Muir Glen Gift Pack!

You all know that I’m cheap, but I don’t go around begging for free stuff. There are a ton of “Mommy Blogs” out there packed with giveaways and coupon codes and product reviews, and I’ll do it occasionally, but it’s not really my cuppa. I’ll do a giveaway if I think it’s something that you’ll like, but it’s kind of a pain in the neck. Still, if you’ve got a blog and that’s your thing, you can actually hunt all over the internet and sign up with various programs to receive products to review. But to me it’s like shopping, which I don’t like. Plus so much of it is the same kind of random over-processed and over-packaged crap that you see in coupons. Part of the reason why I’m just no good at coupons (the other issues being general laziness and disorganization, but I prefer to lean on the I’m-too-virtuous-for-that-stuff reason).

I don’t go looking for free stuff, but sometimes free stuff is thrust upon me.

So it was with Muir Glen. We’ve been huge fans of  Muir Glen organic tomatoes for a long time, and for some reason or other I was on the website a while back when I noticed a special Blogger form. “Why, what a coincidence!” thought I. “I happen to be a blogger!” I filled out the form because, yes, please, I would love some more Muir Glen tomatoes. Or Muir Glen whatever. A little while later I got this lovely little package:

Why, thank you very much, Kelly and my other new friends at Muir Glen! I’d already tried the No Salt Added and With Green Chilies varieties, but the yellow and red mixes were new to me and tasty, tasty! I know that I’m probably going to lose all street cred (or, in this case, “farm cred,” maybe?) but, often, I love Muir Glen tomatoes more than fresh tomatoes. I did a side-by-side taste comparison with a just-picked tomato from a local farm market and a chunk from one of these cans, and I liked the canned better! I know that that sounds insane, but it’s true. I’ve mentioned my Muir Glen devotion before, and my favorite variety is the Fire Roasted Diced Tomatoes, which I use to make my favorite gazpacho recipe from Cooking Light. I also sometimes just cook them down with some fresh garlic to throw on pasta. My children are pro-smooth, though, so we also go through a lot of the crushed variety of fire roasted tomatoes as well.

With my gift cans, I threw the No Salt Added ones into my latest batch of that awesomely delicious slow cooker chickpea recipe I told you about before. Everyone in the family loves this recipe, and I’ve had two different people tell me that they’ve tried it and their families loved it, too, so you should totally get on that.  The red and yellow tomatoes went into the batch of gazpacho that I brought along to my family gathering over the weekend (that recipe takes a ton of tomatoes, so I added some CSA tomatoes as well). I haven’t used the green chilies can from the basket yet, but I usually use it in my Chili-with-Chocolate recipe. Oh my gosh, I just went to look for the link, because it seems inconceivable that I haven’t shared that delicious recipe yet, but apparently I haven’t. Well, it would work in any chili, I guess. But that’s too autumnal for me to ponder right now.

Anyway, I was about to start gloating about how I have this coupon to try any other product that I want (pasta sauce! salsa! soup!), except that when I pulled out the coupon, it turns out that it was remarkably short-lived, and in the time it took me to get around to posting, it’s already expired. See? I told you I suck at coupons!