Trader Joe's: A Utopia

I'm new to the utopia they call Trader Joe's (link). I've been there about 4 times now in the past couple of months. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's a grocery chain. It's not a regular grocery; don't expect to get your Twinkies and Pepsi there. Trader Joe's is a small store that sells unusual, hard-to-find, and interesting foods like chocolate covered sunflower seeds or roasted plantain chips.

Within the store is its' own culture. The workers are overly friendly and fun (often singing, etc) and even the customers talk to one another. They have tiny grocery carts for your kids to push around (which we haven't tried yet-- I can't imagine managing that along with my kids in that store). Our TJ's also hides a plush monkey in the store each week and if your kid finds it, they get a treat (snack) from the basket. They also have balloons and will even let your boy pick a pink balloon despite your efforts to nudge him towards blue or black.

There are some products I really like there already.
They have a good selection of freeze dried fruits which Keegan will eat. You know I'll buy anything that he'll eat. They have freeze dried mangoes, strawberries, blueberries, and bananas. They are sort of a dry, crunchy, dissolveable texture. Think Lucky Charms marshmallows.
They also have a whole aisle of various dried (different than freeze dried) fruits, which Keegan will not eat yet but they still look good.

Today I bought their mandarin orange chicken (frozen) and some frozen veggie fried rice; we'll see how those are. Let's not tell Nathan; he might think I made them from scratch.
I also liked the frozen, chocolate covered bananas, although I wouldn't write home about them. (although I suppose I'm blogging about them.... is that the same!?).
Nathan likes their ginger cat-shaped cookies (sort of spicy in a sweet sort of way). They also have plain (vanilla?) and chocolate.
Keegan also likes their roasted plantain chips (in the potato chips aisle). We call them monkey chips for him.
They also have shelves and shelves devoted to anything you can think of..... dipped in chocolate. Really, you can't go wrong.

The culture there is also interesting. Everyone seems to bring in their own cloth bags. They also don't have cart corrals in the parking lot but everyone is decent enough to take the carts back to the storefront..... even when it's raining and you have to leave your 2 kids unattended in the car, fighting over balloons already. Did I mention that the carts are 'cute'? They are red coated and small. I don't know why that warms my heart to have a cute, red cart.

I've seen lots of other fun stuff but try not to overbuy. They are known for their good wine selection too but I don't care for wine myself. My kids whine enough already- why buy more, right?

So, tell me what your TJ's must-have items are! I don't want to miss anything!

Fine Print: My camera is broken (*gasp*) so all of today's pics were stolen directly from the internet. So there.