Update

I haven't given up on this blog or anything. I just haven't been to Trader Joe's in several weeks. It's on the other side of town, and I haven't been in that neighborhood for other errands, given the general cutting back on hitting restaurants and other retail establishments. I've been making do with stuff from a regular (read: inferior!) grocer that's within walking distance. But my TJ's shopping list keeps growing, and I'm sure I'll be back there soon, with more new goodies to try and report on.

Additions to blog formatting

A few days ago, I got an email from my friend Dan in Minnesota:

You would do your readers a favor if you would have one more list, beyond your Top 10:

List the things you would buy again (obviously linking each item to your original review).

Me, in the store: What was that thing Bob liked awhile back -- the veggie stuff in the frozen bag? Hmmm. Check the list on my phone. Polenta! That's it! I'll try that!

It seemed like a good idea. I thought that while I was at it, I would also compile a list of things that not only would I buy again, but that I do actually buy over and over again. 

So three lists, in ascending order of greatness: Would buy again, my staples, and top ten (which, of course, is never limited to ten items). 

It took me a bit of tinkering to figure out how to make Blogger do it in a way that would be useful, and then it took, well, basically all day today to go through hundreds of posts, and paste their links into the appropriate lists. But now it's done, and will henceforth be easy to update one item at a time, as called for. 

The posts containing those lists are the next three you see. After some time they'll scroll off the front page, as newer posts emerge. But--here's the important bit--it doesn't matter where they are, because I've added permanent links to them at the top-right corner of any page of the blog you might be looking at. See them up there?

There's one glitch that I can't easily solve, which is that those anchored links don't show up on the mobile version of the home page that Google (owner of Blogger/Blogspot) sends out when it senses that you're reading on a smart phone. The only work-around I know of is this: scroll down to the bottom of the page and find a link that says something like "View web version." Click on that, and it loads the full version of the site, with those links where they should be. (The same is true for getting to the search function at the upper left corner, which I frequently want to use when looking up an old review while I'm in the store.) 

I hope you find this a helpful additional feature. 

Vacation

I'm going to be heading to Utah to visit with family for the next several days. The posts will continue to publish on schedule every morning at 9 a.m. Eastern time. I have also prepared a weekly roundup post for Saturday night, as usual, though, it's very short, containing only news items up through today. I may or may not be checking email to approve comments. If I don't, I'll catch up with them when I get home. Be patient, please.

More posting

Once again, I'm writing posts faster than they get published. I have them lined up through the second week of January, at the current rate. So, once again, I'm going to bump up the posting frequency: now every day, including weekends. But that's it. I won't believe that people are interested in seeing them faster than that, and if they keep accumulating, tough.

The posting schedule--again

I guess I should have foreseen this: the recently changed posting schedule did nothing to reduce the backlog of posts. After all, switching from Monday-Wednesday-Friday to every other day was not much of an increase. I have posts written and scheduled to publish on that every-other-day routine through early January. It's silly to leave them in limbo so long.

So I guess I'll crank up the publication schedule again. I'm going to try five days a week, Monday through Friday. That should make an average of 21-22 posts per month instead of 15. If eventually I work through the backlog and I'm not writing as often, I may need to scale that back, but we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it.

New schedule will begin tomorrow.

Changed publication schedule

I started with posts twice a week, but I was writing them much faster than that, so I was building up a ridiculously large reserve of pre-written posts. That prompted me to bump up the publication schedule to three per week.

Well, that didn't cure the problem. In fact, I think it pushed me to write even more often, because I was perversely worried about my reserve of posts running dry. So now, even with the increased publication, I now have posts done and scheduled to run almost to the end of December.

It's just silly to have them on ice for that long, so I'm going to increase the posting rate yet again. I'm going to put up a new post every even-numbered day--15 per month--starting this week. Let's see what that does to balance the rate of writing and posting.

Writing like a madman

I have been in a frenzy of trying new TJ's things over the last couple of weeks. I have been writing so many reviews that I have posts all set to be published every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (9:00 a.m.) through December 1! That's 3 1/2 months' worth of writing already done! It is, frankly, pretty ridiculous.

What's even more ridiculous is that I have a couple dozen more reviews that I could write anytime on products I've already tried, and a couple dozen more products sitting around here that I have not yet tried. I could fill the thrice-weekly blog for at least four more months (December through March) without ever going back to the store!

This can't be healthy, can it?

Posting schedule

I've been writing posts--a lot of them. So many that they are pre-written up through almost the end of October, deploying automatically on Sundays and Wednesdays.

Nina suggested that I bump up the publication frequency. Even though I have a ton of material now, I'm a little worried that, in the long run, three times a week will be harder to sustain than two times a week. But I think she's right, so I'm going to give it a try. If I have to cut back later, so be it.

So, starting tomorrow, I'm going to change the postings to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 9:00 a.m. Eastern time. I hope you enjoy them. I'm sure having fun writing them!

Next post: Hibiscus Cranberry Juice Blend 

It begins

You may know me from such films as--no, wait, that's Troy McClure on "The Simpsons." You may know me from my other blog, Poker Grump (which doesn't get a lot of upkeep these days), or Facebook, Twitter, or even (gasp!) from real life. Or you may not know me at all, having stumbled here via Google or whatever. However you got here, welcome. Thanks for peeking in.

Let me explain what I'm doing here, and why.

My back story 

I'm a 53-year-old guy living in Asheville, North Carolina. I've been here about 18 months. A Trader Joe's store opened about a mile from where I live, on the street where I already did most of my shopping and other errands, making it exceptionally convenient to visit frequently.

I had never even heard of the chain until I started dating my girlfriend, Nina, in 2009. When I visited her in Washington, D.C., she took me grocery shopping to her TJ's a couple of times, and I was intrigued by a whole store full of different products, virtually all of them store-branded--no national brands. She asked me to pick out a cheese to have with our dinner one night, and I thought the "Cheddar-Gruyere Melange" sounded interesting without being too exotic. I was floored by how good it was.

I was interested in exploring more TJ's items. However, I was living in Las Vegas at the time, inconveniently far from the nearest TJ's store there, so I went a couple of times and tried a few things, but didn't change my grocery buying habits much as a result.

A few years passed, Nina moved from D.C. to Asheville because of reasons, and I quickly moved here to be near her. That a TJ's was announced shortly after I moved here, with a location of terrific convenience to me, was just an added happy bonus.

Since the store's opening last September, I have tried dozens of different products. The exploration has been greatly catalyzed by the fact that Nina comes over for dinner once a week. I'm not a good cook, but I love having her here. She likes trying new food, and I enjoy finding new products that she hasn't had before.

My own experience with food has been rather limited. That is, I've eaten as much as most 53-year-olds, but probably a lot less variety than most. My diet has mainly consisted of maybe a dozen things I especially like to make for myself, repeated over and over and over again. The entrance of Nina into my life, with her zeal for trying new things, has gently, gradually nudged me that way.

A concrete example: Last week I was at TJ's for some items, and passed an aisle-end display of "Hibiscus-Cranberry Juice." I like cranberry juice, and love it blended with other juices, especially grape, raspberry, or cherry. But hibiscus? Who has ever heard of that? My reaction was, "Well, that's different. I should try it." With absolutely no doubt whatsoever, five years ago my reaction in the same situation would have been, "Well, THAT'S different. I'd better not try it. Why aren't they putting normal juices with the cranberry, the way nature intended?"

My purposes 

I have in mind some reasons for doing this blog. In no particular order:

• It gives me an excuse to play around with my new camera, taking pictures of food. 
• It will force me to write about a subject--food--on which I am a rank amateur. I do a lot of writing, both for public consumption and for private clients, but until now all of my writing has been on subjects on which I know a great deal. There's safety in that; I won't make a lot of embarrassing mistakes, or reveal ignorance. This is a whole different thing. I'll be writing as I learn, fully exposing how little I know, but hopefully eradicating my ignorance one little post at a time. 
• I tend to try foods, then not remember clearly what I thought of them later. I've bought stuff I don't like a second time by accident, not remembering that I didn't like it the first time. This will be an accessible record that I can consult. 
• I hope that readers will help educate me, disagree with me, explain where I'm wrong and why, point me to other items that I should try, share ways of preparing foods that would be better than what I have done. 
• It will be another motivator to keep trying new things. TJ's web site says that they typically roll out 10-15 new items a week, and retire an equal number of poorly selling ones. There's no danger of running through the entire catalog and being left with nothing to write about. 

Disclaimers 

• I'm no foodie. I have taken no courses in food preparation or evaluation. I make stupid rookie mistakes in my cooking. My palate is untrained and neither experienced nor particularly adventurous. Don't expect me to expound on the subtle flavor profile of some new cheese. If you ever catch me saying crap like, "It has a prominent hickory note, with lovely undertones of weaselwood and dahlias," you have permission to shoot me. 
• I don't drink alcohol, so about one-quarter of the space at my local store is never going to get included in my exploration. 
• I'm not going to take requests. 
• If it has onions in it, I'm not going to eat it, period. Onions are foul, disgusting, noxious weeds that should be vaporized off the face of the planet. This is one of the few non-negotiable items in my life, so don't ask. 
• I hope to write posts about twice a week, but I'm not committing to any particular schedule. I'm tentatively planning for Sundays and Wednesdays, but we'll see. 
• Posts will probably often be very, very short. Like, "This stuff sucks. I don't ever want to taste it again, and I don't even want to write any more about it now." 
• As will rapidly become evident, there is no commercial interest here. I.e., you'll see that I'm just as willing to bash as to praise. Nobody is paying me to do this. In the unlikely event that TJ's finds and likes this blog and decides to offer me freebies or something, I'll let you know about it. No secrets or undisclosed motives. 
• It's likely that every post title will be just "Trader Joe's" followed by the name of the item under review. I know this will be tedious, but it's intended to help people doing searches for specific things. 
• Comments are welcome, with word verification (to cut down on the damn spammers, who should rot in hell starting immediately) and light moderation. Basically, say whatever you want about my posts and I'll approve it, unless it's clearly spam, or libelous, or just rude/insulting without any substance. 
• I'm aware that there are already other blogs out there covering this same territory. I haven't yet decided whether I'll ignore them, or slavishly read and link to what they have said about items I'm writing about, or something in between. But I won't ever copy or plagiarize. Every word you see here will be mine (or that of Nina, if I am successful in coaxing her into sharing her opinions here, too). So will every photograph, unless marked otherwise. 

OK, I think I've rambled enough. Time to write my first few posts (set in advance to publish on Sundays and Wednesdays, at least for now), and see what happens.