Even more awesome Trader Joe Products (under $5)

Peanut butter goodies
This is my new favorite cookie! The bottom is a crunchy cookie with some creamy peanut butter on top. That's all dunked in milk chocolate and sprinkled with peanut bits. Sorry, girl scouts, but these are better and cheaper than your expensive badge-earning cookies. For only $2.99, you get 16 goodies. I didn't get these on my last shopping trip because I'm trying to lose a few pounds. If you get these, get 2 because you'll want one for yourself and the other one, well, you can decide whether you'd like to share it.

Watch out, girl scouts - these Goodies will give you all a run for your money!

Dark chocolate covered peanut butter wafer cookies
These cookies are about the size of a large chocolate caramel candy. The thing that makes them tasty is the combination of the crunchiness of the wafers, the creaminess of the peanut bitter and chocolate, and there is a slight saltiness from the peanut butter. As good as these cookies are, I think the dark chocolate gives the cookie a slight waxy texture. I'm not the only blogger who thinks that these snacks are not a hit - others have been a little more critical. Milk chocolate would make these a bit more melty and perhaps make them just as good as the Peanut butter goodies. Having said that, these wafer cookies are less messy than the goodies because you can pop a whole cookie into your mouth. The nuts on top of the goodies will fall all over the place if you're not careful. For $2.99, these are worth a try, especially if you prefer dark chocolate over milk chocolate.

Dark chocolate covered peanut butter wafer cookies

Dried unsweetened dark cherries
Even though I have a food dehydrator, there are some dried fruits that I would rather just buy from Trader Joe's. Cherries and strawberries are two fruits that take a long time to dry properly and are not always in season. Additionally, cherries require that you pit them one by one before putting them in the dehydrator. So, $4.29 is actually a great price for a bag of dried dark cherries. The strawberries are great too but they're only available during the summer months.

Dark cherries are a great snack either by themselves or dipped in chocolate. I also use them in brownies or other baked goods. Give these a try!

A tasty and healthy snack - imagine that!

Vegetable root chips
These are basically Terra chips but cheaper. For $2.99, you get a bag of taro, beet, sweet potato, and yucca chips. Another snack that I have to hide from myself or else I'll eat them in one sitting.

like Terra chips but only $2.99 a bag

Growing your own scallions

This is not a new idea. Several others have made youtube videos about growing (by StarofParis) or regrowing (by TeeRiddle) scallions from the stumps. If you click on the links in the previous sentence, they will take you to their videos. Both of them are pretty good and give you step-by-step instructions on how to do this. I know that scallions are not the most expensive thing in the supermarket but it's just nice to be able to have fresh scallions whenever you need them. I often have to create uses for all the scallions that come in a bunch. Home-grown scallions don't take up space in the fridge and won't rot. It's also cool to be able to cut a fresh scallion and chop it up to throw on your wonton noodle soup. Just make sure you water them on a regular basis and you won't have to buy scallions for about a year.

The basic steps are:
1. Buy a bunch of scallions that still have the roots attached.
2. After using the scallion, plant the stump with the roots attached in a pot of soil (if you drink coffee, save the grounds and mix it in with the soil).
3. Water it.
4. Let it grow. It should take a week or two to see the green parts emerge. Just water them at least every other day and be patient.

Here are a couple of pictures of the ones I recently planted:

Lone scallion growing in the pot on the right

Added some new scallion stumps

Only 5 days later

10 days later - they grow very fast!