Southwest Salad - Trader Joe's

$3.49 per 8 oz Container

After a few trials of some not so good items from several restaurants, I've been staying home and giving the ready-made salads at the grocery stores a try.  Tonight, I had the Southwest Salad from Trader Joe's for dinner.  I found this salad quite filling and it could be good for my plan of detoxing myself since this salad was 100% veggies.  But did I enjoy it?  Not really.  I found the mix of veggies too much on the bitter side because of the shredded red cabbages and red onions.  I love red onions but when there were already the shredded red cabbages, there was just too much bitterness in the veggies.  The corn, diced red and green peppers would have helped if only there were more of them. The black beans however complimented the corn very well. The Mexican cotija cheese also added a nice touch.  I don't like red cabbage in my salad but I ate it because of its health benefits.  I think this salad would have been much better if only the accompanying bag of salad dressing wasn't also too much on the bitter and tart side. All I tasted from the salad dressing was tartness, bitterness, a little taste of salt and a hint of heat. I personally don't think this dressing worked with the salad too well since the salad  was also heavy on the tart side.  I wish they could add more sweetness to the dressing or to the veggie mix to balance out the tart and bitter flavors a little better.  The current bitter tone was too overpowering to my taste.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prime Beef Shabu - King Shabu Shabu

Image
$22 + Tax I love Shabu-Shabu.  I can have this for lunch and dinner everyday if only I can afford to.  I don't cook but I love this cook-it-yourself table top cooking format at a Shabu-Shabu restaurant. I was never a fan of this dining format until I discovered this restaurant .  I had visited a few Shabu places before but I never liked it.  Back then, I felt the meat was gamy, and the dipping sauce too boring.  I used to think Shabu was bland and overall not that appetizing.  But this place completely changed my feeling for Shabu-Shabu.  I think the quality of the ingredients really make a huge difference.  The meat here is of very high quality!  The ponzu sauce and goma (sesame) sauce here are the best tasting dipping sauces I've had among all Shabu places.   A meal like this may look easy to replicate at home, but not really.  I did try a few times but it was never as good.  I wasn't able to get the ponzu and goma sauce to taste as good as the sauces in this p
Read more

Golden Buckwheat Crisp Balls + Longan Cake - Eva Air

Image
Free for all passengers on board Eva Air enroute from Macau to Taipei Since I'm so used to flying from New York City to Los Angeles without being given any snacks or even a small bag of peanuts, I was pleasantly surprised to be receiving a snack tray during my 1 hour and 50 minutes' short flight from Macau to Taipei.  The little bag of Balls Crisps were so crunchy and delicious!   I don't usually like dried rice cereals or any dried snacks, but I love these Balls Crisps very much. They just had such great flavors.  The longan cake was like raisins cake, but instead of raisins, the dried longan fruits were used. For those of you who had never eaten a longan, it's a very delicious fruit that looks like a big pearl after being peeled from its skin.  Due to its appearance, it's also called Dragon's Eye by the Cantonese Chinese. The longan fruit is very sweet, fresh or dried. The cake was delicious, but my cake unfortunately came with some sand inside the cake,
Read more

Berrytale - 85 °C Bakery Cafe

Image
$1.5+Tax The is the sweet roll that I always crave for in the morning and in the afternoon.  They are great for breakfast or afternoon tea.  I once brought a dozen of this to my work's morning meeting, and all my colleagues were fighting for a second.  This freshly baked sweet roll is so good it's addictive.  The roll is freshly baked many times a day at this bakery because it sells so fast. It's filled with blueberry cream inside and topped with a dot of blueberry jam.  The sweet buttery crust on top of the bun is always very fresh and delicious.  After trying out this roll, my colleagues now can't go back to the average donuts in the pink box.  The difference between this roll and the typical donuts in pink boxes is the ingredient.  This roll tastes really good with good ingredients, while the average donuts are probably sweetened with corn syrup, deep fried in old oil and  filled with Crisco instead of real cream.  I never liked the average donuts in pink boxes
Read more