Elements to Spruce Up Homemade Food.
Like everyone, I’ve been cooking and eating at home a lot more lately. I’m someone who likes routine until I don’t. I’ll eat the same thing for a few, get bored, then get creative for a while until I fall back into a routine. It’s a cycle. Regardless of how routine or creative I’m feeling, a lot of my homemade lunches are bowls of grain + protein + greens + fun stuff (avocado/nuts/salsa/etc) + sauce.
One of my all-time favorite meals not made at home is the Whole Bowl from Active Culture in Laguna. It’s brown rice (or quinoa) + black and kidney beans + cabbage + cilantro + avocado + salsa + OG Sauce. When I would come home to Laguna from LA, I would almost always pick up a Whole Bowl. I could not tell you what is in this OG sauce, let alone attempt to recreate it but it makes the meal. I was DELIGHTED when I found out I could order just the OG sauce to-go in bulk. So now, most weeks, I buy an $8, 16oz OG sauce and transfer it to a salad dressing container for easier use and storage in the fridge.
Most weeks, I’ve also prepped diced cabbage, prepped cilantro, rinsed and drained canned beans, InstantPot cooked quinoa or brown rice, and sometimes homemade pico de gallo. With these meal components ready in the fridge, I’m a 90 second microwave away from a Whole Bowl at home. My finished semi-homemade Whole Bowl is the picture at the top.
I realized I have also been subconsciously doing this with another restaurant, La Sirena. Their salsas are great. I make salsa at home from scratch for fun frequently, especially a blended fire-roasted salsa and pico de gallo. But I still crave La Sirena’s salsa. When I order food from them every couple of weeks, I’ll buy 8oz of one (or two or three) of their three salsas to have for the week. Like the OG sauce, I transfer these salsas to a mason jar for storage in the fridge. They become great additions to homemade tacos, eggs, a dressing for a salad, or just a snack of chips and salsa that feels special and tastes a lot better than most salsas from the grocery store.
Sometimes home-cooked food can miss the mark that take-out food can nail. I think this is a big reason why DoorDash and the likes have taken off in the last few years: Cooking can be daunting and if the end result is not very good, a lot of home-cooks lose the incentive to try. But cooking at home is often cheaper and allows for more control of ingredients. So the accompaniment of a special element from a restaurant can be the best of both worlds.
While there may not be a La Sirena or Active Culture near you, I guarantee there is a sauce from one of your favorite meals from a favorite restaurant. Maybe it’s a salsa from a Mexican restaurant, a peanut sauce from a Thai restaurant, or amazing salad dressing from a vegan restaurant that you would love to have in stock at home. And if it’s not on the menu, just ask! A restaurant would probably love to sell you a larger size for later. Especially in the current climate when overall many of us are eating out less but still want to find ways to support our community.
If you give this a try, let me know about your half home cooked - half restaurant creation.
