How I miss food events! The lunches, the museum openings, the Fancy Food Show! Miles of smiles, isles of samples!
Here’s a substitute thrill that, like so much else in this plague year, will have to serve; a capsule sample of what’s lost, and, one hopes, what’s to come again. I’ve never watched an unboxing video, but I experience a frisson when I get a box of product sent by a company also missing the old days of face-to-face (table-to-mouth!) interactions. Recently, Yo Mama’s sent along two pasta sauces and two dressings from their product line.
How do their products stand out from all the other sauces on the market? Well, they claim to contain “no artificial anything,” and “no gums, no fillers, no preservatives,” and the sauces boast “no added sugar.” The lists of contents on their labels bear this out. I could pronounce every last one of them.
And how do they taste? Very nice. Fresh. The low carb and sugar content make them good choices for folks looking for those characteristics. I cooked a batch of meatballs in the Basil sauce and used the Marinara over plain pasta, topped with cheese. Both meals were greatly enhanced by the sauces.
On to the two dressings. The Honey Balsamic is concentrated, tangy, sweet but not too sweet, and overall a real winner. The Yo Mama folks suggest using it as a marinade as well as salad dressing, so I duly anointed some salmon fillets and sweet potatoes before broiling them.
Delicious! Next, I tried it on broiled Romanesco cauliflower and shrimp.
Another winner! In fact, I started being parsimonious with the remaining contents of the bottle, lest it disappear too soon. I can report that the Balsamic blends beautifully with both yogurt and coconut milk to produce a dipping sauce and salad dressing I looked forward to consuming for several meals.
Lastly, I cracked the bottle of Asian Sesame dressing and marinade. It is almost as good as the Balsamic, mixes just as well with the two creamy stretchers, and goes down a treat with avocado toast
and with an individual goat cheese tart from the Olney Farmers Market
as well as many other things! It is, in fact, a great way to add zing to any meal that might need it.
In short, the dressings are winners no matter what your diet concerns (as long as you notice the servings are measured in tablespoons); the sauces are perfectly pleasant and a benefit to those who are looking for healthy, “keto” and “paleo” certified foods.
Yo Mama’s Foods website has a map showing their distributors, and they will gladly fulfill mail orders.
