An Obsessively Curated List of Clean and Tasty Packaged Food Products (Part 2 – D to G)
Alden’s Cookies ‘n’ Cream Ice Cream
February 1, 2017
By Lisa Petrison
This is part of a discussion of exceptional food products that may be worth considering by those who would like to really enjoy eating while simultaneously avoiding the large amounts of glyphosate, mycotoxins and various other poisons that are pervasive in the modern food supply (and in particular in the modern U.S. food supply).
Links to all three parts are as follows.
All products mentioned in this article should be assumed to be without ingredients that have been treated with non-organic pesticides/fungicides/herbicides as well as gluten-free, unless stated otherwise.
It is my goal that only items that are GMO-free and glyphosate-free be included in this entire discussion. To my knowledge, the only exceptions are a few meat or dairy products for which a small percentage of the animal’s feed may have consisted of GMO grains or alfalfa; these are marked as noted below.
Items listed at the bottom of each category are ones that I have consumed repeatedly myself and feel comfortable recommending to others, in terms of my belief that they likely will be free of unacceptable amounts of toxicity and that they likely will provide an enjoyable eating experience.
Notations on the lists are as follow
(1) – Item may contain gluten or gluten cross-contamination.
(2) – Item may contain products that were grown with non-organic herbicides/fungicides/insecticides (or where the involved animals may have consumed such products).
(3) – Item consists of dairy or meat from a largely grass-fed animal receiving some supplemental feed, including a small percentage of feed with the potential of having been glyphosate-contaminated.
Dairy Products
To my understanding, the key to making good cream cheese, cottage cheese or sour cream is starting with really good milk.
Straus, Sierra Nevada and Kalona SuperNatural all start with excellent milk quality, and I have really enjoyed these other products from them.
Although I don’t feel that the quality of the milk used by Green Valley is quite as high, their organic cream cheese and sour cream products seem to be of acceptable quality and have the nice bonus of being lactose-free.
Traders Point Creamery (an all-organic farm producing 100% grass fed dairy in Zionsville, IN) is offering what seems like it may be the best cottage cheese that I am likely to ever have access to in my life. I am going to have to make a special effort to give this a try, I think.
Kalona SuperNatural Sour Cream & Cottage Cheese
Dessert Sauces
The organic hot fudge and caramel sauces by King’s Cupboard are extraordinarily delicious and use only high-quality organic ingredients – cane sugar, butter, cream, chocolate, cocoa, vanilla, tapioca syrup, milk and sea salt.
I would suggest sticking with the organic versions even if they need to be ordered directly from the company (rather than being tempted by the non-organic products currently being sold via Amazon or Vitacost since those likely are using conventional dairy products).
The Ah!Laska is a pretty good, basic chocolate syrup that seems designed to appeal especially to kids.
King’s Cupboard Chocolate & Caramel Sauces
Dried Fruits
Dried fruits tend to become moldy very easily during the drying process if particular care is not taken in using only good fruit to begin with and then following proper drying procedures. I have had problematic experiences with many dried fruits, including quite a few fruits labeled as organic. Choosing quality brands is important in this category, therefore.
I first got excited about the dates from China Ranch when I was spending time at Death Valley National Park. They were pretty much the only quality item stocked in the small grocery store there, and I was surprised at how delicious they were.
Subsequently I lived one winter near China Ranch at the hot springs in Tecopa, CA. The ranch is a really beautiful place with some nice hiking, and the dates (which also are available by mail order) are incredibly good. Date shakes are a specialty there and it could be worth a try making them at home.
Braga is a central California grower of pistachios and also sells a variety of other growers’ nuts and dried fruits through mail order. I have found their raisins and cranberries to be quite good. They also sell dates, which I have not tried.
Eden sells dried cherries, blueberries and cranberries (organic or “transitional”) that I have enjoyed.
Although I have tried only a few of Navitas’ products, I do really like their goldenberries (which are also known as Cape gooseberries). They are fairly tart and feel to me like they are super-full of antioxidants.
The Dubuque Food Co-op (now closed) stocked Tierra Farm’s nuts, seeds and fruits, and so I got to try a wide range of items. I thought that all of their products, including the dried fruits, were of excellent quality and reasonably priced. They are available in small quantities by mail-order.
A wide variety of dried fruits that I have not tried yet are offered by Wilderness Family Naturals.
Braga Dried Cranberries & Raisins
Eden Dried Cranberries, Blueberries & Cherries
Drinking Chocolate
My favorite drinking chocolate is Taza, which comes in discs of stoneground chocolate. The preparation method – which involves grating stone-ground chocolate by hand and then mixing it into milk or water – does take a little more time than just dumping powder into a cup, but it leads to a more enjoyable cup of hot chocolate and the experience is a little richer as well.
The Taza discs contain just cacao powder, cane sugar and spices. They are available in several different flavors: cinnamon, coffee, salted almond, vanilla, two kinds of chili peppers, extra-dark and regular.
For powdered chocolate, I recently have enjoyed the NibMor brand. It has just a few ingredients (cacao powder, coconut sugar, spices) and is not too sweet. It comes only in single-serve packets, in Traditional, 6 Spice and Mint flavors. (The contents of each pack easily make two good cups of cocoa though, in my opinion.)
Dagoba is another brand of hot cocoa that I have really enjoyed. It contains just cane sugar, cocoa, bits of chocolate and (in some versions) spices. (For some reason there also are trace amounts of milk.) I especially like the spicy version.
Sjaak’s and Theo also make drinking chocolates. I have not had a chance to try those yet, but based on the quality of those companies’ other products, I have little doubt that they are very good.
I’m also interested in Lake Champlain’s organic hot chocolate, which contains just sugar and chocolate.
Essential Oils
I have used essential oils pretty intensively over the past year or so, both internally and for massage. Almost invariably, they feel nourishing to me in the way that foods are nourishing, rather than as if they are acting as medicines.
The brand of essential oils that I really like and have used most often has been Florihana. This is a French line of organic or pesticide-free oils that feel really clean and good to me. Presumably because they are selling direct to the consumer and thus do not have the extra marketing costs associated with Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) companies, they seem reasonably priced to me compared to certain other oils of the same quality.
Federal Express shipping is free from France with a $100 order from the Florihana, and so I have tended to choose quite a few different oils that sounded good to me and then just played with them a bit. Some of the oils also are available on the Tropical Traditions website.
I personally feel that it is very important to dilute essential oils with a carrier oil or with alcohol before taking them internally. (If instead an attempt is made just to dilute essential oils by putting them in a glass of water, they oil and the water will not mix and the potential exists for the esophagus to be burned by the oil.)
When I was treating gut issues with essential oils, I would mix up to 20 drops of oil (including wild oregano, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, black pepper, coriander, lemon, orange, mandarin, grapefruit, bergamot, spearmint and peppermint) in a teaspoon or two of Bulletproof Brain Octane oil. Usually I would add a bit of honey or maple syrup, and then was able to eat the mixture off a spoon.
A brand of organic essential oil that I like even better than the Florihana for wild oregano oil is ReThink Oil. That company sells several other essential oils as well, and I would like to give those a try.
Florihana oils are a little expensive to use regular for diffusing. For oils that are slightly less expensive and still good quality (and that I can order one at a time from Amazon rather than feeling obliged to place a large order), I have liked Healing Solutions.
In general, of all the health treatments I have tried, the essential oils have been by far the most enjoyable and quite possibly one of the most helpful. I just wish I had given them a try sooner.
Ferments
Although not everyone can tolerate all fermented foods (or any fermented foods), I have found certain brands of fermented food products to be extremely healthful for me.
A few years ago I spent an hour or so visiting with the owner of Farmhouse Culture and went on a tour of their processing plant in Santa Cruz. I was really impressed by the company and love their krauts, and so I stick with that brand unless I can’t get it.
Recently I special-ordered some of their new Gut Shots (sauerkraut juice) through my local food co-op and liked those a whole lot too. (There is a study in the literature that suggests that charcoal in combination with either sauerkraut juice or humic acid was successful in prompting glyphosate detoxification in dairy cows, and some people such as Dr. Don Huber think that this may be helpful in humans as well.)
The Farmhouse Culture krauts as well as the gut shots are available in five very nice flavor variations (Smoked Jalapeno, Garlic Dill Pickle, Horseradish Leek, Ginger Beet and California-Style Kimchi) in addition to the plain Caraway version. The company also offers ferments made with a few other vegetables, including Curry Cauliflower, Orange Ginger Carrots and Taqueria Mix.
Although Bubbies is not marked organic, their whole dill pickles and sauerkraut both seem really clean to me and are a little more widely available than the Farmhouse Culture line. (I drink the pickle juice too.)
Bubbies also makes fermented dill pickle relish and fermented whole green tomatoes, but I have never seen those in any stores. I would really like to try them.
Miso is another product that I have found to be delicious and healing. I use it a lot more often now that I have realized that just stirring a spoonful into moderately hot water makes a tasty soup that is far, far better than any of the boxed miso soups that I once spent a lot of time sampling. (If I want to be fancy, I will add a little soy sauce and a little sesame oil, and maybe even a little bit of sliced green onion, to the cup.) Miso Master is a reliable brand.
I discuss Kombucha as well as Yogurt & Kefir in their own sections of this article, and pickled herring in the Seafood section.
Periodically I have tried creating my own fermented foods, but invariably I eventually conclude once again that I do better with the brands mentioned here. The homemade ferment that I have had the most success with is milk kefir, which is pretty sturdy and better than any brands found in the stores. I have tried a number of different companies for the cultures and have been the most satisfied with Yemoos.
Bubbies Sauerkraut & Dill Pickles (2)
Farmhouse Culture Krauts & Gut Shots
Fermented Sauces
The fermented sauce that I have used most often is San-J Organic Tamari, which is widely available and reasonably priced. Since the ingredient list does not specify a particular kind of salt, I use the low-sodium version and then add additional good salt if the dish needs it.
Recently, though, I did a side-by-side comparison tasting and was blown away by how much better the Ohsawa Nama Shoyu was than the San-J, in terms of both smoothness and depth of flavor. Since then, my Chinese cooking has taken a great leap forward just by switching to that sauce (and I am not planning to go back). Although nama shoyu contains wheat, I wonder if the fermenting might break down the gluten and fructans enough so that they are not a problem for many sensitized people.
Another soy sauce product that I enjoy is Eden Ponzu sauce, which is made in Japan. It contains soy sauce, rice vinegar, mirin, barley malt, and two kinds of tart citrus juices, and it is very flavorful. Although it is not marked organic, all of Eden’s products are GMO-free and it feels fine to me.
Although I do not believe that it is important for most people to avoid fermented soy since the fermentation process breaks down the problematic substances in the soy, Coconut Secret Coconut Aminos are a pleasant-tasting alternative that add some umami to foods. I find them too sweet and too lacking in character to be very interested in using them though.
Red Boat Fish Sauce has become popular in large part due to promotion by the very good food blog Nom Nom Paleo and others in the Paleo community (much of which does not approve of any soy). Although I would not go so far as to put it on almost everything as they suggest they are doing, I do enjoy it on occasion.
Mirin is a sweet fermented Japanese rice wine that I add to many Asian dishes for more depth of flavor. Good mirin is expensive, but it makes such a difference that I often use it anyway and usually choose the Eden brand. Sometimes I will substitute just plain rice wine plus a little sugar though.
A product that I used to be very fond of is Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, but the organic versions (sold by Annie’s and The Wizard) are made from totally different ingredients (including soy sauce with wheat in it) and do not taste the same at all. It helps to add a little Red Boat fish sauce to them, but there still is something seriously lacking.
The Lea & Perrins distributed in the U.S. is made in Canada and has a totally different ingredient list than the UK one (for a while they were even putting corn syrup in it). It also tasted really toxic to me when I tried it, perhaps because of glyphosate-contaminated sugar.
I thought the UK version – which I ordered through Amazon for slightly more than $10 – was a lot better. It is pretty much exactly what I remember it being when I was growing up in 1970’s, and it doesn’t seem toxic to me at all. That is a little perplexing though, since the first ingredient on the label is malt vinegar and it is my understanding that barley in the UK is often sprayed with glyphosate as a pre-harvest dessicant. (The other ingredients are spirit vinegar, molasses, sugar, salt, anchovies, tamarind extract, onions, garlic, spice and flavourings.) Nevertheless, I’m going to be sticking with this Worcestershire sauce for the time being and am happy to have found it.
Fermented sauces in general tend to contain a good bit of natural glutamate and histamine. I use them only occasionally, but some some people need to avoid them entirely.
It is perhaps worth noting here that Bragg liquid aminos – while popular – are processed with chemicals rather than fermented. It’s been quite a while since I have used them, partly for theoretical concerns but mostly because I just like other products much better anyway.
Flour
A couple of years ago while visiting Moab, I tried a place called Paradox Pizza and was stunned and perplexed by how much I liked their pizza crust and their tiramisu. There was no mention of the flour that they used on the menu, but I eventually learned that all their baking was done with organic wheat flour from a small Utah company called Central Milling.
So if I decide to try making my own sourdough bread (which I may do soon), that is the wheat flour that I am going to use for it. (Some loaves made with the flour are pictured above.)
At present I am only using Jovial Einkorn flour (for occasionally making gravy or pie crust), but I don’t think it would work very well for bread and it also would be very expensive for that purpose. I do really like it though.
While I have not tried the Jovial gluten-free flours, based on what I have read about them and on my general experiences with Jovial, that is where I think I would start if I needed that kind of product. Pamela’s All-Purpose Flour also could be worth a try.
Although I also have yet to try Braga Almond Flour, the quality of the whole almonds from that company makes me think that their flour is likely pretty good too.
For coconut flour, Let’s Do Organic and Nutiva are brands that I feel fairly confident would be good based on the quality of their other coconut products.
One simple dessert that I like a lot is tapioca, and it is nice to have the Let’s Do Organic brand for that. It also is a good thickening agent.
Rapunzel’s corn starch is another good thickening agent that I sometimes use when making Chinese food.
Wilderness Family Naturals also sells coconut, almond and tapioca flours that I have heard good things about but have not tried.
Jovial Einkorn Wheat Flour (1)
Fruit Juice
The only bottled juices that I have much interest in drinking on their own are from two Italian companies – Bionaturae (for really yummy fruit nectars) and Italian Volcano (for oddly satisfying blood orange and tangerine juices).
I do use a fair amount of bottled cranberry, tart cherry and pomegranate juices, however.
Almost always when I am drinking plain water, I will add a little bit of unsweetened cranberry juice to it. This usually tastes really good to me and appears to be helpful for detoxification purposes.
I mostly use the cherry and pomegranate juices to add some flavor when I am consuming supplements (such as powdered magnesium, powdered Vitamin C or herbal tinctures) that are mixed into water, in order to make them more palatable.
The organic juices from Eden, R.W. Knudsen and Lakewood all generally seem to be of good quality for these purposes.
Ghee
Ghee is butter with the milk solids removed, leaving only the clear fat. It also is known as “clarified butter.”
Some people who cannot tolerate butter do fine with ghee, and it is better for high-heat cooking. It also has the advantage of not needing to be refrigerated.
It is pretty easy to make ghee from fresh butter, but packaged ghee is convenient. In addition, when I compare what it would cost to make ghee myself from Kerrygold butter, the ghee products on the market don’t seem all that terribly expensive.
Pure Indian Foods used to be pretty much the only grass-fed ghee on the market. I bought a small jar of it back in 2012 and did not feel compelled to order more for my own use (though I did think at the time that it had some potential as being useful for those camping without refrigeration).
Now the market is flooded with grass-fed ghee products. The most prominent of these is likely Bulletproof Ghee, and so recently I gave that a try.
The product is certified organic as well as grass-fed. The color is bright yellow, and it feels really clean to me.
However, in experimenting with ghee again, I did not think it was nearly as good as just using plain butter in Bulletproof coffee (all the foam is missing). And I do not like it as much as I do regular butter (or a combination of regular butter and red palm oil) on popcorn.
Like butter-lover Julia Child though, I do like ghee for sauteeing vegetables at moderately high heat. While regular butter burns very easily, ghee holds up nicely at higher temperatures, allowing the vegetables to get a little browned and tasty. Then I usually add some regular butter at the very end, for additional creaminess and flavor.
I also like ghee for giving sunny-side-up eggs a buttery flavor when being cooked over relatively high heat (allowing the whites to get crispy while the yolks stay relatively uncooked).
(I’m not especially worried about theoretical dangers of eating foods that have become browned with regard to the resulting acrylamide or Maillard’s reactions being toxic, by the way. Humans have been enjoying foods charred over fire for so long that I have to believe that we are adapted and/or designed to be able to deal with that toxicity in ways that we are not able to deal with, say, glyphosate toxicity.)
Some of the other ghee brands now on the market include Ahara Rasa, Ancient Organics, Banyon Botanicals, Dr. Jay’s, Fourth & Heart, Pure Traditions and Simply Ghee. In addition, Organic Valley makes a ghee that is marked as organic but not as grass-fed under the Purity Farms brand name.
A grass-fed ghee tasting could be informative.
Pure Indian Foods Grass-Fed Ghee
Granola
For the most part, I don’t eat very many U.S. grain products even if they are organic. Still, I like good granola and eat it sometimes, and I have done quite well with the brands listed here even though most contain oats.
For those interested in making granola (which is not too hard and results in a fresh and relatively inexpensive product that is significantly better than even the best packaged granola), I suggest using McCann’s Rolled Oats from Ireland. I suspect they have much less glyphosate contamination than U.S. oats, and I have done consistently very well eating McCann’s oatmeal at least a few times a week over many years.
Nana Joes is a very small granola company that I discovered when visiting the Bi-Rite food store in San Francisco a few years ago. It makes shockingly good granolas – stellar ingredients, wonderful flavor combinations, very lightly sweetened with maple syrup. The stand-out in my mind is the grain-free Urban Blend, with toasted coconut-flour chunks replacing the oats and with pecans, pumpkin seeds, dates, apricots and sesame seeds rounding out the main ingredients. But all their granolas (as well as their trail mix and bars) are terrific and there is a reasonably priced sampler package available if you can’t decide which ones you want. U.S. shipping is free with orders of $30 or more.
Another outstanding granola line is made by an organic farm located in southwestern Colorado called Indian Ridge. I first came across their granola at the Telluride Farmers’ Market and was really impressed with both the quality of the ingredients and the flavor. The gluten-free, nut-free version includes oats, cornmeal, sunflower seeds, coconut, cranberries and pumpkin seeds. (I like the Chia Cherry, which also includes almonds and is not guaranteed as gluten-free, even better though.) This granola line (which uses 95% organic ingredients) contains both brown sugar and honey and is a little sweeter than Nana Joe’s, but still not nearly as sweet as most granolas out there. There will be a shipping fee on this one.
Frog Hollow (an organic fruit grower and bakery in northern California) makes a deceptively simple, delicately crispy, freshly baked granola that is similar to that previously offered by Cafe Fanny (a Berkeley, CA, restaurant owned by Alice Waters that is now closed). It very well may be the most delicious granola I have ever had, which is saying a lot considering how much I like the others listed here. The only drawbacks are that it goes stale quickly and that it contains both wheat and dairy. I suggest buying it as an add-on to have as a treat when ordering Frog Hollow’s preserves. It is lightly sweetened with honey.
(Note that while there is a boxed Cafe Fanny granola currently being sold in stores, this style of granola must be eaten fresh to be good and therefore the packaged version is not the same thing at all.)
Purely Elizabeth, which is widely available in healthful food stores as well as online, is another good granola choice. There are two newer grain-free versions that I have yet to try, in addition to their more well-known ancient-grain granolas. The products are sweetened with coconut sugar.
Another good granola that comes in easily portable snack packs as well as larger bags is Dr. Flynn’s, created and sold by an actual medical doctor. It is lightly sweetened with maple syrup and includes a variety of health-promoting ingredients. The granola is free of gluten-containing ingredients, but not guaranteed to be free of gluten cross-contamination. It is sold on Amazon.
Nature’s Path makes quite a few granolas (some of them gluten-free) that are much more reasonably priced that the other options here and that I would have no problem eating in a pinch.
Grilling Sauces
Barbecue sauce is an especially difficult category, since almost all bottled sauces contain glyphosate-contaminated sugar, food additives and other undesirable items. While making your own barbecue sauce using a combination of bottled ingredients is not too difficult, bottled sauce is much more convenient and also can be fun.
One sauce that I have really enjoyed is SFQ, a “San Francisco-style” barbecue sauce that I first learned about from the Bi-Rite store in SF. It is based on organic ketchup with added ingredients, including coffee, chocolate, wine vinegar and a variety of international spices, in addition to the more standard molasses, brown sugar and hoisin sauce and hot pepper. Although not all the ingredients are noted as organic (I have particular concerns about the soy and corn in the hoisin sauce), this product seems pretty clean to me and the subtle flavor combination (somewhere between a barbecue sauce and a mole sauce but with even more complexity) is really terrific. For those who are interested in trying it but do not live in the Bay Area, the Flavored Sauce Shop offers single jars of the sauce with a comparatively low shipping cost.
While I have not been very impressed by the American-style barbecue sauces from the big organic companies, Organicville produces some barbecue sauces – as well as some teriyaki sauces – that are not too bad. I just wish they would switch to a better sweetener than agave.
Organicville also recently launched a line of a wide variety of Asian and Hispanic sauces under the Sky Valley brand name. All of the sauces are gluten-free as well as either organic or GMO-free (with hot peppers being pretty much the only non-organic ingredient), and I am not see that any agave is being used. I tried the all-organic Korean BBQ Sauce and liked it quite a bit, and they have several other sauces that would be appropriate for grilling as well.
I’m also happy to see that Stonewall Kitchen has just released two new organic barbecue sauces – Honey Miso Barbecue and Smokey Maple Barbecue – as well as an organic and gluten-free Sesame Teriyaki Sauce. I am really looking forward to trying those!
Montana Mex makes two spicy organic grilling sauces – Sweet & Spicy BBQ and Sweet & Spicy Habanero – that I just noted as being available through Vitacost that I have yet to try.
There also are a few very small producers of organic barbecue sauce – Bill’s Best, Kinder’s and Triple Crown – out there that I have not tried.
Organicville Barbecue & Teriyaki Sauces
Sky Valley International Sauces
Herbs and Spices
A big problem with dried herbs and spices is that even if they are organic, they have the potential of becoming moldy. Choosing a quality supplier therefore can be very important.
My current approach to spices is to buy just a few of them in one-pound bags from Frontier and then to use them liberally. The quality is really good and they are much less expensive that way.
Frontier’s organic spices often are available for purchase in smaller amounts from the bulk section in larger natural food stores as well.
I really like Savory Spice’s stores and feel that all of the products that I have purchased from them (organic or not) have been very high-quality and clean. It has been quite a few years since I have had a chance to visit The Spice House, but my experience was that their products were excellent as well. I am happy to see that both of these companies have increased their selection of organic spices during the past few years.
A remarkable product that I discovered at the Taos Farmers’ Market is the dried Oregano de la Sienna grown and sold by a local farmer named Todd Bates. It has an amazing fragrance and the kind of flavor that is well-suited to sprinkling into a wide variety of dishes (it’s especially good with potatoes and with Mexican food). Bates sells large boxes of the dried flowers (a beautiful purple color), the leaves (not as dramatically pretty but just as fragrant), or a mixture. (If you don’t think you can use up the whole box – you might be surprised – consider putting some of it in nice jars and giving it away as gifts.) Although there is not yet a website for the company, orders can be placed via email at nmnpr68@yahoo.com.
I have never had a noticeable problem with good vanilla extract, but the dried vanilla powder from Bulletproof is a fine alternative to it.
Mold in black pepper is such a problem that Dave Asprey advises avoiding it entirely. I personally think that is going too far and that a better approach is to put some effort into finding pepper that is not moldy.
My own feeling about how to go about this is based on my belief that people actually know instinctively whether food that they are eating is poisoning them, and therefore that if just about everyone is absolutely crazy about a particular black pepper product, likely that means that it does not contain significant amounts of toxic mold. I thus looked on Amazon for the whole black peppercorns that people seemed to like the most – which turned out to be this Spicy World brand, with more than 1200 reviews and an average of five stars.
So I took a chance on spending the $13 for a big bag and they turned out to be terrific. I’m using far more pepper than ever before and am feeling really good about it.
For salt, I have had good experiences with grey French sea salt and Himalayan pink sea salt (and am not very worried that the latter will give me lead poisoning).
Usually, however, I use Redmond Real Salt, which is a a salt mined in Utah from ancient sea beds. I think it is at least as tasty and clean-feeling as the other kinds of salt that I have tried, and it also is more widely available and economical.
Spicy World Tellicherry Peppercorns (2)
Hot Sauce
The only two wholly organic lines of standard hot sauce that I have been able to find are O’Brother, That’s Hot! and Arizona Pepper Organic Harvest. Each offers pretty good-quality products in the three most popular styles (jalapeno, habanero and chipotle).
The Wizard also makes an organic, mildly hot concoction called Hot Stuff that is tastily flavored with umeboshi plums. (Although I am not entirely happy about the presence of agave in it, the amount seems too small to worry much about.)
I think that certain mainstream hot sauces can be good choices as well, provided that they do not use extraneous chemicals or other problematic additives that do not belong in hot sauce anyway. Some suggested choices that I have tried are The Pepper Plant (for mildly hot, flavorful sauces); Melinda’s (for wholly natural, moderately hot to very hot sauces); Dave’s Gourmet (for mildly hot to insanely hot sauces); and plain old Tabasco (for the classic hot sauce that everyone knows what to do with).
(I would stick with the Original, Chunky Garlic and Habanero sauces for The Pepper Plant though, since it is unclear what kind of sugar they are using in their other products.)
Organicville offers a number of hot sauces as part of its new Sky Valley line of international sauces. All of the sauces are gluten-free as well as either organic or GMO-free (with the hot peppers being pretty much the only non-organic ingredient). I tried the Sriracha Sauce and thought it was quite good. Based on the ingredients lists and my first few experiences with this line, I am feeling really optimistic about it.
Amore (an Italian company) makes a non-organic chili pepper paste that can be squeezed out little by little as needed from a tube. I have not tried this Amore product yet, but I like their other pastes so much that I suspect this one is very good too.
Arizona Pepper Organic Harvest Hot Sauce
O’Brother, That’s Hot! Hot Sauce
Sky Valley International Sauces (2)
The Pepper Plant Hot Sauce (2)
Ice Cream
Straus (located in Petaluma, CA) uses their own high-quality milk and cream to make a variety of delicious ice creams that feel very clean to me. All of their products are both organic and gluten-free, and the cookies in their new Lemon Gingersnap version are made by Pamela’s. I especially like the Caramel Toffee flavor. The products are sold mostly in pints.
Three Twins (located in nearby San Rafael, CA) also makes exceptional quality organic ice cream in creative flavor varieties (such as sea salted caramel or cardamon). I also recently tried one of their new ice cream sandwiches and thought that (despite the fact that the chocolate-chip cookies contain wheat) it was really terrific. Although most of the flavors of ice cream do not include any ingredients with gluten in them, a few (such as the lemon cookie and malt ones) do contain gluten and cross-contamination of the equipment has the potential of occurring.
Alden’s (based in Oregon) sells quarts of very good ice cream in basic flavors, available pretty widely. A few flavors of the ice cream contain ingredients with gluten in them and equipment is shared, but the company says that it is careful about cross-contamination and tests each batch of gluten-free ice cream for the presence of gluten before shipping it out.
Julie’s (which is owned by the same company as Alden’s) mostly sells ice cream bars and sandwiches. The company makes makes a gluten-free ice cream sandwich and uses the same strategy as Alden’s to prevent cross-contamination from occurring.
New Barn AlmondCreme is a new line of organic almond-milk ice cream, including some vegan flavors as well as others containing eggs. Considering the quality of the New Barn Almondmilk product, I am guessing the ice cream is very good too.
A note about my favorite packaged food product of all time: Increasingly it seems to me that when companies are super-concerned about ingredient quality for the sake of taste, the products tend to be pretty clean even if they are not committing to being organic. I tend to think that the main issue with Graeter’s Ice Cream is that even though they state that they are going out of their way to get good-quality local milk, the cows likely are still getting at least some glyphosate-contaminated feed. Still, this is extraordinarily good ice cream and I eat it without apparent negative effects (except maybe on my waistline) once in a great while. I just wish that eventually they would get around to making an organic flavor or two.
Julie’s Ice Cream Bars & Sandwiches
Straus Family Creamery Ice Cream
Ketchup
I’ve never in my life been a ketchup fan and always was mystified at why so many people liked it so much.
That totally changed recently when I tried Stonewall Kitchen Country Ketchup, though. It was a revelation – thick with big chunks of vegetables, spooned out of a wide-mouthed jar, with a really great balance of flavors. It was good enough that I found myself thinking about cooking particular meals with the express goal of being able to use that ketchup on them.
I then tried the company’s Truffle Ketchup, which is a totally different style and contains what seems to be substantial amount of white truffle oil. It was, if anything, even better than the Country ketchup.
Stonewall Kitchen has long seemed to me an odd company, with a sophisticated target market and a history of being associated with farmers’ markets but a stubborn disinclination to focus at all on toxicity issues. When I tried to query them on the topic four years ago, they acknowledged that they used only cane sugar but otherwise refused to answer any of my questions at all.
I’ve continued to have a slightly guilty affection for their products and to purchase their jarred products from time to time though. Even though I always wonder about the toxicity issues (and even though they are on the expensive side for a non-organic brand), they always taste good enough that I never have been sorry when I have bought them.
Now, finally, Stonewall Kitchen is reluctantly committing to having all their products verified as GMO-free (they say very few of them had GMO’s to begin with) and have just introduced more than a dozen or so organic products (including some preserves, some grill sauces, some salad dressings, a relish and some baking mixes). Because I am so fond of this company from a taste point of view, I am really excited about this development and am looking forward to trying all these new products.
In the ketchup category, the company currently makes four different non-organic spoonable products (a smooth traditional Farmhouse Ketchup and a Chipotle Ketchup, in addition to the Country and Truffle versions that I have tried).
They also make a similar Cocktail Sauce that I also have liked a lot (though it’s much better with some fresh lemon juice and some bottled horseradish added to it).
Over the years I’ve tried a bunch of brands of organic ketchup – including Annie’s, Woodstock, Organicville and Heinz Organic – and while nothing was really wrong with any of them, I don’t feel like I can really recommend them since I never eat them myself except when doing taste testing.
(A couple more organic specialty ketchups that I have yet to try: Elevation and Montana Mex.)
Recently I compared Sir Kensington’s Classic Ketchup (a non-organic, non-GMO product that is more expensive than the Stonewall Kitchen ketchup on a per-ounce basis) to Annie’s ketchup and to the Stonewall Kitchen Country and Truffle ketchups. The Sir Kensington’s was slightly more heavily spiced than the Annie’s, but otherwise they seemed exactly the same.
The Stonewall Kitchen ketchups were in a totally different class though. And that makes me wonder if there are other particularly good Stonewall Kitchens items that I’ve also been missing out on, due to my (apparently largely unwarranted) fears about ingredient toxicity.
Stonewall Kitchen Ketchups (2)
Stonewall Kitchen Cocktail Sauce (2)
Kitchenware
Kombucha
A product that I especially like is GT’s Kombucha. If I could afford it, I likely would drink nothing but that, all day every day, and believe my health would be better for it. (As it is, I usually drink at least a bottle per day, which is still a pretty big investment.)
I’ve tried a number of other brands of kombucha but eventually decided to just stick with GT’s. Although some of the others seem okay, GT’s seems better in terms of purity and health benefits as well as taste, and it also is very widely available in many different flavors even here in the Heartland.
The only product of theirs that I would advise against is the GT’s Multigreen Kombucha. I did okay with this the first time I used it, but the second had a pretty noticeable negative reaction to it. The label states that the product includes “Klamath Mountain blue-green algae, spirulina, chlorella.” Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker actually warned against this very thing in an interview in 2014 – suggesting that Klamath Lake had had a major outbreak of microcystis and that it didn’t make much sense to be taking supplements made from the algae growing there. So I would suggest avoiding this Multigreen version and sticking with the many other wonderful GT’s flavors.
Legumes
Packaged beans and beans are a category that I never have put much thought into before. The only thing that I was pretty sure of was that soaking beans overnight was really important (in order to reduce the antinutrients, mycotoxins and other toxicity). In terms of taste though, it always seemed to me that quality products were all pretty much the same.
Therefore, when I first saw information about this new Jovial product, grown in Italy and shipped in glass jars across the ocean, it seemed like a little bit of wasteful overkill to me. But I decided to give their chickpeas a try, in a direct comparison against the best quality canned chickpeas and the best quality dried chickpeas (cooked) that I could find.
There actually was a pretty big difference. The Jovial chickpeas were smaller and substantially more flavorful, in a vaguely sweet earthy way. I found that there actually is a purpose in adding these to a chopped salad or a pita sandwich, other than for the consistency or as a protein source or as an inexpensive filler. They do change the taste, for the better.
Jovial is also offering in bottles cannellini beans (small white Italian beans that I also sampled and enjoyed) and borlotti beans (also known as Italian cranberry beans or Roman beans). The products are grown on Jovial’s farm in Tuscany and then soaked overnight before being bottled.
Despite the fact that I now think that Jovial’s prettily bottled beans are superior in taste, Eden’s organic canned beans (which also are soaked overnight before being cooked) are quite good too. For instance, they are perfectly suited to showcase by simply roasting them in olive oil – a dish that blows just about any other “quick meal” that I can I think of out of the water. (I sprinkle them with a little pre-mixed seasoned salt rather than fussing with all those different spices, and then add a touch of maple syrup after they’re cooked.)
I think that the dried chick peas that I have been using – sold by Hunza Natural Foods in Wisconsin via Amazon – are actually pretty good quality compared to most dried beans I have previously encountered, but probably I will continue to use them just for casseroles, soups and hummus into the future.
While some people do have problems digesting beans (the soaking should help), a bigger issue for most Americans is likely a lack of knowledge and imagination in terms of preparing beans in enjoyable ways. Here are some easy and yummy-looking recipes for canned chickpeas and canned beans that I am going to focus on trying.
More Discussion
Links to all parts of this discussion of tasty and clean packaged food products are as follows.