June Trader Joe's Favorites

Hi Friends!  We just got home from a fabulous family cruise - more on that later this week! - and stopped at a Trader Joe's in Nashville on our way home.  It's about 3 hours from our house, but it was on our way.  We ended up stopping at the Hillsboro Pike location.  It was super well stocked.  I wish we had room for bunches of peonies and a tiny olive tree, but instead we focused on groceries this trip.

We repurchsaed some favorites and tried some new things.

Several of you recommended last month that we try the frozen croissants.  We purchased a couple of boxes and loved the chocolate ones.  They were so fancy and so good.  The kids thought they were fine so I'll probably save the rest for myself - ha!  I thought the mini croissants would be good with salads.

We repurchased the cut white corn and vegetable fried rice.  The garlic shiitake green beans, roasted potatoes and roasted corn are new to us.

Yum!

We bought pizza dough, pizza sauce and pepperoni to make our own pizzas.  I am so excited to try this for dinner one night this week.  Their shredded cheeses were $5+ a bag so I skipped those.

We repurchased this salad mix.

I've been on a Caesar salad kick and have purchased Caesar salad kits from all the grocery stores.  Trader Joe's is my favorite!  I bought a salad kit and a bottle of Caesar dressing.

This was a new salad for us.

I thought this would be yummy warmed up with pita chips.

I was so excited to try this and I didn't care for it :(  It was too runny and I didn't love the flavor.  It just felt like something was missing.

We got some taco shells to try and picked up this s'mores mix.  We didn't love it which was disappointing because we love s'mores stuff.  It was very heavy on the chocolate, barely any graham cracker and a little marshamallows.  We'll stick with the Sam's s'mores mix.

What should I pick up at Trader Joe's next month??  Are there any Summer staples we need to try?

Trader Joes Favorites

Our closest Trader Joes is 90 minutes away in Louisville, KY.  We brought a big cooler along on our road trip with the intention of filling it up at Trader Joes.  Our plan worked perfectly.  I bought a fair amount of frozen things which kept the refrigerator things perfectly cold in the car cooler until we got home that night.  We got to try many new things and can't wait to go back.  The friendly staff laughed when we told them we were from Evansville.  Apparently they have met nearly everyone from Evansville shopping at the store.

I'll show you all the things we got and give our review.  We spent $100 and got tons of food.  I bought a $3.99 oversized canvas tote.  It held our whole cart full with just a few items to carry out.  It worked out perfectly for our cooler/road trip situation.  I will probably leave it in my car so I'm prepared for our next trip.  Kevin also wants you to know that the beer options at Trader Joes were awesome!  He found a lot of rare, local and unique beers to try.

We enjoyed all of the frozen dinners!  It took 3 packages to make enough for a family dinner.  They cost about $4/package.  We'd definitely get the penne again.  I served it with grilled chicken.  The kids said the rigatoni was a little too green and less fettucini than they were hoping for.

The Bulgogi Beef had far less beef than the picture showed, but it was good.  We added some sauce to add flavor and probably wouldn't repurchase it.  Kevin was hoping it would be really flavorful and it was pretty mild. The corn was yummy!

Yum!  I added eggs when we ate it as a side for dinner.

All of the produce was really good and fresh.

The salad kits were AMAZING.  We'd likely go back just for a salad stock up.  We got to sample the Sweet Chili Mango Salad in store.  It's a little spicer than I prefer, but the rest of the family loved it.  Fletcher would tell you that he doesn't like salad, but he LOVES this salad.

Both delicious.  I'm craving Casesar salad every day thanks to this kit.

Kevin grabbed this to shred for taco night.  Yum!

The tiny cookies were fun, but we probably wouldn't repurchase.  Olive thought they might be fun in a trail mix or on top of ice cream.  The boys LOVED the PBJ dippers.

Kevin loves this kind of BBQ sauce.  No one else does, but he's excited about it.

We have a running list of Trader Joes items to try and make sure to buy items for our next visit.

What is your favorite Trader Joes must haves?

Leave them in the comments and I will add them to my list.