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Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Two disappointing frozen pizzas from Trader Joe's

Alas, although I am a fan, sometimes Trader Joe's is Traitorous Joe's.

And such is the case with these two frozen pizzas. One merely does not live up to the hype, the other is downright bad. Let us examine them together.

First. Something for which I had great expectations. The wild mushroom and black truffle flatbread. While technically not a pizza, but more of a schiacciata, it's definitely in the Italian camp; to be precise, with its dark truffles and 'shrooms, in the Central Italy camp. The thought of truffles in any form for about five bucks might lead some people to abandon their rational faculties. However, once you have purchased it, brought it home, and opened the package, you are confronted by a smallish dark brownish oblong that is not very attractive. You cook it (it takes longer than the instructions suggest) and it remains stubbornly unattractive. And mediocre tasting. Which is not what we want from wild mushrooms and truffles. Mine is a minority opinion; there are plenty of raves on the Web. But what do they know?

Second. The Reduced Guilt Pizza Primavera. Again, at two dollars and 250 calories, you say, how can I go wrong? You can and I did. It's shown and described as a veggie pizza with squash, eggplant, zucchini and peppers, but basically mine was a very small pizza with zucchini and tiny bits of pepper. Zucchini had poor texture and flavor. Nasty bad garlic taste. Reduce your guilt to zero by not buying or eating this pizza.