Dear Foodie Fam,

It’s National Sauce Month

Let’s get saucy! I was thinking about how my fave sauces seem to root to happy childhood memories so here’s a little ode-ish blog entry!

My favorite Sauces!

Marinara Sauce

Growing up, my parents loved to go to seafood places in San Mateo (our hometown). Looking back, I think they were pretty genius for doing this. They got to enjoy great Bay Area seafood while satisfying their kids with basically one appetizer dish, each. What a way to save money, enjoy a fancy meal and make kids happy! My bro was obsessed with calamari and I was crazy about popcorn shrimp. To this day, I cannot properly satisfy my popcorn shrimp craving unless it is served with marinara and tartar sauce ( and fresh lemon, too). I still don’t know which sauce I like better with popcorn shrimp! Tartar is so creamy and makes the shrimp’s buttery flavor come out. Yet, sharp marinara seems to bring out the sweetness in the shrimp meat. Honestly, I mean… I’ll be happy with popcorn shrimp, regardless… but for me? The proper way of eating popcorn shrimp is with marinara and tartar sauce.

McDonalds Sweet and Sour Sauce

I like honey mustard and I like ranch but in terms of McDonalds branded flavor, I prefer Sweet and Sour Sauce with my chicken McNuggets (see this in my Valentines 2019 post). When I have my nuggets with honey mustard or ranch, I always think about how I can have any old nuggets at home with better honey mustard or better ranch ... Sweet and Sour Sauce, though? I’ve never had something like it anywhere else... I mean, OK: Sweet and Sour Chicken? Meh. I don’t even really like sweet and sour sauce on anything but McNuggets. I don’t quite know when I decided I liked this sauce. When I started eating chicken nuggets later in my childhood (Seven years old? Eight?) I just decided that that would be the sauce I’d have with my order… and it was a hit with me. NOTE: This photo is from the McDonald’s Amazon page! They sell a 25, 50 and 100 pack!

Hollandaise

Growing up, my brother loved hollandaise sauce on corned beef hash for breakfast. It was his favorite request for his birthday breakfast or for holiday breakfasts. He’d love it poured over a poached egg, too. My brother use to annoy me and by association, hollandaise sauce did, too. Just goest to show you he’s always been the “foodie“-er of the two of us! Although it’s so rich and I try to enjoy it less often than other sauces, I love hollandaise, now. Any benedict or brunch item just gets that much sexier when it’s slathered with hollandaise.

Pesto

It’s probably my fave warm weather sauce. The bright flavor reminds me of young summers when my mom would make pesto salad for me using Trader Joe’s pesto sauce. I would glide in from reading outside in the cozy Bar Area summer sun and guzzle down bowls of pesto salad with her garlicy short ribs. She knew these (and blueberries) were my favorite foods from 4th grade-9th grade. I discovered pesto for the first time at a (mainly white) potluck church party and fell in love. I’d never had it before. Today, I like to make my own fresh pesto from basil I take care of. Basil is my favorite thing to grow and tend to. Ooooh, it smells heavenly…

Benihana Yum Yum and Ginger Sauces

Yum Yum Sauce and Ginger sauces especially remind me of good times. Dad reserved only the most special of occasions for going to Benihana: birthdays, graduations, visiting grandmothers… Those Benihana polaroids are still keepsakes for our family.

SPECIAL MENTION: Kewpie Sauce… I don’t quite remember ever seeing it on it’s own but now that I’m older, I now know it was an ingredient in a lot of my fave Asian foods.

Sloppy Joe

I was watching a Mary Kate and Ashley movie. The one that’s sort of like Parent Trap where one twin is supposed to be a tough, street-smart, wise-cracking girl and the other is a pampered, wealthy, refined girl. The scene where the pampered one enjoys her first Sloppy Joe (shortly followed by her first food fight) was a revelation. I asked my yaya (nanny) to make it for me. I don’t know how she figured it out. Maybe she picked up a spice packet at the store! Since then, sloppy joe sauce has always made me feel so carefree. Of course, I make my own Sloppy Joes, now! Dutch and my nephews love to indulge in them… they go fast.

Bolognese

As a very, very little girl, lasagna was my first ever fave food (I think it was the ricotta). But with age I drifted to spaghetti, more (probably because it’s easier to make). Spaghetti is such an ultimately comforting food for me, I call it sad-getti... and since I prefer meat sauce spaghett -and actually resent having to eat Filipino sweet spaghetti- bolognese is one of my fave sauces. I make mine extra garilcky.

SPECIAL MENTION: Anything garlicky… I love garlic. I add garlic to everything and when it’s already in things, I add more than recommended. Aioli, for example, is a sauce I revel in (and it’s also kinda like hollandaise)…!

Caramel

In few words: caramel is a narcotic to me. This is why I avoid it. I love it but I can’t say no to it… and I go overboard when I can.

Banana Ketchup

I definitely don’t like it on everything (especially the Filipino way of putting it on rice, egg or spaghetti) but ever since I could remember, Jufran Banana Sauce was the only sauce I’d eat on Lumpiang Shanghai. Today, I still always make sure to have it in my fridge and to bring it to potlucks I make lumpia for. I am behind everyone else I know in that I have yet to learn to appreciate chili oil or chili sauce more than banana ketchup… however, I am also a bit exotic? I only recently found out how foreign this sauce is to non-Filipinos.

Chili

This happened in college! I got addicted to Carl’s Jr. chili cheese fries thanks to my classmates in art school. Carl’s Jr. was the closest fast food to our campus and we would load up in my friend’s car to grab Starbucks and chili cheese fries. They were filling and reasonably priced for a hungry art school student stuck at school from 6am to 10pm. Anyway… our love for those fries are how all our drawing classes started smelling like Carl’s Jr… I will never get over the loss of the now discontinued menu item.

Gravy

I don’t know how, when, or why I started to love gravy. I just know that today, if it’s available… I like it on everything I can put it on (logically). There was one time at Denny’s where I ordered three different order that all had different gravies… biscuit, chicken and beef. Wow, foodie fam... The love is real.

Foodie fam, share your favorite sauce in the comments, below!