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.

Chick-fil-A's family-style meals include items and prices that vary by location, but they usually include a combination of mains, sides, and desserts.

The meals were prominently displayed on Chick-fil-A's online menu when I checked, but when I tried to order one at the counter, I was told I could not.

Instead, I had to download the app to order the 10-count Chick-fil-A Chick-n-Strips family-style meal, which was a little annoying. I already have plenty of apps on my phone, and this step felt unnecessary since I was prepared to order in person.

The meal I ordered cost $47.99 and came with 10 chicken strips, two orders of waffle fries, two orders of mac and cheese, two chocolate chip cookies, and two brownies.

It was ready in just a few minutes. We were dining in, but because I ordered on the app, it came packed up to go, sturdily packaged in a manageable-sized bag.

When you've got little kids, you can wind up eating a lot of stray chicken tenders.

In many cases, the breading is caked on and the chicken is overcooked to the point of chewiness. That was not the case at Chick-fil-A.

The strips were nicely salty and mildly seasoned, with a hint of crispiness in the breading and moist meat that tasted freshly cooked.

By the standards of fast-food chicken tenders, Chick-fil-A's get five out of five stars. My wife and I both thought the chicken strips were the best part of the meal.

Family meals at Chick-fil-A are available with sides in multiple configurations. We chose two orders of waffle fries and two orders of mac and cheese, but we could've switched up those ratios or swapped in a fruit cup.

The waffle fries were a hit with my kids, probably because they tend to like the saltiest part of any meal.

I was underwhelmed. I didn't think they had much flavor besides salt, and they weren't really crispy at all.

The mac and cheese was a pleasant surprise.

It looked and tasted like it had been baked as a casserole — a homestyle mac and cheese with nice texture and flavor from the creamy sauce and chunks of browned baked cheese.

All Chick-fil-A family meals available on the app come with two brownies and two chocolate chip cookies.

There's a nostalgic appeal to the desserts at Chick-fil-A, especially when you compare them to the garish, enormous sweets sold at popular cookie chains.

These treats seemed like something you might find at a school bake sale: Moderate portions and classic flavors.

My kids loved the fudgy gooeyness of the brownie, but my wife thought it just seemed a little underdone.

The cookies had big chunks of melty chocolate and a nice combination of outer crunch and interior softness.

I didn't detect any of the artificial chewiness you can sometimes find in mass-produced cookies. Both desserts were huge hits with my kids.

I didn't think this meal was an especially good value.

Adding up the individual components — $23.49 for a 10-piece Chick-n-Strips, $3.85 each for medium waffle fries, $5.35 each for mac and cheese, $2.19 each for the cookies, $2.99 each for the brownies — comes to $52.25.

So, I saved less than $5 by going with a family meal.

Plus, this choice locks everyone in the family into the same meal (I would've preferred a spicy chicken sandwich).

After we added in two drinks (iced tea/lemonades) and a fruit cup (for our 7-year-old dabbling in vegetarianism), we spent about $65 on our dinner.

That's almost twice as much as it'd cost us to eat at a local pizzeria, and about exactly the same as we'd pay to eat our fill from a broader variety of options at a nearby Shake Shack, our usual go-to for quick, casual meals.

Even adjusting my expectations for the location in Midtown Manhattan (which tends to be expensive), the price felt high for what we got.