A trip to Trader Joe's

Have you been to Trader Joe's?  They only recently started opening stores in my area and I waited forever for one to open near me.  Before that, the closest one was about 45 minutes away.  Now I can jog to Trader Joe's or drive there in 7 - 8 minutes.  I went there a couple days ago to pick up their 3 grain tempeh, which I have yet to try.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been on a tempeh kick lately.  

Anyway, as it always happens, I got distracted in the store and picked up a couple other items.  I got their dried flattened banana.  It's almost like taffy and it's so chewy and sticky!  It's like candy, really.

So the dried bananas were right next to a weakness of mine - the nuts!  Trader Joe's does have some of the best value when it comes to their nuts, I especially love their roasted deluxe mixed nuts, but opted to try something I hadn't seen before in their store - Thai Lime and Chili Almonds.  I usually get their cashew and peanut variety and there was one similar of just plain cashews, although the seasoning was a bit different.  I just know I liked the one with tom yum flavor a lot more and this one had it.

I immediately tried it when I got home and it's amazing! I do like this better than their cashew and peanut variety as it seems to be less oily.  The tom yum flavor overpowers the cashews too much anyway so I think the almond variety is more balanced and definitely has a better crunch.  It's a bit addictive though, so I won't be buying it too often.

When I was getting my tempeh, I happened upon their Italian Sausage-less sausage.  I've tried the ones from Lightlife before and I thought those were pretty good, but wanted to try other brands.

I pan-fried half of one sliced in half on a sprayed skillet and it crisped on the sides nicely. It is slightly soft, but doesn't really fall apart when you cut into it. The texture was good, I think it's similar to Lightlife's version, and the flavor was good - it brought back memories of sausage pizza. My first thought biting into this was, I should make a pizza out of this and that I will soon. Maybe just get pita bread, mozzarella, tomato sauce, and top it off with diced chunks of this.

I need to start experimenting with other recipes soon as stir-fry anything is getting boring (although it's so convenient). Maybe foray back into chicken??? It's been on my mind a lot lately since I started eating seafood again last August after 5.5 years of being a vegetarian. I still can't get past the image of a chicken looking at me with his leg missing and asking me why I ate his leg. When I went to Tan Tan last week, we had ordered fish - the waitress pointed to the fish tank which size was which. When the dish came out and the fish was sitting on top of the plate (yes sitting, they did not put him on his side), I looked back over at the tank and there was one less fish.  He was only swimming around 20 minutes before.  I'm still haunted by this. I was a bad vegetarian for 5.5 years and relying on greek yogurt for my protein gradually gave me a massive sweet tooth (dairy has a lot of sugar and really, I don't think I would try and eat a bowl of savory greek yogurt if there was ever a thing). Becoming an endurance runner as a vegetarian who wasn't careful with macros intake turned my healthy eating habits upside down and I'm still trying to fix it (both habits and health). We shall see.