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Ornamental Pepper Plant At Trader Joe’s

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We picked up the most interesting, cool looking plant today at Trader Joe’s. This was one of those busy days where we needed to bring something to a lunch meeting and just waited too long to decided what to make! So we solved this problem by leaving the house a bit early and shopping at Trader Joe’s

Trader Joe's Ornamental Pepper Plant

Not only were we able to pick up a tasty lunch (Delaina got a sushi sampler, and Kris got a turkey wrap) but we picked up some cookies to share with everyone and … this cool looking pepper plant to add some color to the office.

Neither Delaina nor I have anywhere close to a green thumb, but when we see awesome and unique plants like these, we feel compelled to purchase them as gifts for others. Besides a funky plant like this would certainly jazz up any office, don’t ya think??

Anyway the plant was welcomed in the office by those with green thumbs (thank goodness!) and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

As you know from shopping at Trader Joe’s they have such an array of blooming or funky plants as well as cut flowers, that it is a great place to stop in when you need some kind of a gift.

What are your favorite plants/ cut flowers at Trader Joe’s (I think I am leaning right now to the huge sunflower blooms that I see…..) Leave a comment to let us know! THANKS!

Trader Joe’s Snaquarium Maritime Morsels

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Ever see something that makes you zip back to your childhood and makes you smile as well? Well that happened to use the last time we shopped at Trader Joe’s.  As we entered the store, we were met with a huge tower of these little cookie boxes- you remember the kind that held animal crackers with the little string handle?

Well, Trader Joe’s has created a new twist to our old childhood favorite in their product: Trader Joe’s Snaquarium Maritime Morsels. These ocean-themed iced animal crackers are a wonderful Modernization of an old favorite.

Trader Joe's Snaquarium Maritime Morsels

Trader Joe's Snaquarium Maritime Morsels

The cookies have a light lemon taste and the icing really makes the flavors pop!  I was a bit worried about how fresh the cookies would be in cardboard box, but when I opened up the blue aquarium like box, all the cookies were sealed up in a smaller plastic bag. It was fun to see the different sea shapes that were chosen for these cookies.

Trader Joe's Cookie Box

So if you need a peek back into your childhood (why I loved those little boxes with the strings…)  pickup a packet  of  Trader Joe’s  Snaquarium Maritime Morsels.  We loved them and hope you do as well.

What did you think? What was your favorite shape?? Leave us a comment below if you like- Thanks!

Meatless Monday: Polenta Provencale

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This week was just crazy busy for us, but we still wanted to enjoy our Meatless Monday in style so what did we do? Headed out to Trader Joe’s of course and in the freezer section found something new and exciting to try this week. What did we pick: Trader Joe’s Polenta Provencale.

Trader Joe's Polenta Provencale

Trader Joe's Polenta Provencale

Now we were not really sure what to expect with this item. We chose it because we were looking for a heat-and eat dinner choice for Meatless Monday AND we liked all the ingredients on the label.

I mean really who could resist a product that talks about combining polenta, spinach and peas in a spicy cream sauce??

Yikes! That did sound good…

This product is frozen (including the sauce) into small round pieces. The whole thing just sorta melted in the pan as I was stirring (over medium heat) . It was so easy and smelled wonderful as it was heating up.

Frozen Trader Joe's Polenta Provencale

Frozen Trader Joe's Polenta Provencale

Well you will be happy to know that this product did not disappoint. The polenta pieces were the size of a small egg, the peas were sweet and the spicy cream sauce was just wonderful and rich. The only small complaint that we had was that there was not enough spinach for our liking. But this was easily changed as we added some sliced fresh spinach and stirred it into the rich sauce.

Warm Polenta with extra spinach

Warm Polenta with extra spinach

The bottom line?

Trader Joe’s Polenta Provencale was a delicious quick dinner on a busy Meatless Monday. Next time we will serve it with some cooked brown rice to soak up all the yummy sauce!

Have you tried Trader Joe’s Polenta Provencale yet? What did you think??

What is For Dinner At Your House Tonight?

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Over the weekend I had the opportunity to talk about Dinner with a number of  friends. Now these are not all foodies mind you, they are normal uber busy folks with classes, jobs, kids and a zillion distractions before dinner is served every night.

We were all kind of venting about dinner and what it really means, and also what kind of notions that we all have about dinner (from childhood) stuck in our heads.  These ideas, I discovered over the course of the many conversations about dinner, are really doing more harm than good in our lives. Here is a sampling of the different attitudes about dinner that we discussed:

  • Dinner = Cooking a Complicated Recipe that you have never cooked before
  • Dinner= Must include a salad main course bread and dessert each night
  • Dinner= Must include stuff that is “good for you” even if the kids won’t eat it.
  • I only think about Dinner on my way home from work
  • I only think about Dinner when I am ready to eat it
  • I can’t plan ahead, as I am not sure what I will want to eat that night

There were a number of other, interesting ideas about what dinner means to folks and what they do about it. We were discussing how we/folks get caught in the “let’s go out trap” and what we can do to plan ahead and avoid it.

Because, truthfully, if you want to really know what you are eating for dinner  (high quality, organic, fresh, low fat, low carb, grass-fed etc…) you will want to cook at home. Restaurants are in the business to make money and oftentimes this means that what is important to you, may not be what is important to a restaurant.

I was curious about what you think about dinner at your house.   What are your challenges? What do you wish you could figure out? How can LivingTraderJoe’s help?

Please leave a comment here or at our new Facebook Fan Page

(If the link does not work, just search “livingtraderjoes” on Facebook and you should find us)