Trader Joe's Mushroom & Company Multipurpose Umami Seasoning Blend

First and foremost...Happy New Year everyone! Here's to hoping your 2019 will be full of enough golden spoons to make it pantheon worthy.

Second off...umami. It's a word that's always been a little full of mystery for me. It's a word to describe a taste along with salty, sweet, bitter or sour, all of which I feel I have a basic grasp.

But umami? Please. I had my suspicions that Google confirmed: it just means savory. That's all. It's goofy to me, using a word then immediately having to include a much easier to grasp definition. Why can't we just call it "savory" and skip the whole "umami" deal? Granted, it's more fun to say, and makes me feel a little sophisticated, but still. In the food description family, umami is the hoity-toity cousin that tries just a little too hard to stick out.

All this to say if anyone ever asks you what "umami" tastes like, for whatever reason, it wouldn't be a bad idea to pick up Trader Joe's Mushroom & Company Multipurpose Umami Seasoning Blend.

It's, well....savory. Duh. But there's quite a bit going on here too. There's a good salty bite, but also a little spice, a little heat, a little herby earthy type vibe...and comfort. It tastes like comfort. Like a warm broth washing over all the ills of the world. There's just something extra to it. Maybe somehow it's the mushroom powder, as I have no idea what it really does, but man, it's there. It's something to really kinda experience instead of being easily describable.

Except maybe in this regard: it tastes like what makes chicken soup good. Or a good gravy. Or some nicely roasted meat. Or...stuff like that. I can somehow only think of the seasoning through a carnivore lens, though I'm sure it'd work on veggies and potato soup and all that kinda stuff too.

My only complaint is it seems a lot has to be used to make the flavor really noticeable. We made some New Years pork roast that I had to shake a bit much of this on top to really release the umami tsunami. Eh well. No matter. More comfort, one shake at a time.

No real complaints. It'll be a pantry staple as long as TJ's can be bothered to carry it, which will hopefully be all of this year. That'd really make 2019 one to savor.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Mushroom & Company Multipurpose Umami Seasoning Blend: 9 out of 10 Golden Spoons.

Trader Joe's Champagne Gummy Candies

Well, 2018, you've been an interesting year. You were certainly better to us than 2017, but that one wasn't hard to top at all. 

Sonia and I are loving life on the open road so far, and 2019 will be our first full year of nomadic living. Bring it on.

We found this fun bag of gimmicky gummies at a Trader Joe's in Austin, Texas. I don't think it ever would have occurred to me in a thousand years to turn champagne into gummy candy. But fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it—somebody did.

Each candy is shaped like a champagne bottle. Imagine that. Sonia thinks they resemble...well, I won't tell you what she said about their suggestive shape on this family-friendly blog. Just suffice it to say that I had to tell her to get her mind out of the gutter. Although, well, she kinda has a point.

The flavors are very subtle. There's rosé and brut. I want to say I can detect the difference between the two, but I wouldn't want to put money on guessing which was which in a blind taste test. They're not overly sweet or sour or flavorful. I suppose champagne is supposed to have a "dry" taste and feel to it. These do too in a way, although the dryness of champagne doesn't really lend itself to gummy candy particularly well, in my opinion. And there is actual champagne in there—but all the alcohol is burned off in the manufacturing process. I'm guessing if you were inclined to pair a gummy candy with a glass of actual champagne for some reason, this would be the product to reach for.

Texture-wise, Sonia and I both found the candy to be somewhat leathery. The "best by" date on our bag is in 2020, so it's not like they should be stale. It's an odd mouthfeel. There's no melt-in-your-mouth quality here at all. They require a tad too much masticating, if you ask us. Sonia thinks they might even pose a choking hazard, since they're "slippery" as well as overly-chewy.

If you're too cheap to spring for an actual bottle of champagne, you could probably skate by with this $2 bag of clever candies as your contribution to the NYE party refreshments. As long as people are on their way to Happy Town, they likely won't even notice that these gummies aren't that good. Meh. They're not that bad, either, I guess.

Happy New Year!

Bottom line: 6 out of 10.