingredients from their other flavors, not tasting them but hoping one will catch on by magic.

This flavor consists of chocolate ice cream with fudge-crusted pretzel pieces and a pretzel swirl. Basically, it’s a salty and crunchy chocolate ice cream. The chocolate flavor is too strong to let any of the mild pretzel flavor come through, but the pretzels and the pretzel swirl do contribute a light saltiness. I wasn’t a fan of it because I’m just not a fan of chocolate ice cream – but as a fan of salted caramel, I appreciated the salty flavor here as well. And I do like crunch in my ice cream, so that was a plus. Still, I do find chocolate ice cream boring and I won’t finish up the tub (not a bad thing)

Trader Joe’s Fettuccine Alfredo

July 25, 2024 / marga / 0 Comments

Exactly what you’d expect

Trader Giotto’s, aka Trader Joe’s, Fettuccine Alfredo is just that, fettuccine alfredo. It tastes like you expect fettuccine alfredo to taste. It’s not an espectacular fettuccine alfredo – it’s frozen, after all – but it does taste as close to home made as you can expect a frozen product to taste. It probably has as many calories as the home made kind, but I won’t look and confirm that.

California Pizza Kitchen BBQ Chicken Pizza review

July 23, 2024 / marga / 0 Comments

Not bad for thin pizza

I’m not a fan of thin crust pizza, but obviously carbs are bad for me so I could enjoy pizza more often if I could convince myself to go for the thin crust. California Pizza Kitchen might just convince me to do that.

I’d always liked California Pizza Kitchen, though I can’t remember going to an actual restaurant since my 22-yo was a baby. It’s not surprising, the only one in the East Bay is in Dublin, and if I’m going to go that way, I’m going to go to Zachary’s instead (and not for the thin pizza). Their frozen pizzas, however, are manufactured by Nestlé (a very problematic company). I didn’t realize that when I ordered this one, or that they also make DiGiorno and Tombstone pizzas). Hopefully I’ll remember and avoid them in the future.

These pizzas were on sale at Safeway last week for $6 (regular price is $10) and as we didn’t have particularly high temperatures forecast for this week, and I didn’t realize they were made by Nestlé, I decided to give them a try.

The BBQ chicken pizza tasted just like I remembered from long ao. I enjoyed the flavor combination of sweet (but not too sweet) BBQ sauce, chicken, red onions and cheese. The dough wasn’t too crispy, and it served the toppings well. Being so thin, it only required about 12 minutes in a pre-heated oven.

A pizza is large enough to serve 2 if you add a salad. At under 15-oz, it’s not a super great value, but probably better than filling yourself up with carbs. I’d get it again if it wasn’t made by Nestlé.

Trader Joe’s Spizzico di Pizza Review

July 17, 2024 / marga / 0 Comments

Convenient and tasty pizza bites

Trader Joe’s Spizzico di Pizza are frozen two-bite pizza rounds that you can be heated up in the oven or the microwave – and, presumably, the air fryer. They are pretty basic: dough, sauce and cheese but my younger daughter really liked them – even more than regular frozen pizza. I wouldn’t go that far, but they were tasty enough. The sauce was slightly bittersweet, the cheese had flavor and they were surprisingly crispy even when cooked in the microwave. I’ll buy them again, because my daughter liked them. She ate the whole 9 oz package for lunch, which included 12 pizza rounds. The package was $4.

The whole package had 670 calories, 75g carbs, 8g sugar and 1390mg sodium. They’re made in Canada.

Trader Joe’s Cheese Blintzes Review

July 17, 2024 / marga / 13 Comments

Good flavor, bad texture

Trader Joe’s does many things well, but cheese blintzes is not one of them. These little crepes are sold frozen and meant to be warmed in a skillet or an oven, though I used the air fryer instead – which worked pretty well.

The crepes themselves were slightly sweet, soft and elastic, and I liked them. The problem was the cheese filling. They use a combo of farmer’s cheese and cottage cheese which tastes fine, but has an annoying, gritty texture. Both my husband and I hated it. The cheese is lightly sweetened, so you don’t need to add anything to them, but this actually bothered my husband, who would have preferred them less sweet. We wouldn’t order them again.

The blintzes are around 6″ long, they have 105 calories each, with 16g of carbs and 6g of sugar, all added. The box of 6 blintzes sells for $4.50. The package doesn’t indicate where they’re made, so I assume it’s in the US.

Signature Select Cranberry Walnut Salad Review

July 16, 2024 / marga / 0 Comments

Convenient and Tasty

I get Signature Select salads when they’re on sale at Safeway. My daughter likes the Caesar Salad, and I always go for the Cranberry Walnut one. The mixed greens come in a plastic bowl with a mini plastic fork an they are covered with a plastic insert with divisions for dried cranberries, chopped candied walnuts, feta cheese cubes and a raspberry vinaigrette. It’s easy to mix it all together in the bowl and not too messy. The proportion of greens to dressing and other ingredients is quite good and it makes for a tasty, if very light lunch as the whole bowl is just 4.5 oz (though the version sold at Vons is 4.75 oz for some reason).

Regular price right now is $4.50, which seems insane to me (as all grocery prices do), but they’re often on sale for $3 if you buy 3. If you order online, make sure to indicate a substitute as they will charge you the full price if you order 3, but they don’t have your choices. You can order more than 3 at the discounted price, however.

The Pizza Cupcake Review

July 15, 2024 / marga / 5 Comments

I finally tried this Shark Tank product and it’s good.

Shark Tank, a show where budding entrepreneurs pitch investment opportunities in their companies to five billionaires, has been on national TV for fifteen years – but as I never watch TV per se, I didn’t really become aware of it until a few weeks ago, when YouTube started pushing episodes of it on me. After trying one, I got hooked on it – not so much for the pitches, but because it introduced me to some cool products, some wacky ones and some that everyone could see were destined to be failures. Several of the products pitched to the sharks have actually become popular since their appearance on the show, though so far, there is only one I’d actually bought myself prior to becoming acquainted by the show. I have been intrigued by some of the products featured, however, and when I saw that the Pizza Cupcake was available at my local Safeway, I thought I’d give them a try.

The pizza cupcakes are not cupcakes per se, but they consist of a pastry dough baked in a smaller-than-usual muffin tin, hollow in the center and filled with pizza sauce and cheese. They come frozen and you bake them in the oven. The secret of the cupcakes is the dough, it’s described as a mixture of brioche and sourdough and it’s light, airy and yet still chewy. It’s quite tasty and I loved he consistency. The pizza sauce was on the sweet side, it bordered on being too sweet an acidic – but as there isn’t much of it, it wasn’t a big deal. The cheese is just cheese, it could have used some Parmesan for a shaper flavor. The problem is that there isn’t enough sauce/cheese for the whole cupcake – only the shallow center has it. Fortunately, the bready borders are good dipped on ranch sauce, but you have to have some around to enjoy them that way.

I cooked my cupcakes in the air fryer, using the directions in the Pizza Cupcake website: preheat the air fryer to 350°, and then cook for 5-7 minutes (I did 6). That left me with some burnt spots on the top and cheese that was bordering on cold. Next time, I’ll try not preheating and doing 8 minutes, or maybe cooking it for 10 minutes at 300° – but I imagine all air fryers are different.

The package of 6 pizza cupcakes was $10 on sale at Safeway ($13 regular price), which seems way too expensive – though I find pretty much all food at Safeway too expensive nowadays.

Trader Joe’s Cheese Filled Fiocchetti with Pink Sauce Review

July 14, 2024 / marga / 0 Comments

It’s all about the sauce

Trader Joe’s frozen Cheese Filled Fiocchetti with Pink Sauce are little egg pasta sacks filled with cheese served in an extraordinary not-really-pink cream sauce. The fiocchetti themselves are OK. Heated per instructions in the microwave, they were a little al-dente, and the cheese inside them felt liked hard, grated cheese rather than melted one. But this dish is not about the pasta, it’s about the sauce. And oh, what a sauce it is.

The sauce is a combination of cream, tomato puree and butter, seasoned with garlic, lemon juice, basil, parsley and salt and pepper. It’s bright and light, slightly acidic and just vibrant. It’s a perfect summer sauce. There is too much sauce for the included pasta, and I literally licked the plate when I was done eating.

From a nutrition point of view, this dish is as bad as you’d imagine. The whole 1lb package has 870 calories, 51g of fat and 78g of carbs. It’s supposed to be three portions, but that’s unrealistic. At best, consider it could serve two for lunch when paired with a salad. All in all, I’d see it as an occasional indulgency.

Trader Joe’s also sells a jarred pink pasta sauce. It has different ingredients than this one – it lacks lemon juice, for one, which I feel is an essential ingredient -, but I will give it a try and see if it approximates the amazing flavor of the one here.

Category: Food Items (Page 6 of 26)

Oat Haus Granola Butter review

This Shark Tank product tastes just like graham crackers