I walk to Trader Joe’s every week to shop for my family of 4. These 10 items always make it into my cart.

It’s always helpful to have a few tried-and-true dinners on hand for nights when the kids get fussy.

When I want to make sure I get some food in them, I take a couple of minutes to prepare these thin pasta triangles with butternut-squash filling inside.

My kids have yet to turn the pasta down, and this dish allows me to rationalize that I’ve fed the children a fruit — squashes have seeds!

My local Trader Joe’s often stocks Cosmic Crisp apples, a cross between Enterprise and Honeycrisp apples.

They come in two distinct sizes: small ones, which are in a 2-pound bag, and huge ones, which customers can buy individually. 

I especially like the latter. Cosmic Crisps tend to brown more slowly than most other apples because they have higher levels of acidity and sugar, so if I cut one up and pack it as a snack for both kids, I know the slices will look fresh and appetizing all day. 

And in my experience, Cosmic Crisps don’t seem to bruise easily. I throw one in my bag whenever I anticipate the need for a healthy afternoon snack.

Trader Joe’s jalapeño sauce stays true to the taste of its namesake pepper, though I’d say it carries more of the jalapeño’s flavor than its heat. 

Like all hot sauces, this product has a wide range of potential uses. However, I didn’t discover its true purpose until I put it on a salami sandwich in place of mustard. It brought out the very best of cured meat. 

I eat a lot of burgers at home, so I play around with condiments to keep things interesting. I found that combining this jalapeño sauce with mayonnaise, barbecue sauce, and Worcestershire sauce makes an excellent burger topping.

These might be my favorite chips of all time, which is no small accomplishment.

They taste quite a bit like Cool Ranch Doritos, just with an extra little kick of heat. The chips’ hearty texture is phenomenal, and they remind me of higher-caliber Fritos. 

The bag suggests dipping these chips in guacamole, but that seems unnecessarily indulgent. They carry enough flavor on their own.

I sometimes fantasize about crushing them up and using them to bread chicken, but in truth, I usually just eat half the bag on my walk home.

I drink an alarming amount of coffee. Ever since I started making cold brew at home about 10 years ago, I estimate I’ve saved thousands of dollars in coffee-shop purchases. 

I’ve experimented with various roasts, origins, and preparations and have yet to find a high-quality coffee in the same price range as Trader Joe’s organic Bolivian blend.

It produces cold brew exactly as I want it: strong but smooth, with subtle, caramel-tinged sweetness.

I could say I buy multicolored carrots because my kids think they’re fun, but in truth, the novelty hasn’t yet worn off on me either. 

Now our crudités look like a beautiful autumnal cornucopia. The purple ones are especially popular in my house, and it doesn’t hurt that they’re also very tasty.

I have sensitive skin and can’t handle most fabric softeners, so I always keep a stock of these dryer bags, which have lavender as their only ingredient, to help my clothes smell nice.

I also like that they don’t have harsh chemicals. The lavender is enough to add a pleasant, floral fragrance to my laundry and freshen up the air in my apartment.

I’m old enough to remember a time when stuffed pretzels seemed rare and felt reserved for special occasions. 

Now they’re widely available — especially at Trader Joe’s — and you can choose from multiple different nut-butter fillings and coatings. I favor the classic ones with peanut butter on the inside.

They’re crunchy, salty, sweet, and satisfying. When I think of a Venn diagram representing all the different ways I want my snacks to taste, these treats land smack-dab in the middle.

After trying a variety of Trader Joe’s frozen pizzas, I’ve found I often prefer to make my own. I pair ready-to-bake plain pizza dough with a jar of fat-free pizza sauce and a fresh mozzarella log. 

The jar of sauce and the cheese are enough for at least two pizzas — assuming no one snacks on the cheese — and the dough is easier to work with than other supermarket ones I’ve used in the past.

My kids won’t eat spicy food, but I jazz up my slices with Trader Joe’s version of Sriracha.

It’s always important to stock up on foods my kids will eat, but it’s equally important to keep some on hand that my kids won’t touch. 

I want to know that I have lunch options that won’t descend upon like vultures, and the jerk-chicken burrito is one of them.

It’s delicious and has enough Caribbean spices that my children, who can’t handle spice, stay away from it. Like most burritos, these are great with a little sour cream.

Although I haven’t found it in stores in a while, I hope Trader Joe’s brings it back as it often does with products.

Click to keep reading Trader Joe’s diaries like this one.

This story was originally published on July 2, 2023, and most recently updated on August 6, 2025.