This year my wife and I have a goal. After watching Oprah’s Final Season where she held her favorite things multiple times, my wife and I decided we want to start keeping track of our favorite things. So I am going to create a new series of posts discussing what we find over the year. I realize this steps slightly outside of the topics of this blog, but food is definitely something we enjoy, and I do not mind including praise for companies that provide great products.

This past weekend we had a pretty busy day and when we got home, we decided we all really had a taste for hot dogs that my wife had just bought from Trader Joe’s. When I started to get things ready to grill, I realized we did not have any canned hot dog chili (or buns for that matter), so I ran up to the store.

Let me preface my chili discussion by saying growing up, my mother always made Castleberry’s Hot Dog chili. It was cheap and good, and always gave hot dogs a really great flavor. My dad and I would even eat all the extra chili with some chips. So in my mind I was going to the store to buy Castleberry.

So as I went down the chili section of the grocery, I started to realize all the other available options. It just goes to show how often we actually eat hot dogs or chili. I finally decided on a brand called Chuck Wagon’s Own, made in North Canton, Ohio. (Please note if you go to their website, there is a really annoying music in the background that I can not figure out how to turn off, no matter which page you go to. Obviously no one pays attention to their website and what can quickly annoy customers.) So I decided on the Zesty Coney Sauce and figured it was worth trying. As a backup, I still bought a couple cans to have on hand of the Castleberry chili.

For a quick cost comparison, the Castleberry’s cost $0.55 for a 10 ounce can, while the Chuck Wagon’s Own cost $1.50 for a 16 ounce jar.

So I fired up the grill, diced some onions, and heated the Chuck Wagon’s coney sauce. Let me just say both my wife and I were blown away by this sauce. We are definitely converts and will not be purchasing Castleberry’s if Chuck Wagon’s is around. It has an awesome, slightly sweet flavor, with a spicy kick that comes in after a couple of seconds and no doubt is the “Zesty” part. We are not at all big fans of “hot” spiced products, and the Chuck Wagon’s coney sauce had just the right amount to give it a superb flavor.