FOODIE REVIEW: Hellmann's Olive Oil Mayonnaise

Hellmann's is always my go-to mayonnaise whenever I don't have time to make the Julia recipe from scratch. Which, let's be honest, is most of the time. Because if given a choice between hauling out the food processor and dribbling oil into the whirling eggs at a slow and steady pace and just reaching into the fridge and pulling out that jar with the bright and cheerful label? I am all about option two and a really dreadful lazybones.

We started buying the olive oil mayonnaise a few months back because its premise sounds really plausible, doesn't it? A delicious condiment for your ham or turkey or roast beef sandwich that also drags the bad cholesterol kicking and screaming out of your veins? Bingo! Plus, it just sounds kind of refined, doesn't it? "Olive oil" conjures up images of Italian olive groves and cold-presses and that just doesn't happen for me with, say, soybean oil. Or even canola oil. You never hear about exuberant working holidays spent in the canola fields, which I don't even know what a canola is, as Aisling would say.

The problem is that this stuff is really bland. I mean, REALLY bland. It doesn't even come close to the flavor of Hellmann's regular mayonnaise. Julia Child says in Mastering the Art of French Cooking or maybe it's one of her other books or even one of the videos of her show, that if something doesn't taste quite quite, the first thing you should do is add salt. That is my prescription for fixing the problem with this mayonnaise, because it is as dull as a rainy Monday. But I'd rather not have to fix it myself, you know? I want it to be rich and creamy and have just the merest zingy kick without having to doctor it up.

I'm sticking with the regular Hellmann's.