Trader Joe's Wild Caught Alaska Cod

Review submitted by: Jane Ong

Ewk! This is my opinion after trying out this fillet in my beloved Korean Soon Tofu soup starter kit.  While this frozen fish fillet is labeled as a product of the USA, (this was the reason why I bought it,)  this supposedly wild-caught Alaska frozen cod tasted no better than similar fish product of China that I tried back in 2015.  I love Trader Joe's but this frozen cod had the same bad texture and was just as tasteless. I mean tasteless in terms of how cod is supposed to taste.  May be all frozen cods have the same characteristics due to some kind of special treatment at the packaging plant?  There is no flavor of fish or food, just a hint of weird freezing smell; which I personally found revolting.

I don't think I will ever buy pre-packaged frozen cods again because they taste just as awful as they look.

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Thomas Everything Bagels Review

Review submitted by: Jane Ong

I'm not a fan of bagels.  For the last 10 years of my life, I've been giving myself several chances to learn to like bagels so I can fit in with my friends and everybody whom I know. I had given up on trying until last night when I was trying to shop for my usual favorite "Portuguese Rolls" from ShopRite in Manchester Township New Jersey, and the rolls were all sold out. I was desperate to buy something in preparation for breakfasts this week.  So I ended up having a crappy breakfast this morning, despite the delicious Philadelphia Honey Pecan cream cheese that I very generously spread on top of the toasted bagel half.  Priced at $4.69 for a bag of six bagels, they are a lot more expensive than my usual favorite bag of 6 Portuguese Rolls freshly baked daily at the grocery store's bakery at $2.49 per bag.  

I just tossed away the 5 and a half bagels in the trash because I don't think I want to keep eating them in the morning for the rest of the week. I don't like the bagel's bitter "after-taste" that is so typical with breads that have long shelf-life, piled in the grocery store's bread aisle.  Then there is the 'preserved' smell of such breads that always bothers me, even through the plastic bags.  I thought bagels could be different after being toasted and loaded with cream cheese.  But the bitter after-taste of the bagel was so prominent that I initially thought it was the fault of my cream cheese due to artificial sweetener.  But the cream cheese was actually very good and the bitterness was solely from the bagel.

I won't buy this line of bagels anymore.  I haven't lost my hope for bagels yet.  May be one day when I feel brave enough to try another brand of bagels, I'll finally find the one. Until then, I'm going to stick with the freshly baked Portuguese Rolls.

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Stay Away From Kroger Wild Caught Pacific Cod

Review submitted by: Jane Ong

I just had a piece of these cods that I bought for $9.99 a bag at my local grocery store Ralph. But now I feel I was scammed and I am very angry about the quality of this totally tasteless cod fillets.  I love fish.  Most of my money I spent dining out is on seafood dishes, particularly on fish dishes like cod.  So when I saw the photo and the description on the bag, I was lured to make the purchase.  May be I am not cooking it right?  I thawed the fish fillet and I dumped it in my pre-seasoned Korean Soon Tofu soup starter kit, thinking it's going to add a lot of flavor to my beloved tofu soup.  Korean Soon Tofu soup is a very tasty and delicious soup. I bought the extremely tasty Korean soup starter kit, tossed in mushroom, the cod and green onions.  But the cod added no extra seafood flavor to my tofu soup. While my tofu and mushroom soaked up the seasoning of the soup starter kit, the cod still tasted nothing.   How could the cod taste nothing while my tofu and mushroom absorbed the seasoning of the soup kit?  Eating the cod is like chewing on paper towel. I mean paper towel right out of the dispenser without soaking the paper towel into my tasty tofu soup kit.  It's because if only I soak my paper towel into the soup, even the paper towel becomes flavorful.

What exactly is this cod?  Is this really fish?  I mean I had cods in restaurants all the time, baked cods, fried cods, sauteed cod, grilled cod, etc, etc, and I love Trader Joe's "American Made" oven ready breaded cod fillets.  I had never had a piece of cod that tasted like paper towel. I am angry because I feel that Kroger insults me by selling me this crap.  Does Kroger really think I am so retarded that I think cod should taste like paper towel?  Does Kroger think I don't deserve to be sold decent quality cod but tasteless crap?  The package says the cods were wild caught in the Pacific. Then when I read the "fine print" just now, I saw "Product of China".  Now, no wonder the cod tasted like paper towel, or recycled white plastic?  So America can't even fish now, but has to depend on China to fish for her?  Only god knows how these cods were processed in the processing plants in China or how they were treated to have the texture  changed so drastically and the taste totally bleached out.  Anything that can't be seasoned after soaking in the tasty Korean Tofu Soup kit has to be pretty bad....because this soup kit can make anything taste decent, including paper towels and I am not kidding.  But the soup can't add flavor to the cod.  Besides, fish is supposed to add flavor to any soup...Now, my concern is, are those really cod I just eat or some simulation from recycled plastics?

Dinner Rolls That I Will Never Buy Again!

Review submitted by: Jane Ong

This bag of dinner rolls is the exact reason why I avoided buying baked goods in the mainstream American grocery stores.  These rolls were just awful to me because I am used to much fresher and tastier buns and breads from the Asian bakeries.  After having the really good rolls at a Dim Sum restaurant, these dinner rolls from Ralph just tasted like crap to me.  I know I can't compare the two since they are different like apples and oranges.  But still, I just can't eat the dinner rolls from Ralph anymore.  I tried and I wanted very much to hold onto them. But I just didn't see how these rolls would be any better if only I stored them another day when they tasted so awful on the first day I bought them from the grocery store.  I struggled to eat one roll on the first night I bought it, and then I just tossed the rest into trash.  It was a huge waste of money, and it made me feel so bad and guilty, since I was raised by parents and grandparents who had once lived through years of near-death starvation and extreme poverty. I hate trashing food, because every time I did, I could picture my parents and grandparents starving and suffering.  But I just couldn't bring myself to eat these lousy rolls.

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Marie Callender's Meatball & Sausage Marinara

Review submitted by: Jane Ong

My hotel room here in Toms River NJ has a microwave, so I bought the Marie Callender's Meatball & Sausage Marinara when it's on sale at $1.99 at Shop Rite.  I had been to Marie Callender's restaurant a few times in California and I generally liked the food there but this was my first time buying the brand's frozen dinner.  The portion was great but unfortunately the sausage and meatballs tasted very foul and stinky.  I don't want to know what kind of meat and what quality of meat was used to make this pasta.  It was so awful that I had to spit it out.  I tried 2 bites and I had to toss the entire dinner plate away.  The pasta itself tasted tolerable even though it was too salty for me.  But the meat was the worst I had ever tasted.  I'm not sure if it's just this particular box, or the meat that was used to make this kind of cheap frozen dinner just generally tasted like this.  I will not buy this ever again. But then I think this frozen dinner will be great for a Halloween Dinner Party.  It will be fun to serve this at a dining room that is decorated with spooky stuff and lighting.  I would like to film the entire dinner party and register every guests' facial expression when they take their first bite into this foul and stinky suspicious meat.

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Review on Pepperidge Farm's Pirouette (Chocolate Hazelnut)

We bought this from our local grocery store when it was on sale. We don't like the rolls because they tasted somewhat stale to us. Yes, they were light, yes, they were crispy, and yes the expiration date is end of 2015.  But they just tasted too artificial and stale to us.  If only you had tried the freshly made light and crispy wafer rolls in a good restaurant for dessert, you know what we meant when we said these Pirouettes tasted "artificial".  May be it's the "hazelnut" flavoring, or may be it's just a bad batch that skipped the quality control, these Pirouettes just had that musty stale taste in them.  We tossed the entire can into trash after having 2 rolls.  We just couldn't eat another roll. We didn't miss them even when we were starving.

We Are Not Fans Of Planters Chipotle Peanuts

This new flavor of Planters peanuts isn't as horrible as the Salted Caramel Flavor that we tried a while back.  These Chipotle peanuts are edible to us, but they aren't something that we can't stop eating.  They aren't something that we will fight over either.  We just aren't fans of them. We can eat a few of them when a bowl of them is passed to us, but we won't ask for a repeat.  To us, the heat and the spicy fragrance in the Chipotle flavor don't marry well with the flavor of the peanuts.  We love grilled Chipotle chicken or Chipotle shrimps but we don't care too much about Chipotle peanuts. We bought them, we tried them and we can finish the rest of them so as not to waste our money, but we will not buy again.

How Peanuts Can Go Wrong With Salted Caramel

We love salted caramel on all our desserts and we are huge fans of Planters roasted peanuts.  So we were so excited when Planters launched the new Salted Caramel Peanuts.  After chewing on a few of these peanuts, our first reaction was to want to spit them out.  We couldn't believe how salted caramel didn't pair well with roasted peanuts.  How could that be???  We always drizzle caramel sauce and sprinkle peanuts on our vanilla ice-cream.  We were totally shocked by how weird the Planters  Salted Caramel Peanuts tasted.  A further look at the container helped us realize why.  It was the "artificial flavor" that ruined our beloved Planters peanuts.  We don't understand why anyone will bother to add artificial flavor to something good.  Just when  did  anything "artificial" ever taste any good?   This is a really disappointing product and we couldn't stand the artificial caramel flavor to take a second mouthful, we just tossed the whole container into the trash.