A delicious, robust, and good-for-you line of tomato sauces … what more could you ask for?
In 2010, I started eating clean. Which means basically trying to eat whole foods, foods that don’t have ingredients in them.
O
range and asparagus are whole foods.
Oreos are not.
And then last year, I did a round of Whole30, and I did another one last month.
And Whole30, if you’re not familiar with it, is like clean eating … jacked up.
Like 1000% more.
And whether you’re eating clean or following Whole30 or another nutritional lifestyle, one thing you learn quickly is the importance of reading labels.
Any time I’m buying something new, the label is the first thing I look for.
I want to know what’s inside my food. And namely, what was put inside my food that really has no place there.
And the more labels you read, the more you see how sugar sneaks in EVERYWHERE.
In bacon.
In ketchup.
In beef jerky.
And in other weird, random places where you wouldn’t think it would be.
In tomato sauces.
And that’s one of the reasons I make a lot of things myself … bacon, ketchup, tomato sauce … and more.
It’s easy to control what goes in, and what stays out.
But sometimes, although I have both a long, time-consuming recipe, and a short version, sometimes I just don’t have time to make my own tomato sauce.
So I would love to have a brand that I can count on.
A brand that doesn’t have all sorts of unpronounceable junk in it.
A tomato sauce that doesn’t have sugar in it.
So when a case of sauce from the folks at Hoboken Farms arrived, right dab in the middle of my second round of Whole30, I was pretty stoked to read their ingredient list.
The ingredient list for their marinara sauce?
Whole Tomatoes, Olive Oil, Fresh onion, basil, garlic and spices.
THAT’S IT.
Nothing unpronounceable.
Nothing unrecognizable.
No preservatives.
No sugar.
Although the PR rep didn’t know this when she reached out, I actually met Brad Finkel, the owner of Hoboken Farms, many years ago at one of their farmer’s market stands in Summit. He had seen me with my camera out at the market and I talked to them briefly about photography, and they asked about using one of my images at a new sandwich place they were opening up in Summit.
The team is super friendly, down-to-earth, eager to please, and in love with food and making people happy with it.
Kind of exactly the company you want to support.
They have been a permanent fixture at 30 farmer’s markets since 1992, and that remains the core of their business.
But how does the sauce taste?
It tastes the way tomato sauce should.
Like simmered-all-day tomatoes that have been touched by the sun. Not overly sweet. Perfectly balanced, and so agreed a blind taste test from the Wall Street Journal a few years ago.
Although I have a go-to recipe for Vodka Sauce, theirs is stellar, and exactly what I want as a back-up.
If you’re lucky enough to be near one of the New York or New Jersey farmer’s market they have a stand at, you can grab some sauce, mozzarella, and fresh pasta. If not, their product line is also available at Whole Foods, their own web site, and even Amazon.
When you’re gluten-free, paleo, Whole30, or just eat-all-the-things, you want to put good stuff in your body.
This is the good stuff.
I’ll be back on Friday with a recipe – my current plan is to do a Visit Review on Mondays, an Item Review on Wednesdays, and a new Recipe on Fridays (photo round up, of course, on Sunday). I might slip up here and there, but I’m trying to get back onto a regular blogging schedule. If you’ve been with me since the beginning (11 years!), I know you’ll hang in there. xo
*This was NOT a sponsored post, just sharing the love.
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