Trader Joe's Almond Flour Chocolate Chip Cookie Baking Mix

"Let's see...something Eastery. Something...Good Friday-ish...? What do people eat on Easter? Rabbit. Oh, no wait. Ham. But we don't eat ham...

Um...how about candy? No Trader Joe's candy. D'oh! Something else that's sweet...ah, here in the back of the pantry drawer: Trader Joe's Almond Flour Chocolate Chip Cookie Baking Mix.

I'll make up some nonsense about people giving up wheat flour for Lent and this will totally work."

That was my train of thought in selecting this particular product for today's review. Maybe you did give up wheat flour or gluten for Lent and you tried this product recently. Maybe you gave up animal products and made it the vegan way. I don't know. I think we'll try it with cow's milk because we actually have some on hand right now.

I'm not the most culinarily-inclined guy on the block, so wish me well. I'll see you back here after the cookies are done baking.

---45 minutes later---

Okay, we're back. Mission accomplished. I'd call it a success in my book, with only a few minor mishaps. 

First step: mix the powder, butter, and vanilla in a bowl, then stir in milk one cup at a time. So far, so good.

I've always loved cookie dough, so during this process I seized the opportunity to lick some of the batter out of the mixing bowl. It was super almondy, but oh-so-good. The biggest difference between the batter and the finished product is that the cookies themselves tasted way less like almond. They were extremely similar to traditional wheat flour cookies. The nuttiness that I found so prevalent in the batter is just faintly noticeable after heating.

Technically, the baking process is only 10 minutes long. I left ours in the oven for about 5 extra minutes. They wanted to be very mushy at the short end of the baking spectrum and verging on too crispy at the long end, but they were very tasty in every case. 

Sonia said they reminded her of some fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies she used to get in middle school. These cookies she referred to were wheat-flour cookies, so there again, the taste of the almond flour is very similar to regular glutentastic flour.

There's a respectable amount of chocolate chips in the mix. They're not large. Just tiny morsels. The only sugar in the flour is "coconut sugar" and the chips have some cane sugar. None of that seemed to affect the flavor much. They just tasted like very good, normal, fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies, with just a hint of extra nuttiness and perhaps a whisper of "grittiness" for lack of a better word. 

$4.99 for enough mix to make 12 cookies. Gluten-free. They can be vegan, too, if you use alternative milk and oil instead of butter. 

This is set to be one of the weirdest Easters ever. Hope you're all staying sane.  

Four and a half stars from Sonia on Trader Joe's Almond Flour Chocolate Chip Cookie Baking Mix. Four from me.

Bottom line: 8.5 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Garlic Hummus Snack Pack with Pretzel Slims and Trader Joe's Organic Pitted Kalamata Olives

Obviously these aren't so normal times right now.

I think I've left my property once in the past five days. That means for over 90% of the time, I've been wearing pajama pants. Being cooped up in the basement to work at home has been interesting - always fun when you have to put a call on hold so you can holler at the kids to QUIET THE HECK DOWN - and my back actually misses the crappy, somehow compartively ergonomic office chairs. At the time I'm writing this I'm strangely excited by and apprehensive about going out later today for some groceries and beer.

And kids? Parents of young kids out there, you know what I'm talking about. Things aren't normal or all that fun at all...but we gotta do the best we can, despite all that, for the kids, right? Gotta take care of them, shield them, protect them, yada yada yada. I'm not talking about being a Pintrest-perfect parent - I'm talking about navigating them through these difficult waters to be relatively happy, reasonably healthy (physically and emotionally), and in tact without exhausting your last nerve. Thank God for Disney+.

I think I've written before that one of my family's favorite meals is what we call "snacky dinner" - basically what it sounds like. Cold cuts, cheese, pita, chips, hummus, veggies, fruit - everybody gets to eat what they want. It's a summertime favorite, usually washed down with a watermelon. It's great.

Well, it'd been a while, so we pulled out a snacky dinner the other night, and had two new-to-us contributors -  Trader Joe's Garlic Hummus Snack Pack with Pretzel Slims and Trader Joe's Organic Pitted Kalamata Olives.

I'll do the TJ's snack pack first. It's....nothing amazing, and not worthy of its own review in my opinion. I mean, do you know what small, crispy pretzel chip tastes like? Great. Now what about basic garlic hummus? Delicious, right? Now mentally dip the chip into the hummus and imagine what that tastes like - that's pretty much precisely what we got here. Darn good, right? Yup. Earth shattering and amazing and unique and...whatever else? Nah. I will give kudos that the snack cups seems to hold more than I thought, and I got fuller than I thought on mine. And even though I'm a generous dipper, I ran out of pretzel slims before I ran out of hummus. When times return for an easy, portable snack, this could be a go-to for sure. Delish.

And now a jar of olives? What do you want me to say? Usually for snacky dinners we'd hit up an olive bar and bring home a small sampling of olives and garlic and stuff like that. Not an option right now. So I've had kalamatas before, and this TJ jar full of them pretty much fits the bill. Nothing overly right or overly wrong, but kinda Goldilocksed at "just right." Strangely, our youngest, who previously has hated olives, gave one a try and wanted more. So maybe there's something to these particular olives, but if there is, I haven't determined what that is.

So, there ya go. Are either the garlic hummus snack pack or kalamata olive jars really all that special? Nah. But as a part of our snacky dinner, for a fun meal with the family, we enjoyed them immensely. Things don't have to be perfect or special or anything right now - they just have to get us through, and if they can bring a little happiness along the way, I'm all for it. There's goodness to be found in the mundane.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Garlic Hummus Snack Pack with Pretzel Slims and Trader Joe's Organic Pitted Kalamata Olives: 7 out of 10 Golden Spoons each