Chickpea to Cook

They suck. I try a new one every time I go grocery shopping and no matter whether I buy Chef Boyardee or something a little more upscale like Dave’s Gourmet, I’m just never satisfied.

Can somebody please tell me when Spaghetti-Oh’s sauce started to taste bad? I used to love the stuff as a kid.

Anyway, I had high hopes for Dave’s Gourmet Red Heirloom Tomato Pasta Sauce. I bought it at Whole Foods for around $6.  It was fine, don’t get me wrong, but nothing to write home about (although here I find myself blogging about it….odd.)

It was much more runny than normal tomato sauce and I hoped that meant that it was going to be naturally flavorful without all the preservatives. Sadly, it lacked the garden freshness I was looking for. No zip, no nothing.

I will say it was much better than the next jar I bought, which was Delallo Sundried Tomato Pasta Sauce–imported from Italy and made form San Marzano tomatoes nonetheless.

I have half a jar left in my fridge and I am tempted to just throw it away. It tastes like chunky tomato paste. I could have saved myself the $6 or however much it cost and just bought a tin can of Hunt’s.

Could it be that I am being too picky? Will I be relegated to making my own tomato sauce from scratch or eating my pasta with olive oil and parmesan cheese forever?

If anyone has an exceptional canned tomato sauce, please send me your suggestions.

Until then, my quest for the best tomato sauce continues….

There’s something real and earthy about eating roasted corn on the cob. It’s one of my favorite festival foods: the slightly smokey, charred flavor contrasting with the sweet juices inside the kernals make it worth my while to wait in long lines and pay $3 an ear. 

But not even I was prepared for the new corn on the cob experience I was to have two weeks ago at the Dia de los Muertos Festival in Los Angeles. We’re talking butter, salt, lime juice, chili powder, and (gasp!) mayonnaise.

It’s corn on the cob, Mexican style, and I swear it couldn’t have been better or more authentic if I had bought it off a street vendor in Tijuanna. Instead I nibbled it under an almost full moon in a Hollywood cemetery that was decked out for the Day of the Dead.

The kernals were slightly charred and glistening with butter when the vendor handed me the cob. The first one he had given me was too black–if it’s too burnt you can’t get a full appreciation of the sweetness. This piece was just right.

I saw others douse their cobs in lime juice and dash it with chili pepper. I did the same, and then added a thin line of mayo to one side. It made the corn so moist and succulent, I wondered how it had taken me so long to find this combination.

Roasted corn will never taste the same again.

I wasn’t really supposed to do this. But these luscious Merlot grapes were hanging plumply from the vine everywhere I turned during my visit to the Firestone Vineyard. When nobody was looking, I just had to pick one. Ok, two.

I was at the vineyard on a beautiful September afternoon just before harvest, which means these tasty fruits were nearing their optimal sugar content.  As a budding wine enthusiast, I thought it pertinent to my wine education that I sample the ingredient in the raw.

I snapped a tiny round fruit off the vine, its sticky, blood red juices oozing onto my thumb and index finger. When I popped it into my mouth I wasn’t ready for the complexity of flavor. It was tangy and sweet, slightly crisp and juicy.

It tasted so good, I didn’t want to swallow. Easily the best grape I’ve ever put in my mouth.

It was wine in chewable form. I can’t say it tasted just like a pour out of a bottle of course, but I have a hunch that if the Flintstone vitamins were to come in “Merlot” flavor, this is what it would be like.

Did I just compare a Merlot grape to children’s vitamins?

Anyway, you get the drift.