There’s never any warning.  Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer doesn’t have a set schedule – without any notice it shows up in my Inbox.  In the olden days (back when the dinosaurs roamed the planet) it would appear in the snail mail box.  It’s the same document these days but I have to admit that I enjoyed relaxing with a cup of coffee or tea and leafing through the hard copy.

But this is not a rant about the death of print.  I swear.  It’s more a rant about how YA and I are completely helpless in the face of this flyer.  It’s unbelievable; we are both completely drawn to the new (and probably never-to-be-seen-again) products that are featured.  A little bit like the seasonally colored items that I can’t stay away from.

The theme of the flyer and the seasonal items this time is “strawberry”.  While I love fresh strawberries and I practically live on my strawberry jam, I’m not otherwise a massive strawberry fan.  But YA is.  And there are certainly lots more items featured in addition to the strawberry-laden stuff.  We made a list and I headed out.  Managed to find everything on the list with the assistance of a customer service gentleman who went to the back and found two items that were out on the shelves.  Here is a partial list of what I came home with:

• Pickle Potato Chips: these were primarily for YA – she’s also a fan of Pickle Pizza at the fair.
• Parmesan Tapenade: I love all kinds of tapenade, so this looked promising. It made a great pizza topping on Tuesday.
• Potato Cheese Stix: like it says.  Cubed potatoes, mixed with cheese, frozen on a stick.  YA says they’re pretty good.
• Spicy Taco Sauce: This turned out to be a great sauce for the afore-mentioned potato-cheese stix.
• Strawberry Gummy Bears. Completely for YA.  I never even liked jujubes when I was a kid, so no gummies for me now.
• Turkish flatbread with cheeses, spinach and onion.  In the freezer section – can’t wait.
• Spicy Spuds. Another freezer options – spicy roasted potatoes.
• Oat Bites. There are two kids – PB&J and Raspberry. Bitty little muffins with filling.
• Strawberry Snickerdoodles. I might try this although YA will probably eat most of them
• Garlic Salted Mixed Nuts. They also have little garlic toasted chips in the can.  Quite nice.

There were several other things, including a six-pack of San Pellegrino; we splurge on this a couple of times a year.  None of these items were necessary and neither of us had a plan for any of it, although I did get a pizza dough while I was there, thinking about the tapenade.  I’m of two minds about this silliness.  One the one hand, it was a lot of money for nothing that we had a plan for.  On the other hand, it’s food; we have to eat regardless of the absurdity of the food items.

Tried anything new (food or otherwise) the past couple of weeks?