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You know it’s really fall and that we’re headed for the holiday season when Trader Joe’s rolls out its flavored coffee blends. Unlike most “flavored coffees”, TJs mixes whole beans with pieces of real spices that get ground up alongside the beans and actually flavor the coffee. not just scent it. Their newest addition is Trader Joe’s Gingerbread Coffee, “coffee spiked with real ginger, cinnamon and gloves.” When you open the can, it smells just like gingersnap cookies: sweet and spicy. Brewed, the coffee is very good. It has a mild scent and flavor of cloves, which gives it a very gingerbready feel. The beans are a medium roast and the coffee overall is smooth and rich tasting, with no bitterness to it. This is definitely an excellent choice for fall and is perfect for serving with cookies - especially gingersnaps or molasses cookies, as well as with anything chocolate. -Nicole Weston http://breweddaily.com/

A few months ago, Trader Joe’s jumped on the gourmet marshmallow bandwagon and started selling peppermint marshmallows for the holiday season. They were pretty awful - overly sugary and aggressively minty - and it’s no surprise that they didn’t last long. Because of my previous experience, I was a bit apprehensive about trying out their new Vanilla Marshmallows when I saw them this week. My love of marshmallows prevailed over my doubts and I bought a package to try. Soft and with an almost meringue-like foamy texture, these marshmallows are worlds away from their previous efforts. They are not too sweet and have a very subtle vanilla flavor. In fact, if someone had told me they were “creme soda marshmallows” I think that I would have believed it. They’re not quite up to my favorite homemade marshmallows, of course, but the ingredient list reads almost exactly the same, so they’re pretty similar. The biggest difference is that they don’t seem to be quite as dense/firm as my homemade ‘mallows, although I suspect that all it will come to is that the marshmallows will melt faster in hot chocolate than mine. Otherwise, with 16 marshmallows in a package, they’re not a bad buy. They toast pretty well and I think I’d rather use them for summertime s’mores than regular store-bought marshmallows.