Cooking with All Things Trader Joe's

I've been a Trader Joe's fan for nearly 30 years and a vegetarian for the same amount of time. I love everything about their store - their prices, their unique selections and health-oriented products.As a home chef, I pride myself on creating new and delicious meals and making it an event. I received my hard cover book from [...] a few days ago and put Post-It notes throughout the book.I've made four recipes in two days. There is nothing worse than spending the time to purchase the ingredients, following the recipe exactly as instructed only to have it turn out to be tasteless. In case that happened, I made two meals on the same day, as a back up.The Caper-lovers Chicken and Eggplant (I omitted the chicken) was just excellent. I made a sausage for my husband and a meatless sausage for me. Not knowing if we would like this, I prepared the Creamy Lemony Linguine - I wrote, "wow" on page 59 of the book. My husband and I aren't big eaters but we both went back for seconds on both of these entrees.Equally delicious are the Black Bean and Ricotta-Stuffed Portabellas. It says serves two but we could have easily shared one. I served this with asparagus and Hollandaise sauce and this tasty dish could be served as the entree rather than a side dish. Again, just in case we didn't like this recipe, I made the Tortellini and Chicken Sausage Soup, again, keeping my vegi sausage and the the other sausage separate while cooking. I used TJ's Greens with Envy and TJ's dry Tortellini with Mixed Cheese Filling - and I made a note on page 64, "just delicious"! I did a taste test before serving and added just a touch of salt.We couldn't get enough of this wonderful soup, either! I have so many TJ items in our pantry, not knowing exactly what to do with them. This wonderful book, Cooking with all things Trader Joe's, has answered all my questions and I can't wait until I get to the other 30+ Post It notes I have flagged for the next recipes I want to make.Thanks to the authors, Deana and Wona, for writing this book - it's a 10.

Not sure what I was expecting, but I suppose I expected it to be creative ways to use just a few common TJ's ingredients for easy to prepare meals. A couple of the recipes come close to that, and having lovely color photos are a big plus with recipe books. There are some "usual updated suspects" for recipes (despite the fact that it's a 2008 book), but I would need to shop specifically for many ingredients in most of the recipes such as: cornbread mix, raw pecans, pineapple salsa, green olive tapenade, endive, saffron, masala simmer sauce ("not marsala sauce!"), pine nuts, artichoke lemon pesto, lavash bread, olive bruschetta, crumbled gorgonzola cheese, pear sauce etc. The ingredients had minimal references to common things you pick up at TJ's (I am a big fan of TJ's). The majority of recipes... although beautiful... are not particularly easy to throw together, nor do they focus on ingredients that are things I personally keep around... nor that I remember seeing at my weekly trips to TJ's. For me, this was not a "win" and I'm glad I bought it used. Will pass along to someone more into cooking or that enjoys spending time with interesting recipes. Nope, I want quick and easy and nutritious and dependable and simple - which many TJ's products are on their own I suppose.

I haven't had the cookbook long enough to evaluate many of the recipes myself--you can look to other reviews for that. (I'll echo, though, that many of the recipes are extremely simple. For me, that's a good thing.) The only other thing that I would like to add is that this cookbook is definitely limited by the fact that Trader Joe's will inevitably discontinue items that are important for certain recipes. The authors have a list of recommended substitutions on their website, though. You can find the website by Googling the name of the book. Once you find it, just click on the tab labeled "substitutions." The website also has a blog that the authors update regularly. They appear to read all of the comments and respond to many of them. They seem very friendly and quite helpful. One gets the impression that they recognize that this book is potentially a gold mine for them, and they want to support it as well as they possibly can. For example, they do TV appearances, etc. to promote the book.All in all,I'm certainly glad that I bought the book.

I have a motto on cookbooks. Never buy one if you open it and find items you have never bought or have no idea what they are. Find a book that has the things you are familiar with and experiment for new tastes. Though this book has some things I have never thought of buying, everything is from TJ's and relatively inexpensive. I have had this book for 3 days and have made 5 different recipes. The recipes are very easy to follow. One of the deserts is three ingredients, bread, brownie mix and milk! I have looked through almost all of them and I can't find very many that would be more then $10 per meal. Many more are just adding a jar of this with a packages of that. This book is about combining simple products to create great results.I will be buying this book for x-mas presents this year for my friends who shop TJ'S. If you don't shop TJ's or have a sense of trying something new save your money. The book won't make any sense. If you do shop TJ's and like to eat and cook this is a must.