We had fun this week trying out all the recipe entries for our "Brown Bag Lunches TJ-style" contest.   You can see the winning recipes here.  Between my bookclub dinner and the contest entries, my fridge was stuffed the last couple of days.  Instead of playing around with more new recipes, I figured I'd go browse the "new products" endcap at my local Trader Joe's and see what was new.  I always love the surprises waiting there!  I bought two products that looked interesting and brought them home to sample.  The reviews of both were mixed in my household (I wasn't particularly wowed by either, but read on)
                                  
The first is Whole Grain Strawberry-filled Cereal Bites.  They are small squares of cereal, with the outer layer somewhere between soft and crispy.  The filling is an intense strawberry.  Imagine a miniature strawberry Nutrigrain bar (you know the ones I'm talking about?). For me, I found it too sweet as a cereal, and neither of my kids finished their bowls this morning (although they claimed they loved it).  My husband liked them.  I think it would make a better snack than a cereal.   To me, they seemed slightly oily and list Palm Oil in the ingredients (we'll come back to that in a minute).  Just taking them out of the package left my fingers oily and that's a bit of a turn-off to me.

The second product was Sweet Sesame Rice Snacks.  I was immediately drawn to the outer packaging and the individually wrapped "rice cakes" which were decorated on top with caramelized sugar and sesame seeds.  I love small Asian-inspired snacks like this that have a nice aesthetic to them.  The description was sticky rice that was dried and soaked in melon juice.  Sounded good to me.  Trying them, I found the texture and flavor good but there was definitely  a fried, oily taste and feeling.  "Huh?" I thought, "how did we get oily out of rice soaked in melon juice?"  Closer inspection of the ingredient list brought Palm Oil to attention.  And given 70 calories per little 12 gram rice cake, almost 1/3 is from fat.   Pros: the kids loved them, they were cute, and they were convenient to pack as a snack. 

So my main complaint against both would be the oily/fried taste sensation but I might be the only one in my house that minded it.  As far as Palm Oil goes, the jury still seems to be out concerning tropical saturated fats such as Palm Oil and Coconut Oil.  If you have cholesterol problems,  you might want to research it yourself.  Besides the health concerns, Palm Oil is also criticized for its role in rainforest deforestation.  Not knowing the source or supplier, I couldn't say one way or another.    If you are more educated about Palm Oil, feel free to post below!

I'll be back next week to try some other new products and some new recipes!