Trader Joe’s Almond Butter- YUM!

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Trader Joe's Almond Butter

Almond Butter

Do you love peanut butter?

We just adore the stuff. We love to spread peanut butter on toast or apple slices or eat it with banana chunks (sometimes in a sandwich even).

Ooops! sorry peanut butter, there is a new kid in town…

We were shopping recently at Trader Joe’s , were planning on purchasing some more peanut butter, and a new product caught our eye… (hey thank goodness for that “new items” end cap, right?) Trader Joe’s Almond Butter with Roasted Flax seeds (Crunchy & Salted).

OK, you ask, how good could that stuff really be?

Well, let us tell you it is just FANTASTIC! We bought it, tried it, and then tried it on an apple, and were just amazed at how good the stuff is.

This is one of those natural  nut butters that is still very soft and runny even right from the fridge. It is both creamy, and yet still has small crunchy chunks of both toasted flax seeds and little pieces of almonds. It is just great on just about anything you spread it on.

We have enjoyed it soo much that we quickly ate through the first jar and we had to purchase a second one just so the picture would look OK. Yes, the sacrifices we make to share all these goodies with you here at Living Trader Joe’s…..

Bottom line? if you love peanut butter and you are interested in adding a new nut into your life, give this product from Trader Joe’s a try…

Enjoy! (let us know how you like it!!)

5 Easy Ways to join the Food Revolution

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Are you interested in joining the Food Revolution but don’t know where to start?  Here are 5 easy ways to start to incorporate the ideas behind Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution in to your life and your kitchen. Remember the Food Revolution is designed to be easy and to help you cook more meals from scratch. This might seem hard in the beginning, yet after a few weeks, you will become more adventurous and ready to try new cooking challenges.

OK ready to start? Here you go:

1. Cook 1 meal from scratch this week.

Food Revolution time is here, what are you going to cook?  It is time to reach for the Food Revolution cook book, or your favorite cookbook or check out the Food Revolution Recipes on this website for some ideas on what to cook.  We recommend the Broccoli and Pesto Tagliatelle (pg. 46) because cooking pasta is a great easy meal for beginners and it only uses one pan so it is easy clean up too. We also like this recipe because you chop all the veggies up and cook them in the water that you are also cooking the past in. Then drain everything, and return it all to the same pan. Then add your sauce and mix it all up.  Yum!  AND you have cooked your first meal from scratch in your kitchen. Congratulations!

2. Taste 2 new spices

Do you have some spices that you don’t use regularly in your kitchen? Do you know what they even taste like? I know we have some spices that get pushed into the back of the cupboard and then are never used… Well it is time to take them out and check them out. OR maybe you need to purchase some new spices to jazz up your meals at home?

Either way when dealing with spices that you are unfamiliar with, we suggest the following to become “friends” with the spices: Taste ‘em. What we like to do is spoon out a small amount onto a plate, and then dip a little bit of food into the spice and then taste both the spice and the food. You can taste the spices by themselves, but we think that when you taste the spices with some food (like cheese or carrots or cucumbers or a bit of mayo) you will get a better sense of how the spice will taste when you are cooking.  (Hey you can get your family or friends involved with this taste test, and see which spices become favorites)

Some good dry spices to try this experiment on: cumin, curry powder, sweet paprika, smoked paprika, cinnamon, oregano, basil, any spice “mixture” like Old Bay or Mrs. Dash or Italian herbs. This list is based spices that we use regularly and love to cook with. Have some fun and enjoy trying a bunch of new tastes!  (If you have a Health Food Store near you, check and see if they have bulk spices. Many stores allow you to purchase a small amount of dry spices so you can give them a try before spending a lot of $$)

Also, don’t forget about all the spices that you can try out at Trader Joe’s. These are two that we use on a regular basis to season up/flavor all kinds of foods from vegetables to fish and chicken and shrimps. Remember too that if you don’t like one of the items that you bought, Trader Joe’s will gladly refund your $$ so there is never really a risk to trying anything.

Trader Joe's seasoning

Trader Joe's seasoning

3. Tell 3 friends

Tell some friends what you are up to. Maybe some of your friends can help? OR maybe they will be interested in joining you on your cooking adventures? Maybe you can get together on a random Tuesday night and cook together?  What about a Saturday afternoon potluck where everyone brings a dish and the recipe? An important part of the Food Revolution is for you to Pass It On – all these great skills that you are developing in the kitchen. Start thinking about your group now… You never know who will be interested until you ask.

4. Spend 4 minutes cleaning

This part is the scariest…. In order to cook dinner on a regular basis, you really must know what you have to work with. This means everything from plates and cups to pots, pans, spoons and spices. This also means that you need to set aside some cupboard space for a small pantry of items that will ready to help you cook any night of the week. Basic pantry items might be beans, rice, dry pasta, canned tomatoes, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. More adventurous items could include pesto, coconut milk and curry paste.

But for now just spend a few minutes cleaning out old stuff, checking out what you have and getting all these things organized. We love it when the cupboard with all the plastic containers is organized and no longer falls out when we open the door. Too bad that *#$$* area just can’t stay organized, right?

5. Take 5 to plan

This is perhaps the most important part for success in any project, but especially the Food Revolution. Plan out what you are going to eat when you cook at home.  We suggest starting with only one or two meals at a time.  Maybe one meal you will make from fresh ingredients, and the second, you purchase frozen stuff, so that you will have it in “reserve” just in case you plans change- or maybe you want to purchase a couple of meals to have ready to cook at home to help you with that last minute urge to go out?

We timed it once, and we could have pasta on the table in the time it took to drive to our favorite restaurant, let alone park, stand in the line and finally get table.  OR even worse, drive to our favorite fast food restaurant, order food then inch around the drive through, pay, and then pick up the food and drive home. Frequently in the fast food scenario, the food would be cold by the time we returned to the house. YUCK!

So we urge you to plan ahead for a few minutes and have an easy meal ready in your mind, the next time that fast food is calling. You might find that you enjoy eating at home a lot better! We hope that these easy 5 will get you motivated to try the Food Revolution this week and see how easy it can be to cook from scratch at home.

Join the Food Revolution

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Jamie's Food Revolution

Jamie's Food Revolution

What do we mean by the Food Revolution?

We are talking about the latest book by Chef Jamie Oliver (the Food Network’s Naked Chef ) called Jamie’s Food Revolution: Rediscover how to cook simple, delicious, affordable meals that is at the heart of the Food Revolution.  This time instead of a cookbook that focuses on simply great food, this cookbook has a goal: To reduce high obesity rates and general poor health by cooking from scratch at home. Jamie plans to tackle this goal with a two part plan:

1. First Part: Get cooking!

It is Jamie’s quest to get folks back into their kitchens and cooking on a regular basis. He is serious about changing everyone’s health for the better. He notes that less than 1/3 of Americans cook their dinners from scratch anymore– this book is here to help change that number.

Now we just love this message. I know we are all busy and have to go in about a million places each day, but the idea of taking five minutes to plan, and actually spending time cooking at home and then relaxing at the dinner table and being able to re-connect as a family, to us is just wonderful.

We understand that many readers may not be gourmet chefs, or even confident cooks in the kitchen. Don’t worry…we all had to start from someplace, right?

This book, Food Revolution, is going to help you learn to cook.  Unlike most other cookbooks that just jump right in to each section, this book is different. Food Revolution takes the time to explain kitchen equipment that you will need as well as makes suggestions on items to purchase to stock the cupboard (or panty). Jamie writes that with a well stocked pantry when you purchase a nice piece of fish or chicken for example, you can “take it to Spain, Italy, Morocco or China just by using certain herbs or spices from your cupboards. That’s what’s so exciting about cooking”.  We agree 100% with Jamie. The fact that you can totally change the flavor of a meal from your first thought: “Italian chicken and tomatoes” to a second thought: “Spanish chicken and tomatoes” by switching up the herbs and spices or rice and chickpeas to us is as close to magic as you can get at 5:30pm on a Tuesday night.

2. The second part: Share!

The second goal of this book is just as awesome as the first: To help each other learn to cook better at home. Yep, that’s right, Jamie wants us to share our favorite recipes with one another (once we get a few that is ). He calls this part “Pass It On”.

The Pass It On Pledge

OK so the Pass it on pledge is that everyone has to get involved with changing all of our eating habits and for the better of everyone (Eeks! For the Greater Good?) Anyway, Jamie wants everyone to pledge to learn one recipe from each chapter in this book. Next “Master” the recipe by making it at home a couple of times, and then Pass It On! This happens when you teach the recipe to at least 2 (hopefully 4) friends by having a cooking party. Then hopefully your friends will teach two more and so on, and so on….

It is Jamie’s goal to really start a Food Revolution with people cooking and teaching others to cook on a regular basis.  Now don’t get all overwhelmed and think that you just can’t do this. Jamie is not asking you to cook huge complicated menus for twenty five people on your first night cooking or ever, really. This book is here to help you with nice, clear pictures and simple recipes to help everyone start to cook more at home.

One statistic that was included in the introduction to this cookbook was the fact that Americans spent more on fast food in 2007 than they did on education.  Eeks! We are not sure how to take this, but think this could be a wake-up call to notice how much fast food we are eating and make the effort to include a few more homemade meals into the mix each week. Soon we will be eating more and more meals at home and becoming healthier as a nation as a result. So what do you say? Lets turn our fast food into brain food!

We are going to pledge to help Jamie and his Food Revolution any way we can. We pledge to include more step-by-step recipes here on Living Trader Joe’s.com to help all our readers learn to cook, or learn some new easy recipes.

Please let us know what cooking help you would like us to share, so that we can Pass It On here! You can email us, or leave a comment below. THANKS!

Broccoli and Garlic in pan

How to make Oven Roasted Broccoli

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Broccoli and Garlic From Trader Joe's

Broccoli & Garlic

Here is an easy recipe that we make over and over again. In fact, it is Delaina’s favorite way to eat broccoli, and THAT  alone is saying something….

What is so special about it?

Well,  when you oven roast stuff (like fish, meat,  vegies etc…), the high heat sorta “sears” in the juices inside and usually gives it  nice brown-ish crusty coloring on some edges that just taste yummy.  This way also seems to concentrate the flavors in a very pleasant way as well.

Many of us are used to eating watery vegies that have been boiled (to death usually) or steamed, I know we used to steam our vegetables all the time.  Now to be fair, we still do steam vegetables on occasion, we just have a preferred cooking method for vegetables now, and that is oven roasted.

In fact, this method of cooking (Oven Roasting) is a great way to cook all sorts of vegetables.  So try this way the next time you are cooking broccoli and see what you think.  Then try it again with asparagus, green beans or carrots (just wonderful…).

Oven roasting works best with fresh vegetables. So here is an opportunity to cook those extra vegies that you get at the farmer’s market… You know… the ones you bought and bought  and then came home and said, “why did we buy all this XXXX”??    Yes, we do that too….

Warning: This is TASTY… You will love it!

Another bonus with oven roasting vegetables…. it is SUPER EASY.  One pan, in the oven for 30 minutes (more or less).  This way you can keep your eye on other more “needy” dishes on the stove.

Ingredients:

  • Fresh Broccoli, enough to feed the number of folks you are cooking for.
  • Garlic cloves (OK this is an optional ingredient, but it just tastes FANTASTIC with the broccoli)
  • Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil

Here is How to Make Oven Roasted Broccoli:

1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Line a baking pan with aluminum  foil  -as large a pan as you need for the amount of broccoli you will cook so that the broccoli  will be in a single layer).

3. Rinse and trim the broccoli. This means I usually cut off any woody steams (maybe an inch or two from the bottom) and trim the broccoli into pieces so that the stems are no thicker than 1 inch. Dry with a clean kitchen towel to remove most of the moisture.

4. Separate the head of garlic into cloves. Remove the outer paper and cut the cloves in half, the long way. (so you have flat “coins” of garlic.

5. Place broccoli and garlic into a bowl, and toss with a spoon or two of olive oil until all the broccoli and garlic have a thin coat of oil.  Sprinkle  with salt and pepper and toss again.

Broccoli and Garlic in pan

Ready for the oven

6. Pour the broccoli and garlic into the foil lined pan. Place pan in the center of the hot oven. Let cook for 15 minutes, then stir the pan, and prick the broccoli with a fork to check the tenderness. Cook for 10 more minutes then stir and  check again for tenderness.

7. Remove when the broccoli is tender and has some brownish spots… and the garlic should also be brown in places and tender as well.

Cooked Broccoli and Galic from Trader Joe's

After Oven Roasting

OK so this is NOT our best photo, but I wanted you to TRY and see that the brown patches on the garlic and the fact that the broccoli is darker in some areas….  We gobbled up the whole batch of broccoli before we realized that this picture was a bit dark…. sorry…. I guess we will have to make another batch soon to try and get a decent photo….YUM!

8. ENJOY!

We hope you get a chance to try to make Oven Roasted Broccoli … or Oven Roasted Vegies of any kind, before it gets too hot to have the oven on in the kitchen for that long.

Let us know how it went, and what you thought of this recipe….