If you buy their pot of basil, you can stick it in your own larger pot and have basil all summer.
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Cheese!!! Fancier cheeses for very reasonable prices.
And if you like dolmas, their canned ones are really good. And stuff like sauces or snacks.
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They have the best price and selection of dried and freeze-dried fruit and nuts out of our local grocery store options. They’re the only place where I’ve seen dried cranberries with no added sugar. They also have eggs at 2.99/dozen, when Ralphs usually prices at 4.99 or higher.
I don’t get produce or fruit at TJ’s.
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Omg yes can’t beat the flowers anywhere.
I think point of reference also matters. Oh, you got so angry you threw Pepe.
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Hahahahaha. Sorry. Voice to text and toddlers. I’ll come back to this later.
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I lol’d
One other thing that I don’t think has been said–I heard that they sell some produce per each, rather than per pound. So if you’re looking for super cheap cabbage, butternut squash, etc, some people like it for that.
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This has been so helpful!!! I want to like it and now I know what things to check out.
HAHAHAHAHA this does make a difference!!
I think the reason I was a little disappointed is I can’t have dairy so the nice cheese and a good portion of the frozen stuff wasn’t on my radar. But that is great to know when I want to make a cheese board for hosting in the future! They were also stocking the aisle with snacks when we were there today so it was chaos and I didn’t get to browse as effectively as I would like!
So my list here for next trip is:
- freeze dried and dried fruit (esp dried mango)
- Nuts
- Frozen foods (frozen garlic naan, frozen peppers and onions, frozen artichoke hearts, roasted corn, chicken and mushroom stir fry, brown rice packets)
- Sourdough bread
- cheap wine
- Eggs
- Bbq sauce and ketchup
- Skipjack tuna
- Spices
- Snacks (olives, graham crackers, seasonal items)
- Hot and sweet jalapenos
- Black bean and corn salsa
- Garlic aioli
- body care
- Canned dolmas
- FLOWERS
We have a pretty solid meal prep routine so I wasn’t looking for any of this stuff! I’ve been a Costco girlie for a long time and buying in bulk has become natural for our family (maybe to an extreme for those of you who follow my journal can attest to lol).
Please keep the Trader Joe’s recs coming! It seems like their target audience is “people who want to cook delicious food and make it easy and in portions for single folks or small families”
I think the way I’ll go in the future is to try new things or when we don’t want takeout and don’t want a complicated meal either. It seems like they have a wide variety of different cuisines in their frozen meals and snacks!
Let me know if I’m off base or if there are any other things I should look for next time I go!
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Their wine section is pretty famous. The Charles Shaw “two buck Chuck” (which I didn’t think is only $2 anymore) is made from leftover wine from big wineries so it’s a mystery what you’re going to get. Apparently sometimes it’s really really good! Also a good candidate for cooking wine. At Christmas they sell a mulled wine. Plus there’s tons of wine from all over the world.
Around Christmas there are so many great treats! Our favorite is the standard (not coffee or chocolate) panettone which must be a loss leader because it’s imported from Italy and they sell it for like $5. I think this year it went up to $6 (and this year they stocked much fewer of them and I only got two and then they were gone from all the stores when I tried to get more). It’s so good, probably our favorite, and we’ve tried very expensive panettones. They have really great seasonal snacks, and after they’re gone, they’re gone! I like the maple kettle corn in the fall.
Also their canvas shopping bags are great (usually they’re on the wall around checkout), and very cheap. They also have a sturdy insulated shopper for something like $5-- a friend gave me one and I use it all the time!
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For the dried mango, their “just mango” is our go-to. It’s unsweetened, unlike some of their others. We also love their salsa verde, chicken stock, frozen mango, pepperoni, and carne asada. But we usually only go out of our way to go there for wine or mango.
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they are so great. It’s actually pretty funny how many you will see being carried in certain neighbourhoods of Toronto, since we do not have Trader Joes here.
Also, I really like their dried mandarin oranges, but they are very sweet, and not at all cost effective. But it is not unusual to have a go-to TJ snack among my friends, like their knockoff mini reeces cups. I feel like they were early to the ‘interesting snacks’ high turnover approach, with things like wasabi peas or various puff snacks. Also, the everything bagel seasoning. And now a lot of places have caught up, but we still have a soft spot from them creating that fun feeling of exploration.
But since we are ingredient purchasers, and not meal purchasers, I don’t thing we’d visit often if we lived near one and had the other options we do now.
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I just learned something cool about this! At least for the pouches, I’m not sure on the cans, Trader Joe’s Mercury tests all of their skipjack tuna, and their own limit is set 10 times more strict than the FDA limit. 
their Skip. Jack ends up lower mercury than even wild planets tested albacore. And hard to beat the price.
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Anyway, the point I was trying to make about point of reference. It’s going to be a big difference in relative value if you have access to an Aldi, or the time to shop around for really good sales, versus not. One of the benefits of Trader Joe’s is that everything is always the same price. So even if it’s not the absolutely cheapest you can get, you never have to worry about what day you go or coupons or sales or anything like that to get a pretty solid price.
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I know the orange chicken and the chicken stir fry (both frozen) have cult followings for exactly this. Unsure the dairy status.
Re no dairy. This is honestly where Trader Joe’s really shines. They’re non-dairy Boursin is the cheapest you can get anywhere, their nondairy creamers are tons of different options and pretty inexpensive, they have the cheapest Miyoko‘s, all sorts of stuff like that. Trader Joe’s is a no dairy Haven.
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Apologies for 1 million replies about Trader Joe’s, but I love them. We use the blue and white canvas bags for everything. Park trips, library trips, just everything. They are so much sturdier than anything else.
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This is definitely mostly why I go. My husband would 150% default to takeout/delivery if he could, but the Kung Pao Chicken and chicken and mushroom stir fry help a LOT with that impulse.
Also they sell Danish Kringle all the way from Racine in the winter. It makes me think of visiting my grandparents, so I buy at least one every year.
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TJs has a marinara sauce that is AMAZING - for $1.99 per jar (24 oz). It’s so good I could just eat it with a spoon. I have never had Rao’s - it just costs too much, especially once I found this.
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Oh yeah, those bags have a cult status in Asia, so lots of Asians own them! Especially if you somehow manage to get a mini one because they are “cute”.
I got a big one for my friend who lives in Singapore and now he keeps sending me photos of other ones seen in the wild 
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lol my favorite hobby is spotting TJ’s bags in the wild outside the US
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I have only seen Tyvek shopping bags from TJs.
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The canvas ones are popular and aren’t always in stock!
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