What does Amy's Kitchen Know About Thai?

We're not huge soup-in-a-can fans. To buy this stuff, I usually have to be sick or, since you know I'm a sucker for marketing copy, looking to give something new a shot.

We had a bad experience with a corn chowder lately. It was on sale at Whole Foods and part of a line called Bar Harbor that seemed to be upscale and from New England (what could be bad about New England corn chowder or anything New England?... as you may know, we are in love), so we tried it. It was tinny with no flavor - a big disappointment (the potatoes tasted like canned potatoes - and in a way they were). My husband claims he is ruined and will never eat canned soup again.

Anyway, so why did I take another leap today and buy the Amy's Soups Tom Kha Phak (Thai Coconut) soup? I was very skeptical, but it appealed to me as an easy and exotic dinner.

Now, if you get turned off by oil floating on the top of your soup, you should stop reading.

For everyone else, here's the scoop. When you open the can you see a milky, curdlike substance that smells wonderful. You just dump it into a saucepan and heat - but not too much - as the label warns. As the temperature of the soup increases, what looked like curdled milk disappears, but here's where the oil slick comes in...there is a layer of oil floating on the top of the soup. Now, this soup is not lowfat by any means since it contains coconut milk (13g of fat to be exact) and sunflower oil (high oleic, which is good for you), but I was a little surprised to see so much oil beading on the surface (a little is normal based on my experience of eating Tom Ka Gai in Thai restaurants for the last decade).

So you want to know how it tastes? Well...it was fine, definitely edible unlike the New England Corn Chowder, but not spectacular. It did resemble the Thai soup I'm used to, but unfortunately the aroma was much better than the taste. It seemed to be missing something - maybe fresh lime juice or fish sauce? It just didn't have that POW! that authentic Thai soups have - most of which leave me saying that I could eat Thai soup every day.

The bottom line is that for $2.29 I would buy the Amy's Soups Tom Kha Phak (Thai Coconut) soup again, if I had no other Thai options available to me or if I were vegan (which I'm not) and needed a quick meal. That means I probably wouldn't buy it again...and to answer my question, well, I think Amy's should stick to the less exotic fare.

Alexia Garlic Baguette

I work in an office two days a week. On those days when my husband and I get home after six, our freshly-prepared home-cooked meals are few and far between if we want to stick to our daughter's bedtime schedule (even if we could pull something together from scratch, I'm not sure we'd have any extra bandwidth or desire to want to think about chopping and measuring). So, we rely on either take-out (it's never too early to introduce chinese food to the kids!) or a quick dinner made with the help of our "friends".

Many times we choose the ever-popular spaghetti with sauce and garlic bread (and spinach salad thrown in for good measure). Well, I have to tell you about this garlic bread that I found in the freezer section of Whole Foods. It's called Garlic Baguette from Alexia. It's part of their Artisan Breads product line. It has no trans fats, unlike most other brands you may find in a conventional supermarket. It's made with real butter and does it taste good! We just pop our loaf in the toaster oven, which starts preheating as soon as we get in the door (takes less time and uses less energy than our full-sized oven). Bake it for just eight minutes and, voila, you've got some delicious garlic bread. It comes out so nice and crispy on the outside with a soft center of butter, garlic and herbs. There are four servings per pack and each serving only has 4.5g of total fat and 3g of saturated fat!

I've noticed that this bread flies from the shelves at our local Whole Foods, but I think I've also seen it at Genuardi's (owned by Safeway). Although we usually eat it with spaghetti, my husband had a rather indulgent, but so delightful, idea of using this bread to make meatball hoagies! How good would that be! The best part of this bread is the price. It's retail price is $1.69 per loaf, but it's often on sale for $1.50. You can also visit the Alexia website to get a $0.50 coupon! What a great deal and, trust me, once you try it you'll be buying in bulk.

For those of you who would prefer to make your own homemade garlic bread, I invite you to check out 101 Cookbooks, for Heidi's dad's recipe, or Everyday Food, for a version that uses boiled garlic cloves to take away the garlic bite.