Chopped: TJ Maxx edition

i get my groceries where i get my discount clothing

Hello, fellow Maxxinistas!

That’s right. From now on, the newsletter will be about nothing but TJ Maxx, the greatest department store in all of history. The prices are affordable, the fashion fresh, and even the name is cool, because there’s two X’s at the end of it. (Three X’s would be a whole different subject.)

I am bringing up TJ Maxx for a reason, however. Davida and I were out clothes shopping last weekend, and we hit up a bunch of department stores. While we were in line at Kohl’s, I looked at all the snacks at the checkout counter, and joked that I should cook dinner from the random assortment of snacks by the checkout line.

Davida paused for a second and said, “Wait. What about the stuff at TJ Maxx?”

If you haven’t spent a lot of time wandering around TJ Maxx, you might not know that the store has a small section of food, nestled in the kitchenware department.

It’s all pre-packaged stuff. Most of it is crap cookies and popcorn that’s about to expire. But if you poke through enough of it, you’ll find some really weird gems in there. Davida and I picked out all the best things we could find, and left the store with $85 (holy shit) worth of groceries.

I set out to turn all of my finds into a Chopped style meal. My judges would be three stuffed animals and I would have no competition. How could I lose?

My appetizer course was sort of a crostini plate using some really old cheese crisps from a maker called John Wm. Macy’s.

I looked it up, and yes, it’s spelled “Wm.,” which ostensibly stands for William. Something about that name sounded a little unsettling to me. Then I realized that John Wm. Macy rhymes with “John Wayne Gacy.”

I stared at the floor and observed a moment of silence.

One of our most unexpected finds at TJ Maxx was this stick of artisan cured chorizo from a local brand called Tempesta.

Tempesta is based in Chicago and they make some seriously delicious charcuterie, and how it ended up at TJ Maxx will forever remain a mystery. Finding a log of meat next to racks of steeply discounted Michael Kors shirts felt very strange. Davida was the one who stumbled upon it.

She said, “I can’t believe we just found meat at TJ Maxx!”

I put a thin slice of the unexpected chorizo on top of the cheese crisps manufactured by the guy whose name rhymes with a serial killer’s.

[Note: This is easily the most difficult sentence I’ve ever composed. Please clap.]

Then I spooned some artichoke and red pepper bruschetta on top. If you’re an insufferable food person, this is where you have to shout, “Bruschetta is not a spread, it refers to the toast part! Bruschetta is toast! If you think bruschetta is the topping you’re a complete moron!”

Relax, clown. We all know this. You do not get a prize for reciting this fact angrily. Yes, “bruschetta” refers to the toast portion of the appetizer, not the topping. I think it’s hilarious that somehow Americans have mangled the simple concept of toast that comes from a different country.

Even the Wikipedia page for bruschetta takes a jab at us for not understanding what toast means. The entry says: “In the United States, the word is sometimes used to refer to a prepared topping, sold in jars and usually tomato-based, instead of the bread, a sense which is unknown in Italian.”

I can just hear the eye roll from the Italian that wrote that sentence.

I drizzled some bargain bin TJ Maxx olive oil on top, to finish off the cheese crisp bites. Davida and I tried the little crisps, and they were absolutely delicious. The cured meat tasted like a grown-up Slim Jim, the jarred bruschetta (sorry, Italy) added a sweet vegetable relish element, and the oil added some welcome fat to each salty cracker.

Mr. Bee didn’t say anything but I think I did okay.

Keeping with the broken Italian theme of the first dish, I went on to prepare some pumpkin gnocchi with jarred vegetables and pesto.

We’d found a jar of pickled Brussels sprouts, which we were excited about trying, until we realized that the jar was so big that neither Davida’s nor my hands could grip the lid. It took the shared effort of me holding the jar firmly while she twisted the top, in order for us to monkey the thing open. We probably looked like little children trying to break into a candy container.

I chopped up the pickled sprouts (which were delicious, no joke), along with oil marinated olives that had weird fake-looking char marks on them, prepared the gnocchi, and tossed everything in jarred asparagus and cheese pesto.

The result was the most drab-looking pasta I’ve ever seen.

It had a boggy greenish brown color to it, and the gnocchi looked like fat tree grubs that I’ve seen Andrew Zimmern eat live on Bizarre Foods. While I wasn’t a huge fan of the soft dumplings with briny pickled cabbage and cured olives (the flavors clashed a little too much for me), Davida was delighted, and proclaimed that she loved it. Maybe I’ve set the bar achievably low, considering the other shit I make weekly for the newsletter.

It could have just been me, but Harvey’s beady eyes softened up slightly as he saw Davida’s excited reaction to the main course.

Finally, dessert.

We’d found this weird new age keto blueberry muffin mix, which is a combination of words that should not normally be arranged in that order, along with some butter toffee almonds, balsamic vinegar glaze, and these extremely unusual edible spoons.

I figured I’d just make a little muffin in a ramekin, adding the toffee almonds (which tasted like they were stored in your grandma’s mildewy basement for about 12 years), drizzle some balsamic glaze on top, and scoop it all out using those odd edible spoons.

This was the only dish that needed additional ingredients from our pantry, aka, stuff we didn’t get from The Maxx (which was slightly disappointing, but I’d realized this after the fact).

The final result was a perfectly cute-looking blueberry muffin in a bowl.

The problem was that it wasn’t cute-tasting, however.

Though the vinegar glaze looked like a thick delicious syrup, the vinegar flavor hadn’t been cooked out much, if at all. Imagine a strangely dense blueberry muffin with vinegar on top, and there you have it. Davida did not like this concoction one bit. Frankly, neither did I. Stupid keto muffins. Stupid unreduced balsamic vinegar. Stupid old toffee nuts.

Naturally, seeing Davida’s unfavorable reaction, Pepper looked at me with disapproval on her face. Hey, I guess two out of three counts as a win, though, right?

You’re probably wondering about that edible spoon.

It was about as weird as you’d imagine. The spoon had the tactile feeling of pressed paper, and it was very sturdy to the touch. If you hadn’t told me it was edible I would have just assumed it was cardboard. I reluctantly took a bite, and can in fact confirm that it also tasted like cardboard (the ingredients say the spoons are made out of various flours). It was hard to chew and eventually crumbled in my mouth with no particular flavor aside from a tiny bit of sweetness.

I wasn’t expecting an Alinea-like twist to the end of our meal, but that’s the beauty of shopping at TJ Maxx. You can browse the affordable clothing and leave with a Chopped championship under your belt.

[No, this post was not sponsored. Nobody’s ever sponsored the newsletter except for you guys. TJ Maxx, if you’re listening, please give me at least $85 to pay for the groceries.]

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Well, I won Chopped. TJ Maxx edition, at least…with no competition and three stuffed animals as judges.

Clowns, don’t forget to share Food is Stupid on social media, since it does the newsletter lots of favors! And if you know anyone at TJ Maxx corporate, please let them know that bruschetta is toasted bread and not a jarred condiment.

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You’ll also get access to all the past paid material via the web at foodisstupid.substack.com. The newsletter just celebrated its third birthday, which means there’s so much for you to discover.

Later this week I’m going to see if the edible spoons are dishwasher-safe, you know, in case I want to reuse them. This ought to be good.

As always, I love you all, and leave the cutlery-eating to us professionals. I’ll hop into some of your inboxes later this week.