Reduced < Guilt Spinach & Kale Greek Yogurt Dip

This stuff is SO, SO GOOD, considering it's a much lighter, lower-calorie version of deliciously decadent spinach dip. Actually, it's more like traditional spinach dip's cooler, hipper Millenial cousin, what with the addition of the kale and the replacement of sour cream with Greek yogurt. It's a tasty, more-nutritious makeover of good old-fashioned spinach dip, and I am grateful. This is one of those unique, satisfying TJ's products that, once you've discovered it, you feel compelled to make part of your regular grocery rotation.
Versatility is the name of Reduced < Guilt Spinach & Kale Greek Yogurt Dip's game; its uses are seemingly endless. Many weekdays I'll top Triscuit crackers (or the TJ's equivalent) with it for lunch. Baby carrots and celery are delicious accompaniments for it as well, as are thick, salty potato chips. Mmmm.

It also works very respectably as a sandwich spread or as a topping for sliced baguette.
Two tablespoons will net you 30 calories and an impressive 20% of your Vitamin A for the day, as well as a gram each of fiber and protein. Not too shabby!
I'd like to know if I'm getting any live and active cultures from the Greek yogurt, but the label doesn't tell me, and I'm currently feeling too lazy to call the company and ask. So for now, this will remain one of life's great mysteries.
Happy dipping!

Pumpkin Products, Part 2 (or, GO BUY THESE. THEY ROCK!)

Hello, friends. Let me ask you this: Do you like salty? Do you like sweet? Do you like salty AND sweet together? Do you like crunchy? Do you like hearty, reasonably nutritious snacks that are tasty and addictive?
Well then! These suckers right here are for you:

I'm going to keep this brief (for a change) and get directly to the point: Pita Crisps With Cranberries & Pumpkin Seeds ARE FANTASTIC. If you are drawn to foods that are both sweet and salty, but also kind of nutty and toasty and crunchy, then my goodness, get yourself to TJ's and grab yourself a bag. (Thanks for the suggestion, Beth Hapke!)
And if you come across a good cheese, hard or soft, to pair with these things, let me know in the comments!

This is a terrible photo. I'm sorry. Here are the nutritional highlights:
130 calories per 9 crisps; 0 grams saturated fat. A very decent 2 grams of fiber per serving, and 3 grams protein.  First few ingredients: whole wheat flour, filtered water, sweetened dried cranberries. Happy healthful snacking!

Cornbread Mix

You know Mom's getting desperate when...

The other day I needed a dinner menu that was very convenient, very easy to prepare, and not at all cognitively challenging. Also, there needed to be slightly better than a snowball's chance in Hell that my kids would eat at least some of it. (The little dears seem to be more picky and behaving more obnoxiously at the dinner table lately, which is for sure going to drive me to drink an unreasonable amount of TJ's Two-Buck-Chuck Shiraz if our newly posted Mealtime Rules don't have their desired effect soon. See photo at left.)
While cruising the aisles of Trader Joe's with my little guy Hunter that morning, I decided on TJ's Turkey Chili (in a can; reheat and you're done) over tortilla chips, and cornbread made from TJ's Cornbread Mix.
I like making cornbread. I've never made it entirely from scratch, but I've had good luck with mixes. For awhile I was using a Marie Callender mix that required only the addition of water before baking, and it was moist and tasty, and the kids loved it. On this day, however, I found myself in TJ's staring down the Cornbread Mix and decided to go for it.
Score!

I like this cornbread's texture: it's a little grainy; the cornmeal used is ground coarsely enough to keep the bread from feeling too cake-like. It's also got---and please hold your judgment till the end---a very, very mild vanilla flavor, which sounds hideous, I know, but which actually works here and complements the flavor of the corn.
(Note: The vanilla is SO mild that at first I couldn't even place the flavor. I knew there was something ever so slightly different and yummy going on, but I had to read the ingredients list to know what it was. "Vanilla powder." Bingo! Tangential thought: Is it the same kind of vanilla powder the barista uses in my vanilla latte at our local coffee shop? I wonder.)
The cornbread's preparation was simple: Add oil, an egg, and milk. Combine. Bake at 350. Done!
Now the oooooooone little thing that bugs me just a smidge and will keep me from buying this mix too, too often is that it contains more sugar than I'd like. Sugar is, in fact, the second ingredient---it even beats out cornmeal for second place after wheat flour! One serving contains 15 grams of the stuff, which, if memory serves, was more sugar per serving than Dark Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Wafer Cookies.
Wha?
So while this cornbread mix won't become a staple of my pantry because of the sugar content, I won't hesitate to buy it again next time we do a Chili Night (or even a "Chile Night," as I accidentally typed the first time around. "Hey, kids, who wants to discuss Pinochet and his Caravan Of Death over dinner this evening?" Also, did you know Chile is the longest country in the world in terms of length-to-width ratio? Thanks, Wikipedia!).

Dark Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Wafer Cookies

Two of my favorite foods are dark chocolate and peanut butter, so when I find them together, blended into one deliciously sweet-and-salty treat, I reflexively grab that treat and tuck it right into my shopping cart faster than you can say "Try exercising some self-control for once, Mo."

When I spotted TJ's Dark Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Wafer Cookies earlier this summer, I did not hesitate to pounce on them like a cat pounces on shiny moving objects. Reese's has nothing on TJ's reputation for using pure, simple ingredients---these cookies contain dark chocolate, natural vanilla, peanut butter, sugar, enriched flour...and that's about it. No preservatives or artificial flavors to be found.

Not at all surprisingly, these cookies barely lasted half a week in our house. I loved them, the kids loved them, and Seth presumably would have loved them, too, had he gotten the chance to try one before they were devoured by the rest of us. Maya, in particular, enjoyed them so much that she couldn't understand why I refused to bust them out at breakfast.

What makes these cookies so great and addictive is the inclusion of dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate. The bitterness of the dark chocolate keeps the cookies from being sickeningly sweet and rich, which, in turn, makes these cookies easier to eat in large quantities. The light, crispy wafer cookie inside the chocolate achieves the same feat, so that the cookies seem less sugary than they probably are.  (The label says there are 10 grams of sugar in four cookies. So, yeah: they are sugary; although, I've seen breakfast cereals that contain twice as much sugar than these cookies do.)

The end result is a snack that has crunch, creaminess, sweetness, saltiness, bitterness, and airiness, and that really can't hold a permanent place in my cupboard because I lack the self-discipline to handle such a perfectly delicious treat in a mature and reasonable fashion.

Old-Fashioned Cinnamon Grahams

Graham crackers evoke some nostalgia for me. They're something my mom always kept in our pantry; they were a snack I nibbled on throughout my childhood. (Ever had a bowl of graham crackers and milk? We did that pretty frequently in my house growing up.)
So I have a fondness for graham crackers, which is why I was eager to try TJ's Old-Fashioned Cinnamon Grahams the first time I spotted them among the crackers and cookies on the shelves over the freezer case. (So glad someone thoughtfully and accurately placed that hyphen between "old" and "fashioned," btw.)
My assessment of these graham crackers can be summed up this way: If you were to make a homemade graham cracker, from scratch, this is how it would taste, and this is what the texture would be like.

They are really a far cry from anything produced by Nabisco or Keebler. For starters, they are thick and substantial, and much more filling than a traditional grocery-store graham cracker. They're more hearty, which I think must be a result of the whole wheat flour used to make them, and they have a very distinct molasses flavor, which I LOVE.
And---my kids' favorite part---the grahams are covered on one side in a thick layer of cinnamon sugar. Delicious!
These make a great snack just eaten on their own. I haven't actually tried them in milk, I think because they are so rich and flavorful, they just don't need anything extra.
I bet these would be reeeeally great substituted for regular graham crackers in pie crust; however, since I am, so far, too lazy to make pie, I'm not likely to test this hypothesis anytime soon.

Wasabi, Wow!

Last week my coworker and fellow Joe lover, Jamie, essentially dared me to eat this stuff. "My husband and I have found the one single disgusting thing Trader Joe's sells," she said (I'm paraphrasing), and then presented me with this bag of Wasabi, Wow! trailmix that the two of them had tried and hated during a car trip.
I accepted the challenge after conceding that the components of the mix---wasabi peas, peanuts, almonds, golden raisins, and dried cranberries---did seem a little strange put together. It was the fruits, specifically, that seemed to me not to fit. I'd eaten wasabi peas on their own and in rice-cracker mixes, but never with anything sweet.
Anyway, my interest was piqued and I gave Wasabi, Wow! a go, right there in my cubicle, fully expecting the worst.
But...I loved it! The cranberries and raisins lend just enough sweetness and a nice chewy texture to counter the crunchy ingredients. And the key, I believe, is that the fruit and other ingredients are proportioned correctly. In other words, there isn't too much fruit---just enough. It's actually a pretty addicting mix in that it's salty and sweet, with a pleasant little burn from the wasabi peas. It's also hearty, so a little goes a long way (if, unlike me, you have good self-control where tasty snacks are concerned).
My only, tiny little complaint is that the wasabi peas aren't the best I've ever had. They lack that fake-looking bright-green color many wasabi peas have, which is encouraging, but they also lack some zip. I like a wasabi pea to make my eyes water and my sinuses clear, and these don't quite get there.
All in all, though, I have to say woo-hoo to Wasabi, Wow!---with apologies to Jamie and Mr. Jamie.

Chocolate European Style Lowfat Yogurt

Let's jump right in and waste no time: Trader Joe's does a kick-ass job with their yogurts. Would you agree? Michael Ian Black once joked on his "Mike and Tom Eat Snacks" podcast that approximately 80% of grocery-store real estate these days is dedicated to yogurt, and thankfully, that figure holds *true* (give or take) for every Trader Joe's I've shopped. And really, hooray for that, because first of all, yogurt is tasty and interesting and healthy, and there are so many varieties and flavors to sample and experiment with; and secondly, Trader Joe's yogurts in particular are generally high quality and priced well. Bring on the 'gurt, I say!

...and for the first of many TJ's 'gurts to be featured on this blog AND the first Mo Loves Joe product post, period, I present to you Chocolate European Style Lowfat Yogurt. (Resisting strong urge to insert much-needed hyphen between "European" and "Style," btw. It's not a Chocolate European we're referring to here---thankfully---it's a chocolate-flavored European-style yogurt. But, okay.)
This yogurt is simple yet decadent, and that's why it's fabulous. It is tangy and tart, as yogurt should be, plus chocolately, bitter, and mildly sweet. Other chocolate yogurts from other places and other manufacturers are hardly yogurts at all---they are nauseatingly sweet confections and read more like pudding in flavor and texture. This yogurt is thick and creamy and feels "real." Simply put: I can eat THIS chocolate yogurt as a late-morning snack and feel good about myself afterward.