Text 18556, 90 rader
Skriven 2007-08-05 08:57:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: tastes 945
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Trader Joe's roasted & lightly salted cashew halves and pieces -
definitely floor sweepings. The nut pieces range from teeny
grain of sand size, bell curving to an extreme of very small
halves. They range from mushy stale to pleasantly crisp to
almost hard, perhaps twice roasted. Pretty good to add to a
dish (what's the point, think I, of chicken with cashew nuts
if the chicken bites and cashews are all mouthful size, so you
don't get a mixing of flavors?) but not satisfactory for
snacking - for the latter, go for the whole nuts.

Trader Joe's wasabi tamari almonds - no, the wasabi isn't real;
but it's also not a camouflage for stale nuts, either. The nuts
are good and crisp, the coating uneven - some bites are very
soy saucish, some bites are very horseradishy, some are just
about perfect. Worth buying if you like all three flavors.

Trader Joe's wasabi mayonnaise - quite mayonnaisey (i.e., eggy
vinegary), with some heat. Though there is some real wasabi in
it (the ingredients list has it down bottom, near the spinach
based food coloring), it's essentially mustard mayo (there is
little difference in the chemical makeup of horseradish and
mustard flavor components). Not bad, because if you take prepared
mustard and prepared mayo and put them together, you get a yellow
mess; this is more like taking commercial mayo and stirring
Colman's into it.

Trader Joe's hummus quartet - the gullibility of the public,
what more can I say. I lost my original notes on this, but I
think they went something like this. Roasted garlic flavor was
the best - a lot of garlic, almost as much as in the real
thing. Some pink stuff (I think roasted red pepper flavor) had
some taste. Plain was plain, essentially tasteless. Scallion
tasted as though they'd put scallion slime in it, essentially
worthless. Rather poor.

Trader Joe's Brownie Bites - a good product, nice cocoa flavor,
not too too sweet despite having chocolate bits in each bite-
size cookielet. I believe it uses whole-wheat flour and is
relatively "healthful."

Trader Joe's ORGANIC dark chocolate truffle (60%) - "The uncommonly
smooth dark chocolate in this bar surrounds an intense, velvety
smooth dark chocolate truffle center. Enjoy well rounded cacao
notes with hints of jasmine, coconut and other exotic flavors as it
melts in your mouth!" Not quite, but okay. I detected pear and
banana estery tastes with a ghost of a peanutlike after; good smooth
melt, probably enhanced with lecithin. No defined difference between
the exterior and the "truffle center," rather a sort of gradient
from dark outside to slightly less dark inside.

Trader Joe's Pacific smoked salmon - strong flavors, fish, salt, and
wood. The fish was more pronounced than I prefer, though it was by
no means "gone bad"; salt was inexcusable. I was perplexed by a
rather harsh and strong smoke until I read the fine print - this
fish was smoked over oak. I'd not buy this again to nosh on, but as
it turns out it went okay with (and masked some of the shortcomings
of) the below:

Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese - they have the texture down, as
in the spreading it had that almost gummy Philadelphia aspect; the
aroma is of cereal and vanilla, and on the palate, sugar and cereal
and vanilla, not offensive, but not what one would expect. I think
there is too little acid in the mix. Again, in the mouth, the
texture was pretty convincing. Finish: vanilla. I believe that the
ingredients list does not list vanilla. The strength of the fish, see
above, cancelled the cerealliness, and the vanilla transformed the
oak into, well, less offensiveness. We used less than half a tub
for our breakfast (yes, Carol got me to eat breakfast); I used the
rest in an almost laughably healthy pseudo-Stroganoff with her pet
93% lean ground beef: the main problem here was the vanilla and the
sugar, which I buried with a hit of white wine and a glug of vinegar.

Trader Joe's whole wheat mini bagels - too sweet but okay. Not
much of a whole wheat taste (which is probably why I deemed it okay.

Trader Joe's Maryland style crab cakes - I don't know what makes
them Maryland style: they were loads of filler, a mixture of
blue, Jonah, and snow crab meats (according to the label - I was
doubtful if there were crabmeat at all in there, just some
unidentifiable fibrous strands), and lots of pimiento. Carol
thought they were about as expected; I found them nasty - if I
should sometime in my dotage want a ball o' bread, I will make
myself a ball o' bread. Plus I got a long thin thing inside mine;
this looked like and probably was a piece of plastic such as is
used to hold bales of stuff together: Carol hopefully suggested
that it was crab claw tendon, but I think it was not.

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