Trader Joe's Rolled Oats & Peanut Butter Fiberful Granola Bars

Chocolate. Peanut butter. I'm firmly convinced that there's nothing that this combo can't do. Every year, right around Easter time, I'm reminded how good it is because of all the Reese's eggs and other choco/pb candies that float around. There's this flea market that, growing up, my family almost always went to the Saturday of Easter weekend that had this dirt cheap candy stand that overflowed with every type of candy imaginable. My dad would give each of us $5 and whatever I didn't spend on a bag of all black jelly beans (my absolute favorite) I spent on the little foil-wrapped chocolate p.b filled bunny rabbits, and I'd get handfuls and handfuls of them. It's a combo I'm still not sick of to this very day, as evidenced by my Hoover impersonation everytime I raid my mother-in-law's candy dish when we visit her. Man, I just love it.

Well, these Trader Joe's Rolled Oats & Peanut Butter Fiberful Granola Bars didn't come from a candy store or the Easter bunny, but really, they could have. The wifey and I got these for easily portable for a long weekend trek we just made to Washington DC to see some of the museums and sites. If you haven't been, it's a lot more walking than it looks like on the maps, and I mean a lot, especially when you're six-plus months pregnant like my dear, beautiful wife. It was so much walking that at one point I nearly considered getting us Segways before remembering their inventor died from driving one off a cliff or something crazy like that.

Anyways, these granola bars. These don't disappoint me one bit. I somehow missed the fact that there's chocolate in them until I ripped the package off one of these in a ravenous rage, but there's lots of milk chocolate, from a full bottom coating to the stripes up top, just as they appear on the package. Know what else isn't in short supply? The peanut butter chips. There's tons of them, enough that the whole bar is a dead ringer for a Reese's candy bar, except there's rolled oats holding it all together. Now, I haven't been keeping on my reading of the latest rolled oat technology, but TJ's figured out a way to fortify the bars with some extra fiber (9 grams per bar!). To me, I hear about something having that kinda fiber and expect it to taste funny or be texturally stiff, or have some less-than-desirable side effects, but not one of those was true for these oats and p.b. bars. Each bar was about four or five decent bites, and were a little more filling than regular granola bars, making them a perfect snack to mush into a camera bag for the day, and for something like $3 for a box of five, were way cheaper than any snack options at museum cafes. Those places are freakin' rip-offs.

Chocolate and peanut butter combo products, like these cupcakes and cookies, typically do pretty well on the blog. These granola bars will not be an exception. I cannot think of a single way to knock them, and I will be getting these again the next time I need a reliable, easily-portable snack. I mean, they didn't even get remotely melty and mushy. Just perfect. I'm going with a five. Sandy wasn't as enthused with them as me, but still really liked them. "Eh, I've had better granola bars," she said without much further explanation. In my opinion, if she had, she's holding out on me. She's going with a four.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Rolled Oats & Peanut Butter Fiberful Granola Bars: 9 out of 10 Golden Spoons

Trader Joe's Crunchy Curls

Lentil and potato snacks? Sounds like hippie food to me. Luckily, I'm pretty well in touch with my inner-hippie. No, I'm not really into free love or smoking pot or anything like that, but I'm all about recycling and peace and unique gluten-free snack foods.

As some of you may be aware, I am also a junk food cowboy of sorts, and I'll eat anything that's overly sweet or salty or bad for me. However, that's not the end of the story. I'm pretty open to new things, and some healthy stuff really grabs me for reasons I can't quite always explain. Like these.

Lentils are the unsung heroes of the legume world. Rich with fiber, minerals, and protein, they make good soup, and apparently, pretty decent crunchable snacky things. I've always liked the taste of lentils. So earthy and hearty...they're like meaty little vegetables. As healthy things go, lentils have just about as good a flavor as anything I've tried. Sonia is amazed that they're so filling and yet have so few calories. Good job, nature. The lentil has our seal of approval. Now...if you could do something about the taste of cauliflower...

And these lentils are spirals. They're really, really curly. There's a certain novelty to the heavily-curled nature of these snacks. Curly-fries are curled, and so are Fritos. But they're not as curly as these little curlicues. Curl-o-rama. And they're really, really crunchy. If there's one thing I'm a fan of, it's when a product lives up to its name. I don't like to be tricked. If the bag says "crunchy" and "curly," then the crunchiness and curliness factors better be well above average. And in this case, they are. I'm thinking the potatoes may be mostly responsible for the crunchiness, a la Trader Joe's Veggie Sticks.

I'm not sure why I like these so much. They aren't bursting with sweetness or saltiness or anything like that...they're just wholesome and rich—and yet somehow still light. I give them a 3.5. Sonia gives them a 4. Really darn good all the way.

Bottom line: 7.5 out of 10.