My quest to try everything new at Trader Joe’s is going great, thanks for asking. There have been SO MANY THINGS that this is part II. (Here is Part I.) New this month: Pumpkin-spiced madeleines I’m fond of, mochi I’m not, and get this, carrot cake spread. I think it’s jam? Let’s explore together.

Heirloom Popcorn, $1.99

The sound of a bag of packaged popcorn opening is on a frequency only zombie office workers can hear. And they come speed-walking to try handfuls of the salty-crunchy stuff. This HEIRLOOM popcorn, made with AVOCADO OIL and PINK SALT, might as well be served with a carafe, it’s so thirsty. We get it! You’re made with buzzwords! The tinier-than-usual but not quite Pipcorn kernels are barely salty, which keeps you coming back for more. The avocado oil doesn’t taste like anything, but how does it make you feel? Righteous. “If by heirloom, they mean it tastes like something dusted off from the attic, that’s accurate,” commented a snobby colleague. It’s not that bad, but it was a funny quote so I included it here. If someone left me this in their last will and testament, I wouldn’t be mad. It’s more than anyone else has.

Spiced Pumpkin Madeleine Cookies, $2.99

Nice spice, Joe! Not fake tasting, no overpowering clove, but just a touch of cinnamon. As a madeleine enthusiast and owner of the specialty pan that only makes one thing, I noticed that these don’t have the puffy potbelly that freshly baked cakes, and my cat, do. Whatever! These are moist (so much so that they sort of stuck to each other in the bag) and tender, and they won over the pumpkin haters in the office. Dip it in your coffee, be happy! I’m not stopping you.

Thai Tea Mini Mochi, $3.49

There’s something eerily fleshy about the color and texture of these mochi, made with coconut milk instead of the traditional sweetened condensed milk. The overly bitter black tea-flavored ice cream within has that icy, dairy-free quality that I imagine it would taste like to lick the walls of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Once left out for longer than 10 minutes, these begin to melt and their rice flour skin detaches from the ice cream, leaving a woefully 💩 blob stuck to the sides of the plastic container. Uhhhh…..

Seltzers With a Splash, $2.99/4-pack

Tried the lemon-ginger, which tasted like a cold-fighting health tonic, in a good way. Suuuuper gingery. For ginger lovers only!

ABC Bars, $2.99/box of 6

Contrary to popular assumption, these are not already-been-chewed bars. Too bad! Could’ve been a nice time for Trader Joe’s to get into performance art. These cocoa powder coated chewy almond butter bars look like dirt, or the squishy black top of the parking lot where my high school marching band practiced for three hours in the hot Texas sun. (People passed out daily.) Anyway. The paste-like almond butter in the center sticks to your mouth and needs salt–bad. I prefer the peanut-date bars tested earlier this year.

Organic Shredded 3 Cheese Blend, $4.49

Sprinkle it into your mouth like a child catching snowflakes, see what happens. (They spill all over your floor, the cat comes running.) Each individual shred has the sort of rough but pliable texture of…plastic, I guess. It melts beautifully into a grilled cheese offering the nuanced flavors of not one, but three different cheeses. What are they? I don’t know and don’t really care. It’s cheese.

Black Licorice Treads, $2.49

GUEST REVIEWER! Healthyish editor and black licorice fan Amanda Shapiro. “It’s sweeter and less salty than the intense stuff I’m normally into,” she told me, showing off. It tastes like the interior of Good & Plenty, she noted, with the texture of a fruit roll-up, while fun to tear like string cheese. That’s a lot of metaphors, but you get it.

Organic Caesar Salad Kit, $3.99

Gloopy!

Ready To Drink Cold Brew Coffee, $4.99 for 32 oz.

Because it was cold and rainy on the day I tasted this—I heated it up. Yep. So what? It’s smooth and medium-bodied (unlike the chest-hair sprouting tar water of some bottled cold brews) with notes of Hershey’s milk chocolate.

Carrot Cake Spread, $2.99

I love this in theory, which is the same reason I never learned French. The idea is, you spread this on top of a cinnamon raisin and cream cheese bagel, swirl it into oatmeal, or “eat it with a spoon,” which is what I did. And what’s it like? A sugar paste dotted with little crunchy bits of DRIED CARROT. LE HUH? The texture of the astronaut space food carrots was of chia seeds, if they were twice as large and not softened. A distinct knobby crunch you can’t shake. Is there pineapple in carrot cake? It’s present here, like a cell phone going off at the ballet. Some people might enjoy this.

Organic Yellow Lentil & Brown Rice Spaghetti, $2.99

A long time ago, rocks in chair on porch, I realized that if I’m going to eat pasta, it’s going to be regular-ass pasta. This bean business, which has the flaxen hue and stick-like texture of scarecrow hair, is too far a cry from the original. It never quite reaches the chewy, silky texture of your usual spaghetti. If you’re gluten-free, I’d recommend a bag of Trader Joe’s brown Basmati rice.

Thailand Mae Kah Jan Chiang Rai Small Lot Coffee, $8.99/12 oz. bag

This had a surprising (and near transparent) light body, considering most TJ coffee tastes like too-strong hotel room coffee and that the packaging said…bold.

Old Fashioned Waffle Cones, $2.49/box of 12

Really proud of Joe for keeping all of these intact in their foam packaging. I loved the near-burnt toast flavor and appreciate the sturdy structural integrity. Imagine this: Cone. Insert single jumbo marshmallow at the bottom. Squirt a spiral of caramel sauce on cone interior. Insert one scoop of ice cream. Add layer of crushed potato chips. Top with second scoop of ice cream. Repeat until overfloweth.

Uncured Ham & Swiss Cheese Flaky Croissant Dough Squares, $4.99

There’s a sort of Humpty Dumpty quality to this product. Each individual dough boy, a soft rectangle of pre-cut puff pastry, comes in a plastic bag where cheese and tiny ham cubes have scattered about. Once you put all back together again, you throw it in the oven until the dough is golden and cheese melted. In that time I googled “uncured ham” and contrary to my assumptions of something special, it just means plain, unbrined/smoked/yummy. I guess “plain ham squares” wasn’t on the table, but it was, I’d still eat them. A serving is “one,” so I demolished three, leaving fond greasy memories all over my laptop keyboard.

Previously

The Week of August 23:

Cold Brew Coffee Bags, $5.99

Barista Joe makes homemade cold brew one step easier by putting the grounds into palm-sized tea bags that you steep overnight. These little bean bag chairs means all of that fuss where you strain the grounds yourself is taken out of the equation, the convenience level of Velcro shoes. And I love Velcro! The coffee is strong as hell, without the bitterness of hot-brewed TJ coffee. Note: there are only four bags in each package and they recommend two bags per pitcher. Does math for the first time in ten years. Not sure if this adds up to a good deal. But bean bags!!!

Organic Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast Strips, $6.99/pound

Chicken is cut for you.

Asiago Cheese, $7.99/pound

Remember how revolutionary the asiago bagels at Einstein Bros. Bagels were? Imagine my shock and disappointment when I moved to New York only to discover they didn’t pre-melt cheese on their bagels. Slightly nutty asiago—Parmesan’s more mellow cousin—has slowly grown in popularity in the past decade, and here it is all by itself in a slightly greasy wedge that I grated into malfatti (great idea). The crumbly, near-rubbery texture means I’ll pass on it for cheese plates; it’s a shredder all the way.

Cheese Party Tray, $5.49

Speaking of cheese plates I’ll pass on, this party tray contains shingled rectangles of swiss, cheddar, pepper jack, and colby jack. Those are SANDWICH cheeses, not party cheeses, JOE. Where’s the GD triple creme?! As they sat out in the black plastic tray fit for a party in a car dealership break room, a sheer layer of cheese sweat formed, which gave each slice a hardened edge. Not unlike someone who’s been reviewing Trader Joe’s products for eight months.

Mini Sheet Cakes $4.49

Ooooh cake! Someone DMed me on Instagram that they loved the Chantilly Cream Vanilla Bean sheet cake so much that they tracked down the original bakery and commissioned them to make a larger version for their wedding. Isn’t that incredible?! And I can see why: the charmingly off-center frosting is sweet and buttery with flecks of real vanilla, while the moist cake is lightly spiced. Which reminds me! I also forgot to tell you guys that I recently saw a happy couple on their wedding day, making a Trader Joe’s stop en route to City Hall. Suit, wedding dress, the whole thing!! They were walking down the (TJ’s) aisle with a bouquet of flowers, beaming with happiness. Everyone in the checkout line wished them congratulations. It was a special moment—for this hardened piece of cheese in particular.

Skip the Dark Chocolate Ganache, unless you have a whole gallon of milk at the ready to wash it down.

Organic Mediterranean Style Salad Kit, $3.99

There’s nothing like the smell of raw, chopped broccoli unleashed from its plastic bag. My notes read: “farty.” Hey, that’s what they say, I can’t sugar coat it. Or can I? The gloopy sweet red wine vinegar dressing certainly will. This salad kit, like all the others, spawns more plastic bags right as you cut upon the next one. One’s got the dressing, another some shoe leather pieces of sundried tomato, one for crunchy things, one for feta cheese. Despite all of the arts and crafts, I liked the shredded radicchio and romaine confetti, which I’d eat over raw kale any day of the week. I doctored it up with black olives and made a lunch of half the bag.

Neapolitan Joe-Joe’s, $2.99

Extreme artificial strawberry ice cream flavor overwhelms any hope for equilibrium in these ambitious tri-colored not-Oreo cookies. What I mean is: hella strawberry. I watched my colleague Emily Schultz dissect a Joe-Joe, using the vanilla cookie to scrape the cement-like strawberry creme filling off the chocolate cookie, which she licked off like Fun Dip. WHO RAISED YOU, EMILY? Others took a whiff and walked away. I ate four in a row. You either do, or you don’t.

BBQ Seasoned Spatchcocked Chicken, $3.99/pound

“That’s obscene,” Andy Baraghani said when he saw the spatchcocked chicken about to be photographed, limbs splayed open for the world to see. However, it’s a genius selling point—an intimidating-seeming way to cook whole chicken (here’s how to do it at home, backbone removed and wings tucked under for even, crispy-skinned grilling. Or roasting–I cooked it in the oven on a cast-iron. If only they sold plain spatchcocked chickens instead of the pre-seasoned ones (there’s also lemon-rosemary), because it tasted like barbecue potato chips, heavy on the maple syrup and paprika.

Organic Hemp Seed Bars, $2.99

Healthyish editor Amanda Shapiro chimed in with her professional opinion on these bars, which are “chewy but not too chewy,” and “taste like nothing.” There ya have it, folks. The agave sweetener is subtle; the only flavor you really taste are the shriveled little bites of freeze-dried blueberry.

Simpler Wines Chardonnay Too Uncanny. $2.99

Hold onto your velour beach visors! Because Chardonnay joins the lineup of canned TJ rosé this summer. The aroma of green apple shampoo paired well with the ice cube I added. There are notes of who-cares-it’s-canned-wine, and papaya-I-think? (Marissa Ross, am I doing this right?) It’s a slightly acidic, not buttery, Chardonnay that I wouldn’t mind stashing in my bag to take to the movies.