The Friday 4: Best Trader Joe's Products

Until this spring I'd never knowingly tasted a Trader Joe's product, and until this summer, I'd never stepped foot in the store. But on a city adventure this summer, Brad and I stopped by the Pittsburgh store, which is located in the new posh area of posh Shadyside (where all the cool hipsters live). I'd been jonesin' for my very own bottle of Pear Cinnamon Cider, which my modernist poetry professor brought to class one day in the spring. I must've drunk half the bottle that day . . . . 

Brad was skeptical that this was going to be another Whole Foods,* and honestly I wasn't totally sure it wouldn't be, but we went anyway and were both very pleasantly surprised. It was a whole lot smaller than I'd expected, and the customers were super not-friendly. But the staff is awesome, and the prices are super reasonable. Plus, they've got a bunch of products (almost all of which are their own brand) that I just haven't seen elsewhere (though, to be fair, I was never really looking). 

We've at least liked nearly everything we've gotten there, and loved a whole lot of it. Below are my four favorites. TJ's products have become a semi-staple (it's hard to get over there, otherwise we'd go bi-weekly) in our diets.Check out a TJ's if there's one local. 

4.  Trader Joe's Mini Chicken Tacos 

I ate too many of these the first two times we bought them (surprise surprise - bah), so I'm sick of them, but Brad loves them, and they are surprisingly tasty and easy to make (8 min. in the oven), and they're not soggy. We always eat them as-is, but I'm sure they'd be delicious with some shredded cheese as per the picture on the front of the package. 

I want to say the box of mini tacos is $3.99 (?), but it could be a little more. Even so, it's not a bad price at all, and there's way less sodium in TJ's frozen products than in typical frozen products. 

3.  Trader Joe's Pear Cinnamon Cider 

At $2.99 a bottle, this isn't one of the best-priced items TJ's has to offer, but it's so tasty and different I can't leave it off the list. It's sweet with a bit of a kick (but not too much kick) and not like your usual bottled juice. 

(Brad just commented, "That would be one of my favorites, too, if I were ever allowed to have any." It's true: I'm stingy. But you have to understand just how much I adore this cider.) 

2.  Trader Joe's Masala Simmer Sauce 

I think this stuff goes for about $1.99. Maybe $2.49. It's delish. I am not a daring eater, and of the, oh, three (?) Indian dishes I've tried, chicken tikka masala is my faaaaaavorite. 

TJ's sauce is thinner than what you get at an Indian place, and it does have a bit less spice. But we've found the trick is to not add any water, because when you cook the chicken (in the skillet), the juices from the chicken will already thin out the sauce. (The directions on the jar say to add a jar's worth of water - DO NOT!). 

As an additional note, we pair the chicken with TJ's jasmine rice. We've never found a better price on jasmine rice, and, as with all rice, Brad (for some reason) has the most success cooking it in the microwave. Just be sure to rinse it out well beforehand! 

1.  Trader Ming's Mandarin Orange Chicken 

This is by far the best not-from-a-Chinese-restaurant-Chinese-food I've ever had. It actually tastes like Chinese food, which I can't say for any of the other frozen Chinese bag meals I've consumed. And believe me, that number is higher than I'd like to admit. 

The chicken comes out crispy, there's nearly enough sauce (instead of the usual absolutely-not-enough), and the flavor is delicious. It doesn't actually taste like orange chicken you'd get at a Chinese restaurant, but it does taste like authentic something (very exact description, I know). 

There are three servings in a bag, and we actually parse it out into 3 servings - we each have one and save the other for the next time - so at $4.99 a bag, that's a pretty cheap meal considering all you need to add is white rice. 

*No offense to Whole Foods-lovers. They've got great produce and meat and some other nifty stuff, and when we had the money (rarely) or I was on a three-day health binge (more frequently) back when we lived in the city, Brad and I would head on down to the Whole Foods in Shadyside and stock up. But their prices are beyond outrageous, and the air of superiority floating around that place and in a 50-foot radius is unreal. 

Oh, look! It's new!

My blog look, that is. No, it's not super fancy-shmancy, and I haven't even changed my picture (how boring I am!), but it's fall and this is a fall-ish look, so it's fun and seasonally appropriate, if I do say so myself. 

I mean, there's orange, and other than brown/tan/caramel, I don't know what's more fall than the color orange. You got your orange-y leaves on the ground. You got your obviously orange pumpkins doing their thing. You got your sort-of-orangish-if-you-squint-your-eyes cider. (Speaking of, I just had some delicious cider from Trader Joe's at school yesterday, and boy does it scream, "Fall's here!" Which is interesting if you don't usually think of beverages as talking, let alone screaming.) 

And I'm sure there are other orange things that just aren't coming to mind. Hardy mums? Candy corn? 

Anyway, enjoy fall while it lasts. It's my favorite season, and maybe yours, too, but I feel like it keeps getting shorter and shorter over the years. Like, we only have truly fall weather (45-65 degrees, some wind, chilly but not miserable) for a month and a half at most. Then it's into freezing town, at least for us Pixburghers . . . So, I'm eating it up while it's here!

Good ol' music and the good ol' days

I am, hopelessly, a devotee of the bands I fell in love with circa a decade ago and, more specifically, the songs and albums they put out back then. The big names that made it - Train, Vertical Horizon, Third Eye Blind, 3 Doors Down, Tonic - and the little and/or local ones you don't hear much (or anything) from these days - Athenaeum, Caroline's Spine, Black Lab, the Clarks, Dexter Freebish, Neve, Collapsis. They had my heart then and still have it - as their songs play randomly from my iPod. 

(And don't even try to tell me my music ain't sophisticated b/c I couldn't give a hairy backside.)

According to Chris Rock, you'll always love whatever music you were listening to when you started getting . . . well, you know. (Yes, for the record, I am referencing Chris Rock, and I'm proud of it. I can't think of anyone more hilarious and on-point at the same time with the exception of Seinfeld. So there.) Since I remained a virtuous lass until I wedded my dearest, I'm going to have to tweak his statement and say that whatever music you listened to while coming of age (which sounds a lot less cool than "getting laid," admittedly) will be music you love forever. I mean, isn't there just something that gets you about the tunes you loved way back when? 

And let's broaden that out to the whole music experience. I'm totally having a nostalgic moment for the Pittsburgh music scene of my high school and college days (and I know Brad joins me in this nostalgia, although he hates - hates! - my music). 

Back in t he day, Pittsburgh used to actually be a place to see up-and-comers, and man, was it fun. My senior year of high school, I went to a bunch of shows at different clubs around town. There was Graffiti, where I saw Stroke 9 while wearing a ridiculous back-less shirt and - eeks! - no bra. There was Club Laga in Oakland, and while I can't remember who I saw there, I do remember it was about 1000 degrees. And, of course, there was my favorite, Metropol, in the Strip District.

Oh Metropol, oh the memories. Amanda and I and a bunch of our friends saw Vertical Horizon there - I can still remember the bass player's maroon, skin-tight leather pants (we spazzed out - it basically screamed sex). I'm actually pretty sure that we saw them there twice. We also saw Splender - and after the show I kissed the super hot bass player, but did not accept his invitation to join him back at his hotel room . . . . 

An 18-yr. old me looking oh-so-very-excited with Matt Scannell,
lead singer of VH 

And the number one show of all time (for me, at least): we stood in the front row, smashed against the stage, sweating and screaming and singing and otherwise freaking out as Train performed its debut album (titled, of course, Train). This was before Train was "Train" and, sadly, before Metropol (and the bustling nightlife of the Strip) was no more. 

I remember talking to the band members in front of the club after the show (yes, Patrick Monahan is really that sexy) and one of them said to me, shocked and flattered, "You knew all the words to all our songs." 

I was like, "Of course! I love you guys!" At that point, they'd released only "Free" and "Meet Virginia," glorious things that they are, and most of their fans knew only those words. But we dear high school girls had, of course, virtually memorized their cd. And it was soooooooo cool that they noticed. I've still got the $10 bill that their drummer signed and gave to me. (I was into collecting things from my various hot-guy-related quests, haha.) 

So, as I sit here listening to a song Brad and I listened to courtesy of Napster on the evening of our first date in 2001 ("Send It Up" by Vertical Horizon), I want to give a shout-out: to the bands from back in the day (and all their amazing music that was felt like the soundtrack for my life) and all the old Pittsburgh clubs that didn't make it but kicked *ss while we were lucky enough to have 'em, you oldies-but-goodies are the very, very best-est. Rock on, rock on, rock on.