What are your must-buy items from Trader Joe's for toddlers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Half of these things mentioned in this post can be found at a grocery store for, I'm sure, cheaper, right? - cereal bars, applessuce, pouches, mini cucumbers, dried fruit, frozen processed food like quiches and fish stix....hec, the Super target and super walmart have these items.

No actually, it's a lot cheaper, especially for organic stuff. I dint buy food at target or Walmart though but TJ is definitely cheaper than other grocery stores like HT, giant and so on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This all sounds so...gross.

+1. Some of Michael Pollans Rules:

1. Eat food
2. Don’t eat anything your great?grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food
3. Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry
4. Avoid food products that contain high?fructose corn syrup
5. Avoid food products that have some form of sugar (or sweetener listed among) the top three ingredients
6. Avoid food products that have more than 5 ingredients
7. Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third?grader cannot pronounce
8. Avoid food products that make health claims

I don;t know what my great grandmother would think of TJ's.

I don't get this. TJ's is similar to any other grocery store in that it has a mix of unprocessed and processed foods. It varies a bit by location, but I would even wager the amount of floor space devoted to each is proportional. The reason for this thread, though, is that they don't carry a lot of name-brands, so it's good to get recs, especially on the processed food.

FWIW, we don't buy a lot of stuff at TJs especially for DD (though we do most of our grocery shopping there), but a few things we get from there that she likes:

- Organic bananas
- Organic Bagged Salads (which she calls "eating flowers")
- Organic multi-colored carrots
- Organic Chicken Thighs
- Organic Cottage Cheese
- Organic Broccoli florets (cooked, but it depends on the day whether she loves them or refuses to even try them)
- String Cheese
- Hummus
- Kosher ground turkey
- Frozen falafel (great for last minute/in a pinch meals)
- Organic frozen spinach pizza
- Cheddar cheese
- Organic fruit (strawberries, grapes, etc...whatever's in season and looks good)
- Dried tortellini
- Frozen peas
- Frozen corn
- Pita chips (for hummus)
- Ok-Mok crackers
- Lundberg Brown rice cakes
- TJ's O's (their brand of Cheerios)
- European Style yogurt
- Sprouted grain bread for toast
- Quinoa (esp the red kind)
- Morning Star veggie sausages

I don't buy her milk, eggs, or avacados (which she loves) from TJ's cuz I don't think they are as good there. We usually end up doing a small run to a regular grocery store, but I would say that 2-3/3-4 of our shopping is done at TJ's. Mix of processed and unprocessed foods, but I don't think any of the above is that different from what we would buy at a regular grocery...just a little cheaper in my experience. And I like their frozen meals (like falafel and pizza) a bit better, though we don't do them often.