This week we’re going to talk about sauce (or as I like to pronounce it, “sowse”). Often, sauces bring flavors to life, help mix two otherwise incompatible flavors or, in more dire cases, mask the bland or unpalatable thing that somehow ended up on your plate. Thanks to Cholula, I’ve been able to get through some pretty boring pasta dishes I’ve ordered. Thanks to hoisin, a mediocre Bahn Mi can taste like an Asian deli sandwich. And when I’m eating Mexican food and it’s one of those places that charges you for a salsa refill, Tapatio has helped me get through my remaining tortilla chips. But sauce shouldn’t always be used like duct tape on a broken rearview mirror. Learn to apply the right sauces, in the right amounts, to the right ingredients, and you might be surprised with the results. Just buy a three-pack of these and start experimenting with putting sauces on everything you eat. Before long you’ll know what goes best.

Davis is home to a somewhat diverse selection of interesting sauces. Here are my nine favorite ones to order around town:

• Ali Baba – White Sauce

I lied. I’m not actually particularly crazy about this sauce, but I know people who live and die by it, so I figure it’s worth a mention. This yogurty, homemade sauce might strike your taste buds the way you like. Another sauce related tid-bit about Ali Baba: they put honey and tapatio in their breakfast burritos, which is why they’re so delicious.

• Taqueria Guadalajara – Brown Spicy Salsa

I’m sure many of you have been to the Taqueria Guadalajara near the Save Mart off Anderson Road and Covell Boulevard. That location is good, but their salsa bar is lackluster. The other location of “Guads” is located in South Davis on Mace Boulevard. It’s well worth the bike considering the chips are much fresher and the salsa bar is miles ahead of the other Guads. South Davis Guads has a brown spicy salsa that tastes dark and earthy, almost like mole, but with green onion and cilantro and other fresh chunks to give it a crisp, layered taste. While it’s my favorite salsa there, the rest of the salsa bar is also worth checking out.

• Zia’s Delicatessen – Pesto Mayo

This homemade pesto mayo is one of my favorite sauces in Davis — I usually ask for extra. It’s thick and creamy, like mayo, yet fresh and light, like pesto. It’ll make you feel dirty (mayo) and clean (pesto) simultaneously. I like to think that after Jesus turned water into wine, he turned the wine into Zia’s pesto mayo. Lucky for you, Zia’s and Jesus are homies.

• El Burrito – White Sauce

El Burrito has a pretty good salsa bar (with an overlooked smoky, dark red salsa), but there’s one stand out sauce: the white. El Burrito white sauce is good because you can’t even really taste it specifically, your food just tastes generally better with it. It accentuates flavors, makes meats taste sweeter and blends flavors together more cohesively. And because Mexican food is often the same seven ingredients mixed together in various ways, it’s pretty much good with anything on their menu.

• Shanghai Town – Eggplant Vermicelli Sauce

You’d be remiss not to order the Eggplant Vermicelli next time you visit Shanghai Town. This sweet garlic sauce is not only delicious, but they always give you way too much of it. This means that after you eat the eggplant, you can pour your remaining sauce over rice. It’s incredible.

• Dos Coyotes – Mango Salsa

The Dos Coyotes mango salsa is the crown jewel of their salsa bar. I usually end up filling up about four containers with various Dos salsas, including an additional two to three containers of the mango salsa. This salsa is extremely sweet with cubes of mango, onion and chopped parsley that add a bright, clear quality to the sweetness. It pairs well with everything from their chips to their wet burritos to their pulled pork nachos.

• Mr. Pickles – Baja Sauce / Garlic Sauce

When you order a sandwich from Mr. Pickles, you have the option to get “everything” on it, which includes all your typical sandwich toppings plus their scrumptious garlic sauce which is rich and slightly creamy. I recommend the “Summer Love” sandwich as it comes with baja sauce and you can add garlic sauce. The combo is sensational.

• La Pinata – Habanero Salsa

It took me a while to notice this salsa because it’s in one of the smaller salsa containers and has a bright orange hue that doesn’t look overtly appealing. But it’s the best salsa there. Not for the faint of tongue, this salsa is marked “very hot.” As you struggle under the heat of this sauce, you pick up the subtle smoky flavors of the habanero peppers. It’s for all you heat-seekers.

• Dumpling House – Sauce

The Dumpling House sauce is 50 percent of the reason why this establishment is so good. That is, the dumplings would not be the same without the sauce, and the sauce would not be the same without the dumplings. The two match perfectly together, intertwined in holy fried matrimony. Whatever is left of this hyper-tangy, yet viciously sweet sauce is worth taking to go for your next stir-fry or potsticker sesh.

JONAH VERSMAN was recently awarded an honorary degree from UC Davis’ non-existent culinary program. He can be reached at jiversman@ucdavis.edu.

The Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden once said:

“I am beginning to lose patience

with my personal relations.

They are not deep

and they are not cheap.”

Auden’s quote may sound like the lyrical cynicism of a grumpy recluse, but it points out some hard truths about friendship that some people are hesitant to realize. Friendship is like a bag of Doritos: everyone loves it, but are not always enthusiastic to know what actually goes into making it. There are aspects of friendship that may sound like a drag or even frightening, which might deter even the most outgoing people. Here is a list of a few of those depressing reasons why you won’t make any friends.

Selfishness

One problem you might face is the same issue that many psychopaths, flamboyant dictators and vulture capitalists suffer from: mind-boggling selfishness. Being outwardly friendly is not the same as genuinely having other people’s needs in mind. It’s like House of Cards. Sure, Frank Underwood might woo you with his fake southern accent and assuring friendliness, but would you really be friends with a guy who will sooner or later send you to Guantanamo or murder you for his own profit? I didn’t think so.

Time

If Pink Floyd taught me anything, it’s that the feeling of lost time draining away your potential to do meaningful things can drive a person crazy. That’s a frustration many other college students face, so don’t be surprised when other people don’t have time for you. That being said, it makes shared time all the more precious because it is so rare and yet easily lost. Don’t spend time alone destroying your brain cells by binge-watching old episodes of Cheers. Spend time meeting people and destroying your brain cells by binge-drinking like the people in Cheers.

Social Circles

But don’t get too excited about doing well with new people. You know the saying, “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, the other gold?” Well, just like Bond villains and Spanish conquistadors, some just prefer gold. This doesn’t mean some people actively exclude others, but it does mean that their attention is more likely spent on people they are already familiar and comfortable with. This can happen for various reasons, including having relatively longer friendships, having more things in common — or maybe they are disguised aliens trying to avoid drawing attention to themselves. You can either try to be patient and optimistic when trying to get accepted by others, or you can take the evilicious choice by becoming incredibly famous and talking smack about them in your memoirs/movie biopics/Grammy-winning rap songs.

Confidence

The phrase “You just need more confidence” may sound like one of those things people tell you when they don’t know what to tell you, but it actually has some truth. Sometimes thinking people are not going to like you is the ONLY thing that stops you from meeting people. Fear of social interaction can be incredibly inhibiting and make one feel powerless to do anything. This doesn’t mean you have to mentally pump yourself up and charge into a social gathering like Rocky Balboa at a New Yorker magazine staff party, but it is important to realize the effects of fear as an obstacle in itself and not infallible proof that you can’t do something. Next time you feel intimidated about approaching people, just ask yourself, ”What would the crew of the Titanic do?” Answer: They’d start with an ice-breaker.

Misunderstandings

We human beings would like to think we’re in control of our future, but that is just an illusion. We are subject to mistakes, miscommunications, changing fortunes and autocorrect settings that turn your text messages from a simple greeting into a nude picture. One example was the Biggie Smalls vs Tupac story, the rap industry’s Greek Tragedy. The two used to be close friends until a tragic twist of fate ended their relationship. After Tupac left for the West Coast rap scene, Smalls released a song titled “Who Shot Ya.” It was unintentionally released right after Tupac survived a near fatal gun shooting. Thinking the attempt on taking his life and the song were both the work of Smalls, Tupac retaliated with anger and fury with “Hit Em Up.” Mistakes and miscommunication don’t always come in bullet or song form. Friendships can easily end because of little things. If you want to be a true friend, you need to be willing to listen to people and have faith in the power of forgiveness. No amount of platinum record labels and #1 hits will ever fill up the hollow shell of your soul after you’ve dissed everyone you once held dear.

Criticism

Another reason you might not be connecting with people is your tendency to automatically correct people all the time. This habit can range from “That song was by Ray Charles, not Jamie Foxx,” to “Your humor column idea about not making friends is gonna suck. It sounds too depressing to read.” It’s ok to correct someone when it shows you’re interested in a discussion topic or genuinely concerned about them making a mistake, but when it comes to constantly pointing out small frivolous details, it can be rude and downright petty. Friendliness is not about judging people and making them feel self-conscious about their skills, knowledge and intellect. That’s what GPAs and internship applications are for.

If you think giving attention to the hassles of forming meaningful relationships is like saying, “The glass is half empty,” you’d be right. But let me ask you this: if you’re the person who only cares about yourself, demands time from others, assumes people don’t have social lives of their own, lets fear ruin your every decision, refuse to forgive others and constantly judge them…

Then you won’t make any friends (drops mic).

You can reach EVAN LILLEY at etlilley@ucdavis.edu