It was late on a Friday and we were still at the grocery store way past dinner time, which means the guys were prone to beg for extras and I was inclined to give in.

That particular day, they spied macaroni shaped like Lightning McQueen and Mickey Mouse. At least it was whole-grain. We put it in the cart.

That led to another problem, though. We’d run out of marinara sauce about a week earlier and I hadn’t had time to make my usual five-gallon vat.

“Maybe we’ll find one,” I told Big Guy.

“Why are you reading? They always have garlic.”

The good news: That day, we found a couple that didn’t have garlic.

The bad news: One of them we didn’t like at all.

The weirdness factor: We didn’t like Delallo’s Tomato Basil Sauce in part because it has huge chunks of tomato, and Big Guy and I both hate tomato.

That’s right. We love ketchup, salsa, barbecue sauce and marinara but hate tomato. I’m so famous for that quirk that the cook in the cafeteria would hold up a hand when he saw me headed his way. “I know. You want it without stinky, slimy tomatoes.”

My issue with Delallo could be that the company bills its products as authentic Italian. The authentic Italian mama I worked for for years used to complain about recipe changes she had to make to serve a clientele more used to Americanized Italian food. Despite her tutelage, seems my taste buds are Americanized after all.

I could have solved the chunk problem by running it through the food processor, but its lack of a strong basil presence was another issue. Onions also are listed as an ingredient, but that flavor wasn’t discernible either.

I suppose I could get around all that, too, by adding basil and onion to the food processor as I grind up the chunks. But if I’m going to put in that much effort, I might as well make my own.

At $8.99 for a 24-ounce jar – available at grocers such as Safeway and also through the company’s Web site – Delallo is just too much work to work for us.

Copyright 2009 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

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