Let me count the ways

What new version of canned tomatoes could there be? In recent years we’ve already gotten – just from Hunt’s, for example – diced tomatoes; diced tomatoes with roasted garlic; diced tomatoes with balsamic vinegar, basil and oil; diced tomatoes in sauce; diced tomatoes with basil, garlic and oregano; diced tomatoes with green pepper, celery and onions; petite diced tomatoes; petite diced tomatoes with mild green chiles, and petite diced tomatoes with mushrooms; as well as organic tomatoes in three degrees of structural integrity (whole, diced and crushed).

And now, from Hunt’s: fire-roasted diced tomatoes and fire-roasted diced tomatoes with garlic. Both of these are, as Hunt’s puts it, “gently roasted over an open fire for a great smoky, Southwestern flavor.”

Stay tuned for fire-roasted petite diced tomatoes with balsamic vinegar, basil, celery, garlic, green pepper, mild green chiles, mushrooms, oil, onions, oregano, and bits of kitchen sink.

Pizza two more ways

Freschetta offers two odd new approaches to pizza.

• Build & Bake, in the refrigerated case, is a line consisting of crusts (thin or traditional), sauces (zesty or traditional), meats (pepperoni or Canadian bacon) and cheeses (traditional blend or premium blend). All are sold separately in packages sufficient to make two pizzas.

• PizzAmore, in many, many varieties, each presliced on an oven-safe plastic tray.

The first apparently is for people not satisfied with the choices available in the frozen pizza case (but who don’t care for Italian sausage) and who don’t begrudge the extra few minutes involved in assembling the pizza before baking it. The second apparently is for people who can’t spare the seconds it takes to cut a pizza into slices or who don’t own knives. Both are tasty, but so is most of the pizza we already had.