Trader Joe's Wild Blueberry Vanilla Chèvre

This past Saturday night, Sandy and I had an absolute blast while meeting up with Nathan and Sonia for hopefully the first out of many more "blog summits" (i.e., excuse to get together, eat way too much good food and drink some good drink). Nathan and I are old college buddies and it was probably something close to 10 years since we'd last seen each other, and of course we didn't know each other's spouse. Aside from some great catching up, we talked a little shop and discussed some ideas for this blog which we hope to implement soon, and a fun upcoming reader contest, so be sure to keep tuned. And did I mention the food?!?!? Oh man. We met up at the Media, PA Trader Joe's (inside an old historical train station building, how cool is that?) and went up and down the aisles and snatched a whole array of goodies, went back to their apartment, and had a tremendous feast worthy of our success (except no Two-Buck Chuck involved).

You see, this is what I love about food. Not only does a lot of it taste good, but also it's great excuse for people to come together and spend some time at the table like we did. Think of some of your fondest memories, and there's a good chance food is involved somehow. It draws people together. There's something unique and powerful and fun about sharing a meal with family and friends that honestly makes me hate eating alone. Plus, it's fun to share about stuff that tastes good and even more fun to mock things that don't. It's with this passion for food and sharing that the four of us create this blog, and we're glad you're stopping by for a glance over.

This doesn't mean we're experts or anything, for sure. Nathan refers to us as "foodie-hack bloggers" which is about as accurate a statement as possible (just ask our readers and some of our commenters! You know we love you). Take the Trader Joe's Wild Blueberry Vanilla Chèvre for example. I don't even know how to pronounce it right, that tricky word chèvre. Is it like "chiv-ray" or "cheev-ray" or even like "cherve" (you know, kinda like you'd pronounce "Brett Favre")? I couldn't tell you. What I can tell you is this: Sandy's been itchin' to try it for a while, apparently Sonia has too, I'm willing to try most anything (apparently), and Nathan, well...he's a good man, but he's on record as saying this is the one thing he's most scared to try (I'm glad that, unlike me, he didn't think turn-around was fair play and insist on buying sushi). So, we decided, what the heck, let's get it for our summit for one of our multiple appetizer/side dish treats.

Also, I tell you, it's pretty good stuff. I kinda found myself wandering back to it over and over again over the course of our meal. It's good, solid and thick yet creamy and very rich. I'd relate it to a cross between cream cheese and cheese cake, except thicker and kinda tart (no, not tarty, Sonia. Tart). I think the cheese cake-esque qualities come in from the light vanilla flavoring and, of course, the blueberry glaze around the outside consisting of dozens if not hundreds of small berries and some pleasantly sweet but not sugary goop. Probably because we didn't know much better, we picked up an assortment of regular crackers to go with it, which made an alright taste pairing though it was so dessert-like I'm wondering if perhaps something like some graham crackers would have been a better match. Regardless, it was so thick that often just trying to swipe some off the knife blade onto the cracker broke the cracker. Perhaps we just weren't handling it with the proper delicacy one needs with handling goat cheese, I don't know. All I can say is, it made for tasty bite after tasty bite.

I'm going to break this down into couples for our rating. First, our wonderful hosts from the evening. Sonia seemed to really enjoy it and finally having the chance to try it. Despite our best efforts, there was about half of it left when we packed up for the night, and she smiled a big ol' Latina smile when Sandy and I said she could hold on to it (much easier than transporting across the state). She said she'd give it a four, with the only thing missing was just a little more vanilla flavor. Nathan? Well, he manned up and tried it, took a bite, grimaced a little bit, and said "It...still tastes like goat cheese. No thanks." Eh, more for us, goat cheese-hater*. That's apparently enough for a two in his book. So, for Nathan and Sonia...Bottom line: 6 out of 10

Sandy and I? We both sided with Sonia and really liked it. Sandy wavered between giving it a 4.5 and a perfect 5 but seemed to settle on the lower of the two, which is not anything to be ashamed of by any means. Just means it was pretty darn good but lacked a certain je ne sais pas to get a full pass. I agree. While I certainly enjoyed it (and by that I mean a lot), I don't see myself getting it too often. I'm guessing that's because in my book it's more of a "fancy get-together" -type treat than an every day one. Still, very good and I'd highly recommend it for a party or something of the sort, or if you're the type who likes munching some on chèvre without any special occasion involved, well, go at it. Like Sandy, I'm deciding between two scores...I think I'll go high and say 4.5 as well.

Bottom line: 9 out of 10 Golden Spoons

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*Nate's notes - Nathan would like you all to know that he is not a goat cheese-hater, and that he does, in fact, enjoy goat cheese in its "proper" context as a savory sandwich and salad food, rather than as a dessert-ish food.

Trader Joe's Vintage Root Beer

In summers past, Sandy and I have had the privilege of going to some pretty remote towns in Mexico for a week to help out with some medical work and to get to know some of the local people. Honestly, I'm not even sure I can point to where we've gone on a map. All I know is, we flew into Mexico City, hopped into a 15-passenger van with 20 other people, and drove something like 10 hours over a mountain range or two, through endless desert stretches and then a rain forest, and wound up in a hot, dusty village on a mountainside where we'd set up shop for the week to go drive somewhere else an hour or more away to even smaller towns. Crazy fun. One of the best things about these trips (aside from, y' know, helping people/making a difference/learning from a culture different from our own) was, no matter where we went, no matter how remote, every single village had at least two or three small stores with a Coca-Cola sign out front. Go inside and there would be a cooler full of ice-cold Cokes, all frosty in their glass bottles. Late in the afternoon on a 115-degree plus day, after you get done chasing a bunch of 10 year olds around a soccer court, there's little that's more refreshing than that. Sandy and I would routinely seek a store out and for only a few pesos (something like the equivalent of 30 cents), we'd each have a Coke and seek out a shady spot to sit down and relax.

For those who don't know, "Mexican Coke" is much different than the Coke available here in the U.S. The biggest difference is, instead of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) used a sweetener, Mexican Coke (and most other sodas in the world, for that matter) use real, honest-to-goodness sugar. HFCSs have been used commonly since about the late '70s-early '80s as an ingredient in pretty much every processed product known to man (In lunch meat? Really?) mostly because as a result of imported sugar taxes and farm subsidies, it's much cheaper to use in American food production. There's been all sorts of allegations that the prevalent use of HFCSs has been THE leading contribution in the spikes in obesity and heart disease rates in the past couple decades. There's arguments for and against that notion, and it could go on and on and on, and probably will ad infinitum.

My take? I just want to have a cold, tasty drink. Trader Joe's Vintage Root Beer makes a pretty excellent choice for that. Like other soft drinks marketing themselves under a "retro" or "old school" label these days, TJ's root beer is HCFS-free, just using sweet tasty cane sugar as nature intended. I find sodas made with real sugar tend to be lighter, fresher, and crisper tasting, and the root beer doesn't do anything to change that notion. It's smooth, too, because it's not nearly as fizzy as other soft drinks. To say that it tastes "flat" would be incorrect, I think, because that implies it lacks the carbonation it should have. TJ's Vintage Root Beer tastes more like what you could expect from a homebrew kit or festival stand (like the fresh birch beer I had on the 4th at a Pennsylvania Dutch festival) than a bottle of Barq's or can of A&W. It's light, refreshing and highly drinkable with real root beer flavors like vanilla and anise shining through, and even better served over ice. I'm not as sure it'd be a great choice for floats, though that could be more my own preference because I like the combination of fizz and ice cream. All in all, by itself, it's an excellent drink.

Sandy's not much of a soda drinker aside from the very occasional Dr. Pepper, but she said she really likes it, enough to give it a 5 for all the reasons above. I'm fairly certain she tried to sneak the last bottle while I was showering upstairs, and only very reluctantly shared it with me when I caught her in the act.* Me? Tough to say exactly. It's hard to impress me sometimes on some treats I grew up with in Eastern PA that those of the Pennsylvania Dutch heritage tend to make better than just about everyone else (if TJ's ever tries to make a shoo-fly pie or funny cake, God help them), which I consider root beer being among them. To me, it's not as good as home brewed at a festival, but better than most other types that are commercially available except for A-Treat brand. Now that's some great stuff...also, at $3.99 for a four pack, the TJ's strikes me as being a little pricey. If Coke can get a fridge full of bottles to some dusty Mexican village literally in the middle of nowhere and turn enough coin to sell them at barely over a quarter each, I'd think you could get a similar high quality bottle of soda for less than a greenback each in a major U.S. metropolitan area. Maybe that's just me. Eh. Enough quibbling for me, because for what it was, I definitely enjoyed it and I'm going with a four. All this writing about it definitely just got me thirsty for another one...

Bottom line: 9 out of 10 Golden Spoons
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* Yes, dear, this is a slight exaggeration. But only slight. By the way, notice how I wrote an entire review about soda and never once called it what you and all you silly Pittsburgh-born-and-raised folks call it?