Hooray!!! At last Pittsburgh has a Trader Joe's.

I'm especially excited about it because I lived in
So. Calif. for 13 years and shopped at TJ's a lot.
I really missed it when I moved back to Pittsburgh.

So, I went after work on Friday. As it was opening
day it was a madhouse with checkout lines backed up
down the aisles, making it difficult to browse all
items on all the shelves.

I picked up a few goodies that struck my fancy.
I got a small container of couscous salad with pinenuts,
red pepper, raisins, and peas. I also picked up a 1-qt.
box of their Tomato and Red Pepper Soup and a loaf of
their Asiago and Pepper sourdough bread. I had these
items for dinner on Sat. and Sun. evenings. Quite tasty,
although the bread was a little too salty for my taste.
(I should have guessed as I don't care for the Asiago
Bagels at Panera for the same reason. I guess Asiago
cheese is just really salty and therefore it's impossible
to use it in anything and not have it be too salty for
me. I've never liked a lot of salt.) Anyway, the soup
was excellent and so was the couscous salad.

I also bought a bottle of McIntosh apple juice, made with
all McIntosh apples. It's okay but slightly disappointing
in that it seems to lack a strong McIntoch apple flavor.
When I go to Vermont I always buy cider that is made from
mostly McIntosh apples (shoot, I'd go to VT just to get that
cider if I could afford it) and it always tasty very McIntoshy.
But this juice was not particularly McIntoshy in flavor. The
only difference I noted from regular apple juice was that it
had slightly more tartness, but not a lot. Oh, well. Sounded
good.

I also was disappointed in the tortilla chips I bought.
I got some plain blue corn tortilla chips that had a
slightly less than crisp texture. I also was intrigued
by some Sweet Mole Tortilla Chips. I thought they would
be fairly flavorful. Turns out they taste pretty much
like plain yellow corn tortilla chips with a vague hint
of mole flavor. Oh, well. Sounded good.

I picked up one of their brochures at the checkout and
have marked many items in it to try the next time I go.
And I noticed they have a mole sauce that I'd like to
try. (I made mole from scratch once. It had about 35
ingredients and took 2 days to make what with toasting
various spices and seeds and grinding stuff, etc. And
it didn't turn out very good. I had about a gallon of
it and I ended up throwing a lot of it out as I didn't
like it enough to bother saving it to use later. If I
throw out food, especially something I slaved over, then
you know it's really bad.) So, in the hopes of finding
a good mole sauce I don't have to make myself I'm planning
to give it a try.

Can't wait to go back to TJ's on a less crowded day
and really check out everything.

It's just too bad I am living in PA now. Out in CA
they had wines at TJ's and you could get some really
nice inexpensive wines there. But I live in the
Fascist state of PA where we have to buy from the
state monopoly at outrageous prices. Sigh.

Kate

--
Kate Connally
“If I were as old as I feel, I’d be dead already.”
Goldfish: “The wholesome snack that smiles back,
Until you bite their heads off.”
What if the hokey pokey really *is* what it's all about?