Halfway Homemade
Five vegetarian meals you can pull together fast (with a little help from Trader Joe's)
There is a funny moment in Acquired’s October episode devoted to Trader Joe’s. The hosts, Ben and David, are snacking on a bag of Trader Joe’s mixed nuts and comparing their experience to eating the same nuts from a little tin of Planters.
Ben: It’s funny: if I’m eating the same mixed nuts that are salted from Planters, it feels like I should be drinking them with a beer and...
David: Watching football, and it’s like, “bad for you.”
Ben: And it feels like if I’m eating them out of this [Trader Joe’s] bag…with this hippie-dippy little basket that shows some roots and a sunshine on the bag. And this makes me feel good. This is health food.
This feeling is, of course, the magic of marketing, and in particular, the magic of Trader Joe’s marketing. Why is it that we feel like a TJ label on a product turns it into something more wholesome? Even products whose ingredient lists are as long and confusing as a Dostoevsky novel? The answer is complex and fascinating, and I encourage you to listen to the entire episode, but it can, in part, be explained by the fact that founder “Trader” Joe Coulombe was one of the first to stock his Pasadena store with granola, the ultimate California health food craze product, in the 1970s.
But 50 years later, and eight years into this whole Weekday Vegetarian business, I decided to secure my dinner-making goggles, and walk through my local Trader Joe’s with one question in mind:
What Trader Joe’s products a) have minimal and/or recognizable ingredient lists and b) might help make vegetarian dinners simpler or a little more special?
Today’s newsletter is not about dumping a package of, say, Trader Joe’s Vegetable Pad Thai, into a bowl, pressing a button on the microwave, and sitting down to dinner a few minutes later. It’s about stocking up on a few strategic products that give you a head start on nights when you (or whoever you are feeding) come home late from work or practice or wherever, and you’re too starving or too tired to do the whole from-scratch thing. (And also when you’re thinking A person can only have so much Chipotle.)
In other words: Welcome to Halfway Homemade Week, the final week of your Weekday Vegetarian Challenge! Below, please find five easy dinner recipes I hope will encourage you to stay the course…