Trader Jacque's Fleur de Sel Caramel Sauce and Trader Joe's French Vanilla Ice Cream

I've been kinda waffling for the last little bit here, trying to decide if I should include the picture over to the right there. Between my complete and utter lack of any photographic talent whatsoever, and the fact that Sandy I own the world's worst ice cream scoop, and how inartfully I drizzle my ice cream toppings, and how I wanted to rave about my favorite summertime dessert ever just for it to turn out so...unPinteresty-looking, I kinda hate the picture. Perhaps it's just more evidence that I should let the wife make and photograph dessert more often. Since my photo leaves no great way to even guess what it is, it's grilled pineapple rings with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce - so easy I can make it, so tasty I highly recommend you all go make it right now. Your boss will understand, as long as you share.

We'll skip over the pineapple part here, mostly cuz we didn't get it at TJ's...I prefer fresh, wife prefers canned, TJ's was out, and it wasn't worth putting up an argument about (as my dad says, you can be happy or you can be right). As for what we did buy at TJ's..

First up, Trader Jacque's Fleur de Sel Caramel Sauce. Fleur de sel apparently literally translates as "flower of salt" which is some hoity-toity hand harvested sea salt from France. I read a Wikipedia article about it, and it really didn't shine any more light on the matter than that, so while this might be the Cadillac of sea salts, I wouldn't know any different. What I can tell you is, it makes one heckuva good caramel sauce. It's goopy and thick and rich and definitely full-flavored, while the sea salt just amps up the caramel flavor even more. I'm tempted to eat it by the spoonful, and in fact, I just might while the wifey isn't looking. I won't go out on much of a limb and say this is the some of (if not "the") best caramel sauce commercially available. Regular caramel sauce doesn't completely cut it (that squeeze bottle junk? Please.), and while there's always a place for dulce de leche, I just might have me a new favorite. Fantastic stuff, hands down.

Trader Joe's French Vanilla Ice Cream might be even better. I've always kinda regarded vanilla as a boring kind of flavor. I mean, it's just vanilla, right? For this ice cream, that's wrong. This is something tastier and fancier, like, I don't know, ~*VANILLA*~ or something. Except in a modest way, cuz vanilla still isn't all that flashy. Yet, I seriously do not know what it is, but like other Trader Joe's ice cream sent from above, we could nom all night on it just by itself, and it was even better for our pineapple/caramel dessert. It's just honest-to-good rich, creamy ice cream that for whatever reason struck my taste buds as being especially tasty and somehow more vibrant than any other vanilla ice cream that comes to mind. So good.

Sandy wasn't quite as enthusiastic going into dessert time as I was about this particular treat. She said some of it had to do with her having the caramel sauce before, and apparently it was a little too salty then for her taste. It wasn't this time around, she said, although the best she could muster up for the Fleur de Sel Caramel Sauce was just a lowly, stinkin', miserly three. You better believe I'm upping that for my score. For our second French inspiration, Sandy (as usual) was much more enthusiastic about the ice cream, going with a four. I'm going a smidge higher than that. Regardless of final scores, this was one darn good summery dessert that certainly tastes a lot better than how my feeble attempt to assemble and photograph it looks.

Bottom lines: Trader Jacque's Fleur de Sel Caramel Sauce: 8 out of 10 Golden Spoons
Trader Joe's French Vanilla Ice Cream: 8.5 of 10 Golden Spoons

Trader Joe's Honey Glazed Miso Salmon on Salad Greens

I'm beginning to grow skeptical of Trader Joe's salmon products. The best score we have so far on a TJ's salmon dish was a measly 6.5 stars out of 10. But our biggest complaint about the Mojito Salmon wasn't the salmon itself.

The Sockeye Salmon, however, was a different story. In this case, the salmon completely ruined a halfway decent bag of pasta and vegetables. With a few notable exceptions, we had a lot of comments and emails supporting our findings and opinions about that particular product. The salmon in that bag was just nasty.

Yet, brave adventurers that we are, the foodie-hack bloggers of WG@TJ's plow forth—with our tongue-in-cheek statements of self-aggrandizement held high, ingesting even the most risky of TJ's dishes, hoping that we, for the vicarious benefit of our readers, will discover something unique and tasty and worthy of our hard-earned dollars.

This dish, unfortunately, does not fall into that category.

I must admit that there is generally a huge range of differing experiences when it comes to Trader Joe's already-prepared, refrigerated meals, since the freshness factor can vary a bit, and the amount and quality of each ingredient used can also vary. But again, as in the case of the Sockeye Salmon, we have a meal with great veggies and pasta that is spoiled by a batch of highly-fishy salmon. The dressing was good, the lettuce was fresh, the lo mein was tasty, if maybe a bit too soggy. No major complaints, except for the salmon.

But unfortunately, the salmon is the centerpiece of the meal—or so one would think by looking at the label. I suppose in this case it was a saving grace that there wasn't very much salmon in the salad. What little salmon there was tasted like dirty socks—and yes, I know what dirty socks taste like...long story, don't wanna get into that now #childhoodtraumas.

I'm just going to go ahead and tell you to try it if you're desperate for a lo mein-topped salad with Asian-ish dressing. But be prepared to scoop out the salmon and serve it to a starving stray cat, who very well may pass on the offer.

2.5 out of 5 stars from me. The same from Sonia.

Bottom line: 5 out of 10 stars.