A while back, I warned against the rising tyranny of Trader Joe’s, esp. w/r/t food served at parties. Indeed, my friend Jen of St. Louis confirms this creeping trend:

We have had one for over a year now and I swear there is not a party anywhere where some Trader Joe’s item doesn’t show up. (And people are still all like, “Hey, I got this at TRADER JOE’S!” Hopefully that’s going to wear off soon. The cult of the new food thing in St. Louis is very strong. It’s been almost three years and you still basically can’t go to Cheesecake Factory at a decent dinner hour, there are so many people.) Anyway, the TJ’s party food thing, which isn’t a bad thing, really, it just gets repetitive. I mean, how many times am I supposed to encounter the “four flavor hummus” with excitement? I mean, dump a can of beans in the blender, people, it’s not hard. I enjoy the two-buck Chuck, and they have a nice wine and beer selection but the cheese is just inexcusable. Really, really bad.

…

But the worst thing was gingerbread cookies I bought at Christmas. OK, gingerbread cookies, all soft and pillowy and covered on top with dark chocolate. Sounds like you can’t go wrong, right? No, they actually put the chocolate on the cookies when the cookies where sitting on these little Styrofoam pad things and the chocolate dripped over the top and down the sides and adhered the Styrofoam to the cookie. I swear, this just completely flummoxed me. I had to call Charley downstairs to help me figure out what the hell was going on with these cookies, cause you pick it up and it looks like maybe that white thing on the bottom isn’t Styrofoam but maybe, who knows, something else ’cause the chocolate is holding it onto the cookie, so surely you are supposed to eat it, right?

So after a mouthful of Styrofoam, I had to dissect the cookie. The only way to eat those cookies was to take a knife and cut off the Styrofoam.

Insane.

Enjoy the four flavor hummus. You will be seeing it soon, I predict.

This is another benefit of living in Queens–physical distance from the TJ’s in Union Square, combined with our own laziness, means I will probably never get around to shopping there. Likewise, no one has yet arrived at my house with a TJ’s product in hand. Not that it’s bad. I just want it kept in check. And no four-flavor hummus, ever–not when we’ve got Sabra!