Confession time: despite my love of shrimp, I've only had scampi once or twice in my life prior to this Trader Joe's dish. The carbivore in me generally chooses breaded, fried shrimp over shrimp cocktail or garlic butter shrimp. Still, I've enjoyed shrimp scampi each time I've sampled it, and this instance was no different.
The frozen shrimp all come in a big plastic bag. I neglected to count them, but I'd say the total tally was somewhere in the ballpark of 20-22 shrimp. They're surprisingly large, and they're coated in what appears to be a batter of some sort. At first, I thought TJ's stuck the wrong bag inside my shrimp scampi box. Appearance-wise, they looked very similar to the frozen Shrimp Boom Bah we tried a couple months ago.
Alas, the "batter" was nothing but frozen garlic and lemon butter sauce, which melts off the shrimp and into the skillet as you heat them. These shrimp specimens are indeed unbattered, and the garlic butter and lemon essences give them all the flavor they need. We heated them on the stovetop for about ten minutes, all said and done.
They went great with the Barilla fettuccine we paired them with. I didn't even add any extra seasonings or toppings—not even salt and pepper. The shrimp were flavorful but not fishy—just garlicky and buttery, with a hint of citrus and Romano cheese.
Texture-wise, they were near perfect. Neither rubbery, chewy, or hard, these shrimp were prepared properly, and they had exactly the right mouthfeel. I'd say they were restaurant-quality in almost every way.
$8.99 for the three serving package found in the frozen aisle. Would buy again. Eight out of ten stars from the beautiful wifey. Nine out of ten stars from me for Trader Joe's Shrimp Scampi.
Today, we're looking at a traditional German treat: bacon and egg gummies, bursting with real pork fat and chicken egg flavor! Okay, I'm just kidding. They're fruit flavored. But they really are from Deutschland. Why we're importing gummy candy from Central Europe, I'm not quite sure, but traderjoes.com says the bacon pieces are cherry and the egg pieces are mango. That's just weird, but you know what? It works...kinda.
And not only is there no pork or eggs in the product, there's no gelatin either. We've seen dessert products from Trader Joe's in the past that proudly declared "pork gelatin" in the ingredients, which caused me a significant amount of distress. There's a bit of milk powder in them, so we can't call them vegan, but I'll take a touch of dairy over pig bones any day of the week.
There's a stretchy, squishy, almost sponginess to these gummy candies that makes them fun to chew. They're very smooth and slippery, and they taste unique. Both are bright, sweet-tart, almost citrusy flavors. There's a mild aftertaste, but it's not too overbearing.
I wish these were a single buck instead of two bucks, but somebody's gotta pay for all that marine diesel that ferried these puppies across the Atlantic. Would we buy Trader Joe's Bacon & Eggs Gummies again? I don't think either Sonia or I would really seek them out, but if we found ourselves in the checkout line at TJ's with a hankering for something sweet, I wouldn't completely dismiss the possibility. Eight out of ten stars from Sonia, who would really like to try a super sour version of these candies. Seven out of ten from Nathan, who says "Hey at least they're better than the Peas & Carrots Gummy Candy."
