Trader Joe's Organic Chia Bar

Compacted trash? LOL. I can see where Marvo is coming from, but I don't think these look that bad. They're just a bunch of smooshed-together ingredients, crushed into a bar shape, similar to the fruit + fruit bars we've seen in the past—except these have lots of seeds and nuts, not just fruits.

Texture-wise, they're exactly what you'd expect: a granola-esque, chewy vibe, with a little extra grittiness from the chia seeds. They're not tough in any way, but neither are they smooth. The dried fruit serves as a virtual "glue" binding the other ingredients together with its natural stickiness. I mean, I guess the organic syrups help in that department, too. There's plenty of sticky stuff holding these bars together—they're definitely not going to fall apart in your hands, yet they're not super sticky to the touch, either. All in all, they feel pretty pleasant, particularly if you're into granola bars.

And they're shockingly tasty. I'm still not even sure where all that flavor's coming from. There are a lot of "healthy" sugars and sweeteners in there: organic brown rice syrup, organic agave syrup, and organic cane sugar. For someone with a sweet tooth like me, these bars hit the spot pretty well, despite having a bunch of hippie ingredients tossed into the mix. And don't get me wrong, I like most hippie ingredients just fine, but coming from a generation that grew up thinking of chia as nothing more than the "fur" on a weird, ceramic animal you'd put in your kitchen windowsill, it's still a bit strange to be eating snacks with chia seeds as the main attraction. But interestingly enough, the chia pet people have joined the club and are now marketing chia as something healthy to eat, as well as the head of spiky green hair on a ceramic SpongeBob SquarePants.

My main complaint about these is that they're a little on the small side. Granted, they're extraordinarily filling for their size, but I still wouldn't have minded a bit more material per bar. Four stars from me. Four from Sonia, who thinks that the texture is a little weird, but loved the flavor so much, she almost went with four and a half.

Bottom line: 8 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Sriracha Tuna Salad

After being traumatized by seeing an open jar of Bacon Jam and Sid Crosby's face in the same blog post on Wednesday, I decided to give myself a day off to recover. 

During my down time, I finished up our Sriracha Tuna Salad. It's not exactly comfort food, but tuna salad is nice and familiar, plus there's a bit of that international flair I love—in the form of tasty, Thai-inspired sriracha sauce. Although, both Sonia and I don't think it tasted a whole lot like sriracha. I mean, we could tell there was a tangy hot sauce up in the mix, but somehow it tasted a little different than the sriracha we've come to know and love.

And of course, there's mayo and some chopped up veggies. The whole thing was a tad on the liquidy side if you ask me, but it was still passably crunchy and full of good-quality tuna fish. And just as I expected, there was only a hint of heat—Sonia and I were both pining for more. We would have added some extra sriracha of our own, but we were fresh out. At 8 oz, the package is slightly less than the size of two cans of tuna. With a price point of $3.99 per tub, it's not outrageous, but we'll probably opt to make our own tuna salad and add our own customized amount of sriracha in the future, rather than make this a repeat purchase. Double threes here.

Bottom line: 6 out of 10.
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(Nate's Notes: We would have had a brand new podcast episode up for you today, but I apparently blundered the mic settings during recording, thus rendering it unusable. So apologies to anyone who was looking forward to that. We'll hopefully have a new episode up in a week or so.)