Valerie Bertinelli Just Told Us Her Favorite Trader Joe’s Ingredients

At EatingWell, we’re clearly big fans of Valerie Bertinelli. From supporting her anti-diet culture messaging to loving her easy recipes (like this one-pot lasagna she made for Drew Barrymore), we can’t get enough of the cookbook author and host. So we were excited to see that Bertinelli created a spatula design for Williams Sonoma’s “Tool for Change” campaign, where 30% of proceeds raised from the line’s sales go to No Kid Hungry, a nonprofit working to end childhood hunger.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the campaign and her first time making a design for the cause, we were given the incredible opportunity to chat with Bertinelli. Some things we learned: she loves Trader Joe’s and high-protein snacks, and her spatula was inspired by her love of cats. Want more details? Read the full interview below for more about her favorite summer recipe, the pantry staples she loves and her no. 1 kitchen tool.

EatingWell: What are some pantry staples you always have on hand for quick and easy meals?

Bertinelli: Rice, because whenever I make salmon I inevitably have leftovers, so sometimes the next day I like to make a salmon bowl. So I’ll use leftover salmon, heat up some rice, add something spicy like kimchi, and I’ll slice up some cucumbers and some radishes and mix that with a vinaigrette. I have a Ginger-Miso Vinaigrette that’s really delicious and it just brings up a lot of the flavors in the veggies. I always have lentils from Trader Joe’s that are already made in my fridge, so I can mix up a quick, healthy, high-protein meal if I’m hungry and I don’t feel like cooking. Rice and lentils are good staples to have around, and they last a good long time. Obviously dried lentils are the best because they last longer, but I just love Trader Joe’s and I love finding little goodies there.

If you really don’t feel like cooking at all, get the Trader Joe’s lentils and the Trader Joe’s bruschetta mix. This is stuff you can make on your own, but if you don’t feel like cooking, you mix both of those together with some of their feta cheese or some of their marinated mozzarella, which is also really good. And then I’ll just rip up some basil from my garden and mix that up and that actually lasts in my fridge three or four days, and the flavor is so good. It’s super easy stuff to put together and takes five minutes. And don’t ever throw away that oil in the marinated mozzarella: add some red wine vinegar and you have a great salad dressing. 

EatingWell: Do you have any favorite snacks at the moment?

Bertinelli: Genius Gourmet has some really great high-protein snacks that I really do love. I love that company. I also love a nice, fresh Envy or honey crisp apple with some chunky peanut butter. I’ll slice that up and I will dip it right out of the jar because I live alone and I can do that. It’s great. I have these Chocolate-Covered Peanut Butter Dates from my cookbook that I’ve been making a lot lately too because they’re so delicious. I made those for Fourth of July and I just ate the last one, so I’m about to make a fresh batch because I love having those in the fridge. They almost taste like a Snickers bar. I always put some salt on top of them, it’s really delicious and ridiculously easy to make.

EatingWell: Summer recipes you’re loving right now?

Bertinelli: I have an amazing recipe in my new cookbook, Indulge. I’ve made this a few times already, it’s Grilled Peaches with Burrata, and I drizzle chili crisp on it, whether it’s store bought chili crisp in a jar or homemade. Drizzle it between the sweet and smoky peaches and the creaminess of the burrata, and I’ll grill up a couple of pieces of toast along with that and just rub a little garlic and a little olive oil on there and grill the toast while I’m grilling the peaches. My mouth is watering, I might have to go pick some peaches from my peach tree. But that’s a really great summer recipe. It can be a salad and you add some greens underneath it, or I just pick some basil and tear the basil on top of it. Really great refreshing salad, it can even be a dessert.

EatingWell: Why partner with Williams Sonoma’s “Tools for Change” initiative this year?

Bertinelli: I’ve been wanting to do this for years. First of all, I love No Kid Hungry. They’re an amazing organization and Williams Sonoma partnering up with them is a really amazing thing. There should never be anybody in America—or anywhere—going hungry. This is something that I’d wanted to do for a very long time, so when they came to me this year on the 10th anniversary, I was so excited. 

EatingWell: Did you know off the bat you wanted your design to be a cat? Were there other designs considered?

Bertinelli: I knew exactly what I was going to do. I didn’t know what color scheme and I didn’t know exactly how I was going to do the cat, but I first drew the entire cat with the big long whiskers, and I always knew that I wanted to have a heart nose. I was going to do [my cat] Batman and the way he sits and looks at me sometimes, or Sir Henry who is a lazy boy, but then I thought the cat peeking over the spatula would be a lot of fun, too. So that’s what I ended up going with.

EatingWell: Alongside a kitchen spatula, what are some other kitchen tools that are must-haves for you?

Bertinelli: I absolutely love my zester because it grates Parmesan, it zests any of the fruit that I love—lemon zest, lime zest, orange zest. I love adding that to all kinds of things, from sauces that I make to pasta dishes. It’s such a nice, intense but subtle flavor as it cooks down. So I would say my zester, spatulas and my kitchen scissors.