Price: $3.99
Serving: 1/3 pizza, 8oz.
Calories: 360
Fat: 21%, 14g
Cholesterol: 20%, 60mg
Sodium: 32%, 770mg
Protein: 26g
Carbs: 11%, 32g
Fiber: 8%, 2g
Weight Watchers Points: 8 Points

Trader Joe says: Did you ever think you’d find a Philly Cheesesteak in the pizza section? Neither did we, until we came across this delicious creation. Inspired by the City of Brotherly Love, Trader Joe’s Philly Cheesesteak Pizza is destined to become aclassic in its own right. We’ve topped this pizza’s crust with thinly sliced, perfectly seasoned USDA choice roast beef, roasted onions, red & yellow bell peppers and four savory cheeses.

Abi says: Before this whole review gets underway, I’d like to let all of you know that I’ve never actually had a Philly cheesesteak in Philadelphia. I’ve had cheesesteaks (with provolone, not Cheez Whiz) and I’ve been to Philadelphia (Core de Roma is a completely charming Italian restaurant serving Roman cuisine. You should go there. And get the artichokes. They are so good you will die.) but I haven’t had cheesesteak in Philadelphia. I’m sure it is transcendent.

This lack of experience can’t stop me from telling you what’s wrong with this pizza: too many toppings. That’s right, there’s just too much beef and cheese and too many peppers and onions. Seriously, Trader Joe, do you think that I have forks at my disposal? Do you think that I’m going to eat some toppings off the top of the pizza to make consumption easier?

The most common complaint I hear about frozen pizza is “There weren’t enough toppings.” Sure, pizza crust and sauce are usually nice, but they simply serve as a way for people to eat large quantities of salty meat without feeling like they’ve become temporary adherents to the Atkins diet.

Sadly, there’s a downside to having so many toppings on a pizza: the toppings in the middle were somewhat cool even though the edges of the pizza were definitely done. That crazy-delicious amount of seasoned sliced steak should probably be broiled at some point, but lacking that sort of patience (heat the oven to 500 degrees? and then watch it to make sure my pizza doesn’t burn? ha!).

I just tossed a couple already-sliced pieces in the microwave. They were still good enough to eat with relish and the entire pizza (which is on the medium-to-small side) was hearty enough to feed and sate two hungry adults.

Price: $1.99
Serving: 1 package, 8oz.
Calories: 150
Fat: 4%, 2.5g
Sodium: 2%, 40mg
Protein: 5g
Carbs: 9%, 27g
Fiber: 16%, 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 2 Points

Trader Joe says: T.J’s Frozen Steel Cut Oatmeal brings speed and convenience to the previously time-consuming process of cooking steel cut oats. No longer do you have to slave or a hot stove, stirring and stirring just to enjoy a bowl of this wholesome, nutritious, delicious oatmeal.

Abi says: The only oatmeal I ever ate as a kid came in packets. Sure, we had old-fashioned oats up in the cupboard, but I think that we only used those for making cookies, not for actually eating for breakfast in the form of oatmeal. I didn’t even realize until a few years ago that actual, real, non-processed, steel cut oatmeal requires a rather long cooking time (nearly an hour!). In fact, I’ve never even made stove top, slow-cooked oatmeal.

Of this, I’m a bit ashamed. I love oatmeal and I should be enjoying it in all of its forms. Alas, the closest I’ll likely ever get to that (until I have a family to cook oatmeal for) will be the big, slightly suspect pots of oatmeal at Au Bon Pain (have you had oatmeal with roasted almond slices and toasted coconut and brown sugar? No? Then you have not lived!)*.

In an effort to reduce my dependence on instant oatmeal and stop paying $4.00 for the ABP stuff, I picked up a box of Trader Joe’s pre-cooked, frozen steelcut oatmeal. The box contains two individually shrink-wrapped cylinders of oatmeal. These cylinders bear more than a passing resemblance to the frozen forms of Trader Joe’s Artichoke Spinach dip and French Onion Soup. Way to reuse your industrial packaging equipment, Trader Joe’s!

Unfortunately, the bubbly nature of oatmeal requires that one selects a quite large container for heating. On the first go-round I’d fogotten this edict of breakfast porridge and managed to spend the first 20 minutes of my work day cleaning out the microwave.

On the second try I sat down to a bowl of steaming, fluffy steelcut oatmeal and instantly realized why I haven’t purchased this item in the past and why I’ll never purchase it again in the future: blandness. Steelcut oatmeal might have the upper hand when it comes to fiber, but when it gets down to the nitty gritty, taste wins ever time for me. Trader Joe’s Steelcut Oatmeal is a good idea, but the lack of the merest hint of flavor had me reaching for some strawberry jam and figuring that my earlier failure in oatmeal preparation was a sign that some things are better made at home, where there’s plenty of real maple syrup and cinnamon.

*I didn’t even know that they had oatmeal at Au Bon Pain until I read this rant on Craigslist.

Price: $3.50
Serving: 1/4 bag, 4oz.*
Calories: 200 per serving
Fat: 7%, 4.5g
Cholesterol: 3%, 10mg
Sodium: 12%, 270mg
Protein: 7g
Carbohydrates: 12%, 35g
Fiber: 8%, 3g
Sugar: 3g
Weight Watchers Points: 16 per bag

Trader Joe says: Here’s a quick dinner entree that’ll have people singing your praises! For Trader Joe’s Penne Pepperonata we’ve combined penne pasta imported from Italy with a flavorful sauce made from roasted red peppers, parmesan cheese and a special blend of herbs and spices. The flavors of Provence mingle beautifully with tastes from the Italian countryside - in less than ten minutes in your own kitchen.

Abi says: Trader Joe’s pre-combined pastas and sauces are perfect for those evenings when you can’t be bothered to boil water. Mostly, I eat these because

1. I get tired of tomato sauce
2. I imagine that this is how the Jetsons would make pasta
3. They are cheap
4. Have you seen Adina’s Gnocchi review? I want that sort of transcendent pasta-eating experience

This pasta is a pleasant alternative to a frozen pizza, but nothing special. The best thing about this meal isn’t even how it tastes but that I don’t have to use a colander. I am a super-fan of herbs de provence. I put them in everything, even places where they might not belong (Mexican food, not the greatest idea ever). I know the flavors of Provence. They didn’t exactly make a showing in this pasta sauce. You’d have to have a heck of a lot of herbs to overcome the nearly overwhelming use of peppers in the dish. And the lack of cream. It is not a cream sauce and I don’t know where they got the idea to call it that. Don’t go into this pasta expecting any actual dairy components.

I recommend this pasta if you’re a chronic pasta over-boilerer or if you’d like to branch out from traditional tomato sauces. Paired with some sauteed garlic and artichoke chicken sausage, this makes a delicious (if vegetable-deficient) dinner.

*This bag of pasta plus two sliced and sauteed chicken sausages made two large, filling servings with a bit left over.

Yeah, our kitchen counters are made of tile. This leads me to believe that the folks at Stanford aren’t quite the geniuses everyone makes them out to be. Have you every tried doing normal kitchen stuff (chopping, rolling out pastry, wiping up spilled flour) on a tile counter? It is ridiculous!

Price: $3.50
Serving: 1 cookie, 1oz.
Servings Per Container: 16
Calories: 120
Fat: 9%, 6g
Cholesterol: 16, 20mg
Sodium: 2%, 60mg
Protein: 1g
Carbohydrates: 6%, 17g
Sugar: 8g
Fiber: 0%, 0g
Weight Watchers Points: 3 Points

Trader Joe says: No Preservatives, no artificial colors, no artificial flavors

Abi says: I adore Consumer Reports Magazine. Not because they tell me the best car, vacuum cleaner or microwave to purchase. Or because they let me know when it makes the most sense to pay extra for organic foods, but because they completely agree with me when I state that the Trader Joe’s Chunky Chocolate Chip Cookie dough makes the best pre-made (mixed?) cookies in existence.

No, they still aren’t real homemade cookies, but you’d be hard-pressed to find someone that could tell the difference between these and a batch made with the recipe off the back of a package of Toll House Chocolate Chips. Well, I guess the difference would be that these all cook up to a uniform size and degree of doneness while homemade cookies have a greater element of individuality.

By using normal, non-industrial ingredients, Trader Joe’s manages to skirt all of the strange not-quite-made-with-butter pre-made cookie shortfalls. Check out this list of ingredient simplicity:

• Flour
• Chocolate
• Sweet Butter
• Sugar
• Brown Sugar
• Eggs
• Molasses
• Vanilla
• Salt
• Baking Soda

It is no coincidence that those are the exact same ingredients I use when I make chocolate chip cookies from scratch. Of course, now you’re probably thinking “If these are so simple, couldn’t I just make some regular cookies at home? From my own ingredients?” Well, you could. But then you’d be left with a pile of dirty dishes when you should be enjoying fresh from the oven caramel brown buttery chocolate chunk studded mounds of deliciousness.

And that would be a shame.