Snack Review: Trader Joe’s Crunchy Oats and Honey Granola Bars

I have no idea why I bought these. I never, ever met a granola bar that I liked. I don’t know what I was thinking.

I might hate granola bars because I never met a granola I liked, either. But lately, I have found one exception, which is a Trader Joe’s Maple Pecan Granola with Flakes. They have the same cereal in several other flavors, but when I tried another – hated it. So there is really only one single granola on earth that I can eat.

That wouldn’t seem to bode well for these: they are not Trader Joe’s maple pecan granola bars. So when I put them in my basket, either I had lost my mind at the moment or… gained psychic powers?

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Snack Review: Trader Joe’s Sea Salt and Pepper Crisps Made With Rice

Trader Joes, sometimes you break my heart. If you’re going to make a snack that I can’t live without (Popped Potato Chips, I’m looking at you), you have to have them in stock every time I shop! Otherwise, I end up with something weird like these.

Here at Snackerrific, one of the four senses tends to be neglected. We write a lot about how things taste, of course, and there’s plenty of talk about how they smell, look, and feel in the mouth. But I am pretty sure this is the first snack I bought because of how it sounds.

Really. When I picked up the bag, it jangled in the oddest way. So I shook it, just to check. Yes, it made a sound like a sack full of light pieces of hardware, or maybe even decorative jingle bells. I’d never heard a food sound like that.

It was good that I was thinking about how they sounded instead of how they compared to my beloved Popped Potato Chips, or they would have been even more of a disappointment.

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Snack Review: Trader Joe’s Canneles de Bordeaux

I bought these because everyone should sometimes eat a snack that they can’t pronounce.

No, really, it was that I was suckered in again by the romantic foreignness of it. Look at that little crown-shaped, brown, sort of shiny thing in the picture on the box. Doesn’t it look so terribly European and traditional?

And the text on the back was just the sort of thing that I can’t resist. It’s “a specialty pastry of Bordeaux on the southwestern coast of France.” Not all over France, mind you, in every highway convenience store - no, a regional delicacy! Something grandma made, only if you came from just the right neighborhood!

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Snack Review: Trader Joe’s Cheddar Cheese Squares Crackers

Oh, Trader Joe’s. The highs can be so high (those lovely Popped Potato Chips), but the lows can be so, so low.

These look like Cheez-its, which are my household’s favored brand of cheese cracker. I should have realized, it’s better to go with something totally new than with a copy of something you already like. The odds are pretty good that if you think something is perfect, any small difference is going to seem like a step down from perfection.

Oh, and it was not a small difference.

These crackers don’t taste like cheese. They taste, bizarrely, like milk. I immediately looked at the ingredients, and the explanation is clear: “Natural flavor (milk).”

Actual milk could never impart such a strong milky taste and still result in a cracker-textured cracker. It would have to be a chemical from a bottle. And don’t let the “natural” fool you – “natural flavors” are still industrial products, made in a factory; the difference from “artificial” is just based on what ingredients they started out with.

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Snack Review: Trader Joe’s Popped Potato Chips

I have had just the most difficult time getting around to writing a review of these chips. Every time I tried to take a picture of the bag, it turned out that we’d already emptied it and thrown it away. I finally got this one with a handful of chips left in it.

That’s probably all you need to know about how much I like these. As a snack reviewer, I have to resist the impulse to buy something a second time, since buying something different will mean I can write another review. It’s a tough job we’re doing for you, dear readers.

But these… they are too mysterious and wondrous not to eat again. To me, the Holy Grail of snacks would be a potato chip with no calories. These are not exactly potato chips, but they’re something mystical that’s almost better. And while they don’t have NO calories, they have about a third or half the fat of normal chips. The label says they are “popped” instead of baked or fried. They are made of potato flour, potato starch, and some rice flour, and they’re full of little bubbles. I’m not sure how they do it, and I don’t care, I just want to eat more of them.

These don’t have a strong flavor of actual potatoes, like the other Trader Joe’s Reduced Guilt chips that I tried recently. And that is OK with me. If I wanted to eat a potato, I could eat a potato. And most potato chips don’t, so that just makes them taste more like chips, I think.

Their only flaw is that they are too salty. This is kind of OK, as it stops me from eating the whole bag at once. Also, I don’t mind wiping some of the salt off with my fingers if that’s all it takes to reach perfection.

• Trader Joe’s Website