/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>18639631
If you enjoyed your shopping experience or found the staffs Hawaiian shirts tickled you, you get to ring a bell on the way out.

>>18639631
Shit bread and skimpy produce sections. Meat is serviceable but pretty limited. It's got good canned/preserves and cheese selections. Everyone I know praises it's frozen foods and I feel like they hold up pretty well, I always keep a few in stock in case I fuck up a dish. Everyone has a few things they love from it.

It carries a few very good items and is good value generally, but I would have a very hard time making it my one weekly stop.

>>18639699
That's.... It, pretty much exactly.

Almost everything they do is "store brand" and about half of what they do is markedly cheaper than a brand-name competitor (while meeting or exceeding quality) and the other half is "Nice Things" sold at a reasonable markup. So you'll find a handful of items you personally like that will get you in the door (their frozen chinese food has FULLY replaced chinese takeout for me, frozen pizzas are good, snacks are decent, peanut butter and any dairy products particularly their butter are GREAT, sauces, salsas, and condiments, as well as their booze) and you'll make a few purchases that you could get cheaper elsewhere but pay for "fuckit, I'm already here" convenience. Not really the place to buy fruit or vegetables.

With a small local produce-mart for actual fresh produce, an Aldi/walmart for staples, and a Trader Joe's for the odd specialty, I live a pretty good life.

>>18639631
for me, it's the toucan coffee beans.

>>18639631
You WILL see at least one absolute bombshell woman every time you go.
Their salt and pepper grinders are about half the cost of anywhere else.
Their frozen pajeet meals are good tier.

>>18639816
How does the Trader Joe's coffee compare to the Starbucks whole bean varieties?

>>18639833
It's more mild and tastes less burnt than starbucks medium roasts. I'm not a fan of starbucks in general and would rather buy a shitty bag of eight o'clock beans.

>>18639631
it's a grocery store that probably sells some of what you want at an acceptable price, but you'll still need to go elsewhere for some staples

i farted in one once. they have cheap beer and decent cheese and frozen foods. its not for people who cook. also full of yoga pants white nike women.

>>18639827
>You WILL see at least one absolute bombshell woman every time you go.
Yeah. Maybe less "Bombshell" and more "Breathtakingly-attractive young woman you would move heaven and earth for". But qts do indeed love the place.

Recently had their frozen mac and cheese, last night actually. And I really enjoyed it. Vegetarian girl spent the night and we hadn't really eaten anything so I popped it in the microwave. it's not "cheese sauce" it's really what it says on the box: macaroni noodles and CHEESE. good in that gloopy, stringy, real-cheese mac-and-cheese kinda way I'd been itching for.

>>18639885
>its not for people who cook.
dingdingdingding. that's probably the best way to put it, bravo. you said "cheap beer" and that's true but their hard kombucha is waaaay cheaper, tastier, and harder-with-less-carbs than name-brand competitors. it'll get you dickered and your stomach won't burn the next morning.

>>18639886
I said microwave but I meant toaster-oven.

I'd never make that in the microwave, it would be a waste.

the bananas can be cheap if you sort through them for the largest. last time i weighed my normal volume of doezens per trip, it worked out to $0.32 / lb

you also get to torture the cashiers by making them count a hundred bananas

i'd just buy boxes if there were somewhere around here i could reliably walk in and pick one up, without needing to call ahead and still wait minutes for an obese wagie to waddle to the back while also grabbing a cart for a mere 40 pounds

I only go there when I'm really in the mood for dried fruit or a danish kringle. Yeah the frozen food's good for what it is but I'd rather get actual teriyaki/chinese from local restaurants.

>>18639631
>Is that a... heckin pop culture referencino?!

>>18639631
Is that Lucille Bluthe?

>>18639885
>its not for people who cook.
wording is a bit harsh but now that I think about it, you're mostly right.
All the stuff I get there requires little to no prep and looks like everyone agrees that the staples are shit. I still cook and go there tho.

>>18639885
>its not for people who cook
never thought about it but maybe you're right
I would go there in the past to grab a freezer's worth of frozen Indian foods
they have frozen Thai food as well but IMO they all kinda suck
also I used to get their ready made stuffed peppers but I went there recently for the first time since they pandemic and got one of those and it sucked ass. to be fair the packaging and label we different so maybe even though it's TRADER JOE'S brand they source if somewhere else now. some cheaper place that cares less about quality

>>18640305

>>18641892
Then the Trashcan Man comes along... I'm feeling inspiration for a mashup fanfic.

whose here are /brookies/

only get them once in awhile

Cheap wine is really all it's good for. But I don't eat seed oils which makes all of their frozen food verbotten. Their deals aren't great but dealseekers aren't really the target demographic, they're after hip young professionals and women who don't know how to cook in particular.

>>18641946
We would have literary banana bread for the first time since Gravity's Rainbow

>>18642082
more like dookie

>>18642141

>>18639885
>its not for people who cook.

I was going to argue, but yeah. It's for people who want to feel like they've cooked but in reality cannot cook.

>>18639631

From a budgetary perspective, you can either spend a lot, or less than you normally would at a grocery store. Learn what's cheap and what's outrageously overpriced and you can actually save money. If you actually want to cook, you'll need to stop at another store for most of your ingredients.

>>18642154
>me when i see a webm thread

>>18639885
>its not for people who cook

>>18639631
I was informed on /ck/ they're owned by the same owners of Aldi.
A lot of it seems overpriced, a lot of random brands.

>>18642220
Isn't Aldi and Trader Joe rivals though?

Shopping at Aldi feel like I am shopping at Eastern bloc whereas Trader Joe feel like IKEA

>>18642116
Why is everyone complaining about seed oil all of the sudden? Whats wrong with it?

>>18642271
1.heavily processed, heated and reheated repeatedly which causes the formation of molecules very similar to transfats from the supposedly healthy monounsaturated fats (which, in some contexts, can be healthy) which we now acknowledge are terrible for you

2. empty calories at best. 20% of the average American's caloric intake is coming from seed oils.

3. n-3 to n-6 ratio is insanely imbalanced in a modern processed food diet, strongly related to inflammation and many 'diseases of civilization' even moreso than sugar which was the previous devil. Sugar consumption has fallen since 1999, yet diseases of civilization continue to skyrocket.

There are other reasons but IMO the main reason is to reduce inflammation. A little soy oil won't kill you but look at the ingredients on everything you eat. Anything in a plastic wrapper has a 99% chance of containing either an omega 6 rich seed oil or added sugar. Because they help shelf stability, not because they're good for you.

>>18642311
oh god! what should i eat! even my meats, like sausage and ribeye steaks, chicken wings all come in plastic wrappers..

generally high-quality. meat is overpriced, dairy is very good price, produce is good. they were terrible during the rona terror, i had trader joes wagies following me around the store for not wearing a mask. it was difficult to finish my shopping before they caught me. surprisingly great wine prices. you could also theoretically throw the wine bottles at the wagies and they would have to clean it up.

>>18639631
money fall on you
banana fall on you

>>18642220
i wish we had aldi here but we don't. trader joes is the white people store.

My local TJs is almost entirely staffed by hot twinks so it’s pretty nice

TJs is for good snacks, cheeses, and cheap wine. i dont go for anything else.

>>18642685
mine is hot twinks and butchy zoomettes who don't know what cabbage is

>>18642675
>meat is overpriced

dunno why this wasn't said earlier. it's not whole foods overpriced, but at the same time the price for the quality beats the shit out of chain supermarkets. i can confirm this because my room mate's cat would inspect my chicken and she would always try to bite the chicken from trader joes and walked away when i bought from c-town or some other nearby shitty chain supermarket. i mostly get my meat from costco now so it's a moot point.

i used to buy a lot of produce there, in the summer the produce quality varies greatly. i once bought a carton of grapes, when i got home i realized it was moldy and rotten. the squash/zucchini can come frozen. i've had tomatoes/lettuce/onions rot within a few days, despite going into fridge an hour or two at most from purchase to home. their produce is more consistent in the winter.

spice rack is almost unbeatable for price and quality, as other ingredient essentials like the panko, spaghetti, etc. desserts and packaged snacks are too fucking good, frozen food got me fat.

>>18642311
50% weight gain with identical calories. As industrial lubricant by products closer to plastic than food, might be the single cause of the diabetes epidemic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kGnfXXIKZM

>>18642685
BRB guise

Vegetables and meats are all on the cusp of going off. They specialize in shit that seems like it should be organic but actually is just shit that doesn't taste good

>>18643233
Pretty compelling observations there, thanks.

The last 2 times I visited TJ's they didn't have eggs. So I'm not going again.