Trader Joe's Crunchy Almond Butter Puffs Cereal

A first impression is a lasting one. 

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. 

And so on and so on with a few little pithy adages, but let's start off the new year with some initial impressions of the new Trader Joe's Crunchy Almond Butter Puffs Cereal. 

C'mon, that sounds awesome, right? Boom. First impression made.

Take a look at it, too. It's rice and quinoa based, so no gluten. And as a lowkey bonus, read the description: it's not just almond butter, which is tasty enough in its own right if not a tad plain...but also cocoa powder too! So this can be a healthyesque breakfast cereal that tastes like a buttercup maybe! This train is gaining some traction here. Choochoo!

But then hold the box, or even better, try to open it. The bag inside too. Perhaps the first clue that something is a bit off. The cardboard stock to make the actual cereal box is...odd. It's not the familiar type, but instead sturdier, glossier, stockier, more rigid. It feels odd. If you happen to take a look at the bottom flaps, you'd notice it's folded together, not glued and sealed. Kinda odd, but sturdy enough given the materials. But whatever glue was spared on the bottom was more than accounted for atop, as man, these flaps didn't want to open. There's some serious papercut potential here. But once you past that, you're finally on to the big boss: the bag. It's thicker and heavier and glued way tighter than it should for easy manual opening - I gave up and used scissors to avoid unnecessary cereal explosions all over the floor. lord knows my kids do enough of those themselves. 

Finally, take a bite. Or try to. These puffs are hard. "Crunchy" is an understatement. Looking thru ingredients, because it can't be just rice and quinoa..aha. Cassava flour, too. There it is. All those flours come together to make some sort of cereal kernel that's then coated in almond butter and rolled in cocoa powder. The result: a jaw-achingly crunchy cereal. Tired out my molars for sure, and if you'd think milk would soften it up, you'd be wrong. 

Speaking of milk...I'd say skip it altogether for these poundy puffs. Not only does it not really appreciably soften the crunch, but it seems to cover up all the taste, too. Indeed, if eaten more as a dry snack, the flavors come out a bit more: the earthy grains, the nutty almond butter, the little tastes of cocoa here and there. It's fairly subtle and actually pretty tasty without being too much of a sugarbomb. Delicious, really. While breakfast may be important, sometimes a snack is so much better.

So there you have it. It remains to be seen how often we'll pick up the almond butter puffs for the $4 or so it set us back. I'm definitely not in as love with them as I thought I would, but I don't horribly mind them either. Some matching threes sounds about right. 

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Crunchy Almond Butter Puffs Cereal: 6 out of 10 Golden Spoons.

Trader Joe's 2020 Vintage Spiced Ale

2020. There's one for the books. Appropriate to end the year with a product that actually has "2020" in its name, dontcha think?

Now, I'm not sure if I'm doing this right. If this were a bottle of wine, we'd want it to age a few years and then in, say, 2025 or 2030, we'd be like, "Hey let's break out that bottle of vintage '20 we've got in the cellar," and then we'd reminisce about this most ridiculous of years. Incidentally, that's one of the gifts I got Sonia this year for Christmas—a wine rack that we keep in the basement. I even assembled it myself. We totally have a wine cellar now. We're fancy like that. Actually not really.

We keep one row of pseudo-fancy local stuff on the top rack. The rest is filled in with cheap wines and random selections like, well, this spiced ale. I wouldn't call it "cheap," but for $5.99, it's not exactly gonna break the bank, either. It's a top rack bottle for a bottom rack price. I mean, granted, it's not even wine...it's dark ale, but the shape and size of the bottle fit our wine rack perfectly.

So since I'm fairly certain most ales don't improve with age, let's see what we've got going here. Ooh. That is spicy.

Upon pouring into my pub-style pint glass, the head was a little out of control. I like to think I'm decent at pouring like a bartender, where you have the glass basically horizontal at the start of the pour and then you slowly upright the glass as the liquid falls to the bottom, so as to minimize the agitation of the beverage, thus reducing the amount of unwanted foam on top. However, I may have to reassess my pouring skills after serving Sonia and myself about 1/2 pint of beer and 1/2 pint of foam each.

Nevertheless, the foam and the beer were both tasty. The ale was fairly spice-forward with a sort of clove and allspice blend. There was something cinnamony in there, too, but it definitely had the flavor of a beer, rather than that of pumpkin pie or a scented candle. It was a bit creamy, malty, and it tasted festive and unique. It poured a deep brown color, nearly completely opaque. It was moderately carbonated—not too bubbly and not too flat. 

It's 9% ABV, so definitely on the stiffer end of the beer spectrum. Overall, we both liked it. I guess Trader Joe's mixes things up from year to year as far as these vintage brews are concerned, but this one was good enough that I'd definitely check out next year's offering, as well, whatever it may be. 2020 was a very interesting year and I have a sinking feeling 2021 will be, too. So grab an interesting libation or "take a cup of kindness yet" and have a happy New Year!

3.5 stars from me. 4 from Sonia.

Bottom line: 7.5 out of 10.