Healthier(?) Alternative to Papa John's Dipping Sauce

Recently, Harmony has taken to making bread sticks instead of bread loaves. They're much easier to handle, store, and there's no need to cut it.

And now something different: have you ever ordered Papa John's pizza and got the garlic butter dipping sauce? Mmm mm good. Last time I checked though, the words "Partially hydrogenated" were first on the list of ingredients. Harmony put together this really easy knock-off. Even I can make it.

Ready? Here's what we do: melt some Smart Balance in a saucer. 10-12 seconds in a microwave will do. Then add a pinch of garlic powder. You can add more if you like garlic a lot, which we do. That's it, and we think it tastes great. It is very simple, and I'm not sure why we never thought to do it before.

You know, 20 years from now, we're probably going to find out that, in fact, Smart Balance is much much worse for you than butter. We do have the big tub of it, but we use butter just as often. We hope the moderation might minimize damage while still allowing us to get our daily allotment of fats ;)

(I do acknowledge that Papa John's might have changed the recipe, as their website indicates that the garlic butter sauce has "zero" grams of trans fat per serving. But that could just mean that one serving has 0.4 grams. So always read the ingredient list!)