Olivia Harvey is a freelance writer and award-winning scriptwriter from outside Boston, Massachusetts. She’s a big fan of scented candles, getting dressed up, and the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightley. You can make sure she’s doing okay via…read more
As soon as the clocks “fall back” every November for daylight saving time, I start putting flameless candles everywhere around my house. I’m not a fan of those (way too early) dark winter nights, and the candles bring lightness and brightness to my surroundings. I love standard pillar flameless candles, but it’s always a bonus if you can score a set of flameless taper candles.
With soft, welcoming light that looks just like the real thing (and safer than actual flames), the Home Reflections Set of 6 Flameless Taper Decorator Set will bring timeless, vintage vibes to your abode. Sporting a throwback tapered design, these flameless candles conveniently have a remote and time function: six hours on, 18 hours off. They also come in varying heights, so they don’t look too monotonous while perched on a mantle or gracing a table.
I also love that these candles come in several different colors. Almost all flameless candles out there are white or cream, but these add low-key pops of color, in saturated, even moody, hues, including Black, Bone, Cranberry, Evergreen, Gold Metallic, Midnight Blue, Mocha, and Silver Metallic.
And they’re not just limited to fall or winter. They can bring an elegant glow to your spaces year-round.
Nine times out of 10, there’s a frozen pizza in my freezer. If not, I’m at my local grocery store picking one up. It was a staple throughout my childhood, and the options in the freezer aisle have come a long way since then. You might even say we’re in the golden age of frozen pizza.
I’ve tried lots of different frozen pizza brands, and I’m always interested in trying new ones — especially when they’re created by one of the most legendary pizza shops in New York. The speed with which I secured samples of Di Fara’s Vodka Sauce Pizza is almost as impressive as the pizza itself. Let me explain why.
In a city where you can easily walk past a dozen pizza shops without even trying, Di Fara still stands out. In fact, it’s been awarded the go-to spot by many critics, including the late Anthony Bourdain who called it “the best of the best.”
Di Fara was established in Midwood, Brooklyn, in 1965 by Domenico DeMarco, an Italian immigrant, who perfected his pizza recipe over decades. He emphasized using high-quality ingredients like double zero flour, bufala mozzarella, and slow-cooked Sunday sauce. He shaped the dough, hand-sliced the pepperoni, and finished each pie with a drizzle of olive oil and fresh basil. Unsurprisingly, long lines formed around the shop, and the rest is history.
Pizza fans who live outside of New York can now get a taste of his famous pizza at your local grocery store. Known for its signature crisp-outside yet chewy-inside crust, the frozen version contains wheat flour, deactivated durum wheat sourdough, yeast, and water. It’s topped with a creamy vodka sauce (made with vine-ripened tomatoes, sea salt, heavy cream, onions, tomato paste, extra virgin olive oil, corn starch, water, spices, vodka, and sea salt) and a layer of mozzarella and Parmigiano Reggiano, plus handpicked basil.
Di Fara’s Vodka Sauce Pizza launched this past June and is currently available at select grocery retailers in the Mid-Atlantic region. It’s $9.99 in store and a few dollars more online at Instacart. The brand also expects to roll out to Kroger locations in 15 states across the U.S. in September. In addition to vodka sauce, Di Fara’s line includes three meat, classic, and pepperoni frozen pizzas.
I’ll be honest, I’ve never trekked to Midwood to try the OG, but if this slice is any indication, I need to. I heated the frozen pizza directly on the middle oven rack as per the instructions at 450°F for about 12 minutes. As it cooked, whiffs of garlic and tomato wafted from my oven. My apartment instantly smelled like a pizzeria I’d grab a slice from after a late night out.
Once out of the oven, I waited a few minutes for it to cool before slicing it up and digging in — and WOW. If I didn’t unbox it myself, I’d never know it was ever frozen. The crust was SUPER crispy, nearly cracker-thin, with an audible crunch and snap. And yet! It still had a good chew the further into the center I got.
Even though it’s been a few years since I worked at Trader Joe’s, I still cannot unsee many of the rude (and often quite bizarre!) behaviors that customers repeated on a near-hourly basis. I’m no grocery sociologist, but I do believe the combination of generally chipper employees, 1950s surf rock blasting, and free-flowing samples of your favorite desserts, seems to bring out something in Trader Joe’s shoppers that has them, well, not on their best behavior.
Of course, these were coupled with ultra-heartwarming interactions with some kind regulars and newcomers alike, but years later I find myself terrified to commit any of these faux pas and sidestep them like I’m dodging laser beams in Oceans 11.
My own sweetie-pie mom still works at Trader Joe’s, and I try to allot her enough time to do a weekly vent about the horrors she has witnessed (we call it our “I Don’t Think So, Honey” minute). Maybe we could just agree to stop doing most (if not all!) of these things so we can spend that minute talking about, like, cheese? The weather? Literally anything else would be great.
This one always confounded me, and yet It Happened Every Weekend. Here’s the scenario: A customer, who is currently in the store, asking me quite pointedly why the store is so full of people, all while forgetting they are also contributing to the packed nature of the store. Catch this phenomenon every Saturday and Sunday at pretty much any Trader Joe’s.
I was in charge of ordering cheese at my Trader Joe’s (Fun fact: Every section in every store has an order-writer). When the Baked Feta Pasta craze tornadoed across America, it wiped out every last feta option available for months. Which was fine — it is what it is.
Shoppers are understandably disappointed when a viral (or popular) item is out of stock, but too often, they take out that annoyance on employees who are doing the best they can to keep shelves full. Chances are, that same employee is glad to help you find an alternative that might be even better than the one you saw on TikTok.
Those words are, of course, “You look bored over there.” Dad-joke or not, these words make 100% of Trader Joe’s employees sigh with existential angst when you approach us at checkout. It’s insulting, because it implies we aren’t doing anything, or aren’t working hard.
In fact, we likely have just finished breaking down heavy boxes of wine, wheeling a half-dozen stacks of groceries off a truck, and/or spending two hours in the freezer or cooler restocking some of your favorites. It’s usually a combination of all three, which is why we might be taking a brief relaxing pause between large cartloads to clear our minds, stretch out our sore backs, or just have a quiet moment. Each hour at Trader Joe’s, employees typically change tasks, from register to working the floor, ordering items, and breaking down products to refill shelves. Trust me, working at Trader Joe’s is truly never boring.
“Excuse me” is a tried-and-true classic. The best times to use them are before you grab a heavy jar of artichokes above an employee’s head, before you reach your arm through our legs to get pasta sauce, and before trying to get your cart by us as we cut through boxes of frozen items with our trusty box-cutters. Saying “excuse me” before any of these actions gives us a heads-up and prevents mishaps from, well, happening.
You’ve weaved through the aisles masterfully, gotten everything on your list, and maybe made a friend or two at the samples area. Success! Did you also stick your polite customer landing at the checkout? There are a few ways to earn some politeness points and save yourself some time (and stress for everyone in a five-feet radius).
First things first: no phone calls! This is just rude everywhere, not just while checking out, and it slows a lot of things down.
Second of all, now is not the time to tell your cashier you’re “in a rush.” One of my many proverbs is, “One is not in a rush if they are in a Trader Joe’s.” It’s just not a thing, nor is it the responsibility of your cashier to make up for lost time or poor planning.
Lastly, commit to bagging, or don’t. Either one is totally fine, but a half-bagged job usually means a lot of things are in weird spots (ice cream cartons on top of bread loaves) and your cashier can get in trouble for bad bagging jobs if it really goes sideways. Also, it slows things down for you and other shoppers, too.
I worked during the Early Dark COVID-19 Times (when hoarding toilet paper and sanitizing wine bottles was an all too common sight). What was also common? The lack of awareness that Employees Are People Too.
This takes a lot of different forms, but these are a few of the more common behaviors I witnessed: coming into the store visibly sick (and/or waiting on a COVID test result), handing us rotten food (that you’re returning — a receipt alone is fine) or trash, touching employees (yes, really!), and bringing in reusable bags that have seen better days (or are full of garbage/diapers/more rotten food). We all gotta eat, but we all need respect, too.
Witnessed any rude behavior at Trader Joe’s? Tell us about it in the comments below.
This post originally appeared on The Kitchn. See it there: 6 Rude Things People Can’t Stop Doing While Grocery Shopping at Trader Joe’s
Estate sales, yard sales, and antique shops were regular weekend destinations for my brother and me as kids. My parents, always on the hunt for period-appropriate decor for our Staten Island 19th-century house, made sure of it. Since then, I’ve had a love for home design and…read more