Halloween Gummies

Trader Joe's is flush with fall seasonal products right now, lots of pumpkin and Halloween treats, and even though I'm trying to cut back on sugar, I couldn't resist picking up a bag of the Halloween gummies ($3.99) when we were there. Instead of one big bag of gummies, it's broken down into 20 small snack-size (or trick-or-treat-size) bags, so it's built-in portion control.

Each bag contains multi-colored gummies (I've seen purple, pink, red, yellow, and orange, I think) in Halloween shapes (skeletons, bones, skulls, bats, and pumpkins). Texturally, they're great, very chewy but not sticky. I don't think they've gotten stuck in my teeth at all yet, which is different from a lot of other gummies on the market. (Looking at you, Swedish Fish.) According to TJ's (from a blog post about last year's gummies, which we somehow never saw, but the bag looks exactly the same), they're made by the same French gummy producer who makes the gummy tummies, but I like these a little bit better because they don't have that extra gush that the gummy tummies do. I haven't been able to nail down what the flavors are exactly, but they're sweet without tasting artificial or overly sweet, which I appreciate. Last year's post said they were made with various extracts and concentrates that included black carrot, apple, carrot, pumpkin, blackcurrant, and spirulina, but this year, it just lists fruit juice, vegetable juice, and spirulina, so that might have changed.

Buy again? I don't even know if they'll be at the store the next time we go since they're probably one-and-done as far as product runs, but I would get them again next year. They're a nice gummy treat that seem a little healthier and less sweet than some other candies.

52W Challenge: Corn

I stopped doing the 52 week cooking challenge in late 2017, mostly because it didn't fit our lifestyle at the time, but also because it wasn't as much fun anymore. Lately, finding myself in a cooking rut and lacking inspiration, I've found myself checking in more and more to see what the weekly challenges were, hoping that, even if I didn't start participating every week again, I could at least find something interesting to put on our weekly meal plan. I missed trying new recipes and adding new things to our repertoire, so when the Week 37 challenge came up as corn, I decided it was finally time to plunge back in.

Corn is that quintessential summer ingredient (although we love eating it in all seasons). A good corn recipe, especially a salad, just makes me think of summer, and when I saw a recipe for fresh corn cakes with summer salsa on MyRecipes, I knew that was the one we had to make. It wasn't especially difficult, some of the prep work could be done in advance, and any leftover ingredients (from our modified recipe) could be repurposed for other things during the week.

The ingredients were:

For the corn cakes:
- 4 oz of all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup plain yellow cornmeal
- 2 tsp baking powder
- some salt and pepper
- 1 cup light sour cream
- 2 eggs
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 can of sweet corn
- 1 jalapeño pepper, minced

For the salsa:
- 2 small Roma tomatoes, chopped
- 1 medium zucchini, chopped
- 3 large scallions, chopped
- apple cider vinegar
- olive oil
- salt and pepper

We didn't plan it this way, but I ended up making the salad/salsa and A ended up making the corn cakes. The salad was relatively simple: just chop the vegetables, add the oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper to taste, and mix. The corn cakes were a little more involved, but fairly straightforward. Mix the dry ingredients (flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, pepper) in one bowl, and in another bowl, mix the wet ingredients (sour cream, eggs, olive oil). Add the sour cream mixture, corn, and jalapeño to the dry ingredients, and stir until combined. Then you just drop the corn mixture onto a griddle like pancakes, and cook them until they're done, flipping as needed.

We really liked this recipe. The corn cakes were tasty, and the additions of the actual corn kernels and the jalapeño were key. We thought that they could be improved with some cheese if we were to make them again, maybe some feta or some cheddar. The salsa on the side was an excellent accompaniment for a light vegetarian meal. I read some of the recipe comments afterwards, and someone had suggested also making some salmon with this, which would work really well with the flavors we tasted. This made 8 or 9 corn cakes, so it was pretty filling for the two of us, but if it were being split among more people in a family meal, the salmon would be a nice addition. The only negative to this recipe for us was that we were really bummed that we couldn't share this with baby B. The texture of the corn cakes would be great for a baby his age, and we think he would love the flavors, but the eggs make that impossible right now. If not for the egg allergies, this would be a great recipe to add to our family meal rotation.

Fiery Chicken Curry

I'm generally a big fan of the Indian food at Trader Joe's, as that's the section where you can often find some of the more interesting, flavorful, and balanced single-serving frozen meals. Recently, I spotted something new to me that seems to have debuted over the summer - a Goan-inspired fiery chicken curry with a side of turmeric rice ($3.49).

On the chicken side of the meal, you have a few pieces of chicken breast with a sauce made with onions, coconut milk, tomatoes, vinegar, garlic, ghee, tamarind, green chilies, and some other spices and seasonings, and on the rice side, basmati rice with turmeric and spices. I was expecting a mild heat even though it said fiery, but I was wrong. There was quite a decent amount of heat, but unfortunately I found that the heat masked the flavors of the spices and seasonings in the curry. Most of the flavor I got was just acidic tomatoes and heat, so much so that I preemptively took an antacid immediately after eating. With that overpowering heat, whatever seasonings there were in the rice were also impossible to taste, and the whole dish was pretty much "fiery" without any corresponding bump-up in flavor. Just hot for the sake of hot, in my opinion.

Buy again? No. There are so many good Indian dishes in the freezer case (thinking about the lovely korma fish curry, for one) that I don't feel the need to get this again. I love Indian spices, and I'd rather forgo the heat and taste those in a milder dish.