Sept 22, 2026 – Ann is in OurLittleCorner today

Pan It or Praise It?

Andy and I were delighted to be surrounded by Gen Zers this weekend. And we were even more delighted to get into a conversation about food with the three of them (ages 21, 23, and almost 25). Better yet, they had strong opinions about Trader Joe’s, and Trader Joe’s was already the topic for my blog this week. Their experiences with Trader Joe’s comes from shopping in Santa Cruz, CA, and Brooklyn, NY. Ours comes from shopping in Santa Rosa.

All of us agreed that Trader Joe’s food generally has surprisingly good ingredients and is amazingly affordable. The most expensive meal we bought in Santa Rosa was the bag of Mandarin Orange Chicken, and it was $5.49 – and could serve 3-4 light eaters! The nutrition facts regarding this package of chicken were not quite as impressive as the price, but not terrible.

A good reference for looking at nutrition comes from The Yale School of Public Health. The authors suggest looking at three important numbers on the Nutrition Facts – which appears on the packaged food. Those three are “saturated fats,” “added sugar,”and “sodium.” You should aim to have none of those three be more than 20% of the daily value per serving. TJ’s Mandarin Chicken is a little high in sodium and added sugars.

Consumer Reports has an August 2026 article about store-bought frozen meals; they also suggest looking for “whole food ingredients” and “few or no additives.” While they especially liked Amy’s and Blue Zones Kitchen brands, CR also recommended several of Trader Joe’s meals, specifically their Riced Cauliflower Bowl and their Chicken Burrito Bowl.

Before I get to Andy’s and my reviews of our 13 Trader Joe’s meals, here are 6 packaged foods from TJ’s that our Gen Zers enthusiastically recommend:

Andy and I developed a highly-sophisticated questionnaire for ourselves as we evaluated the 13 items we selected (sociologists would be proud of us!). It goes like this:

• Were the ingredients healthy?
• Was it appealing in its appearance?
• Was it a good price?
• How did it taste? This taste question could be responded to by “yuck,”okay,” “good,” or “yum”
• Would you buy it again?

About my blog title”Pan It or Praise It”: Other than not being enamored with every single TJ’s offering, I wish their frozen meals weren’t covered with the evil plastic and then put into an oven (microwave or regular) to warm. There is no definitive answer about the safety of that – but my inclination is to put the meal into a glass container, cover it with a damp paper towel and then reheat in the microwave. I intend to try that approach after our next shopping trip. And I wish the sodium content in most of their products was a tad less – for health reasons.

And a bit of praise: we are always pleased with the way TJ’s employees are trained to treat their customers. Checking out is actually pleasant. And this was taken from their web site; it’s got some humor too!

Our TJ’s WINNERS! All three received either a “good” or a “yum” rating. click on the photo to see the specific ingredients.

And one final shout-out: TJ’s Gyoza Potstickers are not only our long-time “go-to” but are a favorite of Lauren Saria, the Food Editor of the online news organization The San Francisco Standard (and, just so you know, our daughter, Sara, is Editor-at-Large at The Standard).

Does it surprise you that there is no recipe today? Of course not. Who cooks when you’ve got 13 meals stored in your freezer. But I can tell you that we were very happy when the last frozen meal was gone and we went back to our home-cooked meals. Trader Joe’s meals provided an at-home dining adventure, but enough is enough.