To my surprise, there were at least three or four different varieties of meatballs in the frozen section at Trader Joe's during my last run. It's been a hot minute since we've reviewed any kind of meatballs on this blog, so I thought: what the heck?
I chose this bag for two reasons: these are all beef meatballs, unlike the others which all contained pork. And it's brought to you by none other than our old Italian friend Trader Giotto. Buongiorno, Signor Giotto! Why they don't call you Trader Giuseppe, I'll never know. But whatevs.
I got lazy and opted for the microwave heating instructions. Ready in four minutes from frozen? Yes, please.
The texture was still quite pleasant after being nuked for a spell—not unlike fresh-made meatloaf. It was just a smidge chewier than your average melt-in-your-mouth hamburger, but still very pleasant.
The spice blend wafted out from our magical radiation machine as the meat reheated, and it made our kitchen smell like an Italian restaurant. I tried the large meatballs just by themselves, no fixings. Delicious. They tasted just like they smelled: rich, meaty, and full of peppers, garlic, onion, and parsley. I'd have happily eaten four or five meatballs by themselves for an easy protein-rich lunch.
But in the end, we heated up some pasta and marinara sauce and topped the whole thing with parmesan cheese. Perfetto!
I'm far from a meatball connoisseur, but I've gotta give Trader Giotto's Italian Style Meatballs a fairly enthusiastic thumbs up. About five bucks for a dozen full-size meatballs. Four and a half stars from me. Sonia will go with four.
Bottom line: 8.5 out of 10.
Dangit. Thought I would make it two weeks without reviewing more cookies. I've mentioned recently that our cookie review count is in the ballpark of 100 just on this blog alone. And that's no exaggeration. We've literally done about a hundred reviews of Trader Joe's brand cookies here. And I don't mean "literally" in the way the youngsters use it: like "OMG when he said that, I LITERALLY died!" I mean it like the way it's supposed to be used.
Why is it always cookies? Why can't Trader Joe's make more donuts? I think we've reviewed about four types of donuts over the course of nearly thirteen years. They could call them Joenuts. That's way more clever than "Joe-Joe's."
Anyhow, I'm sick of cookies, and I'm not a huge fan of molasses, so naturally, I picked up a box of 12 Trader Joe's Molasses Cookies on my last Trader Joe's run. Why? Because I was hoping they tasted more like brown sugar than molasses. Fortunately for me, they do.
Trader Joe's Brown Sugar Cookies are soft and chewy enough, not crispy. They do have a faint molasses flavor underneath the brown sugar, and there's a nice blend of throat-warming spices like cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. They're nearly gingerbread-esque, but if you put the word "gingerbread" on a product outside the month of December, Santa's elves will slap you with a hefty Christmas infringement fine.
Sonia liked these, predictably, a little more than I did, but we both agree they're good. Maybe even a little better than we expected. Four stars from the beautiful wifey. Three from yours truly for Trader Joe's Molasses Cookies.
Bottom line: 7 out of 10.
