Are pumpkin products still legit after Thanksgiving? I mean, pumpkin pie sure is, at least until Christmas, right? So pumpkin season rolls on in my humble opinion. Mid-September through Christmas seems appropriate.
On one hand we have hoppy IPA beer and on the other hand we have sweeter stuff like pumpkin cider. I'll do either/or depending on my mood, but something like pumpkin ale often falls between the cracks and fails to meet the needs of either my arrogant hipster wannabe persona or that of my inner giggly college girl. I mean, who actually craves a pumpkin ale?
I just grabbed one off the mix-a-six shelf at Trader Joe's some weeks ago and haven't had the opportunity or desire to drink it yet, so what better time than now while I'm stuffed to the gills with heavy Thanksgiving fare and the first of the Christmas season's fattening goodies? Here are my thoughts...
It pours an amber-ish color with an off-white head. It's sweeter than I thought it would be. Pumpkin spices are evident, though not overwhelming. It's almost more of a cider than an ale, but it's not as appley as drinks like The Gourd Tree Pumpkin Cider.
Despite the sweetness and pumpkin spice aura, the beer finishes surprisingly clean. Alcohol-wise, it doesn't taste as strong as most 7% ABV beers, but it'd be a rare occasion I'd go out of my way to find and procure an ale this "girly."
The price is nice at $1.34 for the individual can. Brewed by Josephsbrau. I guess I might throw another one in my mix-a-six next year if it's around again. Sonia sat this one out. I'm torn between 3 and 3.5 stars, so I'll do one of each.
"Cheese sticks." Hope nobody got a pay raise or promotion for coming up with that creative product title. Why not cheese swords or cheesy rods or cheese branches or cheesy trees? Oh wait. They already did that one. The packaging is lackluster at best, and these crispy little do-dads don't even have a listing on traderjoes.com as far as I could tell. Oh well.
Thanksgiving week tends to be the slowest time of year in terms of blog traffic, so I often throw out kind of oddball generic reviews of boring-ish products during that time because, hey, what have I got to lose?
What's working here: the texture is nice and crispy, crunchy, but not overly hard. The sticks are brittle but even my sensitive teeth and gums aren't irritated even after gnawing on a few of these sourdough sticks. They pair great with almost any kind of soup, especially tomato-based ones, and who needs croutons for a salad when you have these? The sourdough flavor is pleasant, as well, but not overpowering.
What's not working here: there's definitely some cheese flavor, but I think they could have packed them with a bit more. I guess too much cheese would reduce the shelf life of the product and make it more prone to spoilage, but doesn't all that salt help with preservation?
$2.99 for approximately a dozen cheese sticks. I guess we'd buy this item again just to have it in the back of the pantry to serve with tomato soup in lieu of grilled cheese or something more elaborate. Three and a half stars a piece from Sonia and me for Trader Joe's Cheddar Cheese Sticks.
In my experience, pupusas were always the staple food for folks from El Salvador. Those Salvadoreños would seize any opportunity to introduce us gringos to their favorite pupusa joint, often just a hole in the wall or some unsuspecting apartment in a random neighborhood. They'd come out with lots of little clear plastic bags tied at the top with rubber bands. It might have looked like a shady narcotics deal if not for the fact the bags were obviously filled with veggies, sauces, and shredded cheese.
The base element for those pupusas was always a puffy pancake-esque cake similar to the one we have here, although those were generally much lighter. Some weren't filled at all, and all the flavor came from whatever you put on top—usually some pickled cabbage, a thin salsa, and jack cheese—possibly shredded chicken or other meat. Others had a thin layer of beans or maybe cheese baked into the middle of the disc.
Lacking the cabbage topping and unique salsa, I was skeptical of this offering from Trader Joe's. Honestly, there's nothing wrong with them, and their filling is quite a bit more interesting than the street style pupusas I've had in the past. There's no detectable chicken pieces. It's just a whirled mush of chicken and cheese with a few flecks of green chiles scattered throughout.
Using the air fryer method, the breading part of the cake gets slightly crispy. It's a good quality corn masa—authentic enough for me. The overall flavor is salty and savory and there's enough chicken and cheese flavor to be satisfying. The chile pieces add a bit of a kick, but salsa of any kind is in order if you're craving something truly picante.
We added onions to ours in lieu of Salvadoran slaw and experimented with a few different types of hot sauces and salsas. Nothing quite replicated what we'd had from restaurants but we were happy enough to finish the meal, one pupusa each, and contemplated heating the third one immediately and splitting it between the two of us, although in the end, we opted to save it for later.
I think the moral of the story here is to buy or make some Salvadoran cabbage relish, or "curtido," and have it on standby when you eat these. While any tomato-based salsa will do in a pinch, looking up an authentic recipe online might be worth it in this instance, too. Either way, it's not a bad product and it's a simple way to introduce yourself to the world of pupusas.
$4.79 for three servings. Three and a half stars a piece from Sonia and me for Trader Joe's Chicken, Cheese & Green Chile Pupusas.
