South Burlington Haul

Its been a few months since our last haul. I’m trying to cut my expenses in the past while. Overall, its been alright, plus it was a nice chance to give ourselves time to declutter and whatnot. However, you will see that this one is mostly groceries.

If you didn’t drop by because of My Weekly Adventures teasing it earlier today, I went to South Burlington, Vermont for a quick day trip since my friend had to run an errand there and I had discovered something at Trader Joe’s and it was the closest one that we have. Give it to buying food to make me cross into the border, it always does the trick.

We made a few stops, some for his errand and others just for checking stuff out which ended up being three spots that I had a little haul from.

First Stop: Trader Joe’s

• Trader Joe’s Speculoos Cookie Butter
• Trader Joe’s Speculoos Cookies
• Trader Joe’s Organic Super Fruit Jam
• Trader Joe’s 72% Swiss Dark Chocolate
• Trader Joe’s Cold Pressed Juice – Red
• L’Arabar *2 (Apple Pie and Cherry Pie flavors)

Since I did go to Trader Joe’s, I tried to pick up  mostly things from their own house brand since the items are guaranteed to not only represent what it offered but also unique to their brand and I couldn’t get it anywhere else. To be honest, a lot of cool products there that were organic and had very healthy ingredients. I’m definitely impressed. As of now, I’ve only tasted the Cookie Butter, the Red juice and the Super Fruit Jam, plus the cookies. Cookie Butter is absolutely delicious as well as the Super Fruit Jam which has officially gotten me back into the jam mood. The Red juice was odd at first with this overpowering beet and celery flavor, not surprising since it has those two ingredients to start but then a few more sips and you get the acidity from the lemon juice and the apple juice. There are some other fruits and veggies in there, ginger and cucumber if I remember correctly also are listed. I can’t say it tastes bad but it tasted healthy because it is. As for the cookies, I’d expect that is what the cookie butter is made from and they are quite delicious. Its supposedly a traditional European cookie which are thin, crisp cinnamon flavored from Belgian. I’m a sucker with cookies with this texture and just enough cinnamon-y and this was pretty great.

Second stop: Barnes & Noble

Next stop was Barnes & Noble. I’ve only ever heard of Barnes & Noble since we don’t have those in Canada. I love books so bookstores are fascinating to me. Barnes & Noble is pretty special. Not only did I walk into the front door and see a bunch of hiking books on sale, which is right up my alley for more hiking destinations. I walked around and saw a whole area of unique board games and then around there was also an entire cabinet full of Studio Ghibli items and collectibles. I wanted to take them all home but of course, I didn’t. Instead I went to the back and saw some cool puzzles. The ones I liked were in a 4 pack so I ended up getting it since the price was pretty economical also. I haven’t done puzzles in a long time but it is something I want to get back to.

Walmart

Last stop before heading back home was to check out the Walmart. Its not really like we don’t have Walmart at home but Walmart in the US stocks brands and items that we don’t have. My favorite is to unfrosted Pop Tarts. They had a limited choice in this Walmart but I still appreciate it. There are usually cool Oreo flavors that we haven’t gotten yet. I think Lemon is in Canada but I grabbed it in case and then caught a glimpse of the chocolate creme Oreos for my husband. Toss that keeping fit out the window for a moment, right? And then I saw the Ritz Summer Limited Edition, which had me curious but I found out that it is really just four individually packaged Ritz crackers but its essentially the same thing. Finally, it hit me at Walmart that I’ve heard so many people talking about La Croix and I said I would go down to get some and then I only remembered at Walmart so obviously got it there. They only had two flavors and I decided to try the Cherry-Lime Flavor. Its actually not that bad. I’m not a huge fan of Sparkling Water but I did enjoy it especially since cold water is not my jam but flavored cold water is decent. Hopefully I’ll remember to check out Target or something when I head down to Plattsburgh which is in the planning since its also not that far away.

That’s it for this haul! 🙂
A quick and not that expensive trip, even considering the crazy exchange rate.
Some nice cool discoveries and I do like Trader Joe’s so if I ever come across another one, I’ll definitely check out more items.