American Beauty Rotini and sauce!

For anyone with an interest, Rotini is a spiral form of pasta that is known for the manner in which it can hold onto a good tomato sauce! I enjoy eating this form of noodle fairly often which might explain my growing waistline!

A 56 gram serving or 2 ounces dry pasta will fill about ¾ of a cup. Add in a couple of tablespoons of Hunts spaghetti sauce, some garlic bread and you will be pushing 400 calories!

After setting a pot of salted water to boil, I add the pasta and set a timer for 9 minutes on simmer. In the mean time, I will take about 2 to 3 tablespoons of Hunts Original Spaghetti sauce and heat that over a stove top on low. After the pasta is done, I strain the noodles and then add them to the sauce. A couple of minutes later, I'm ready to add them to a plate alongside a couple of slices of garlic bread!

Critique: Ronzoni Tri-Color Rotini!

Not only is this little corkscrew shaped pasta colorful, but the packaging assures one that it is also enriched with carrots, tomato and spinach solids from 'dried vegetables'!

I made up a batch of Ronzoni Tri-Color rotini for the first time and discovered that you have to be careful as it overcooks quite easily. The package states that 9 minutes is medium al dente, but I found it to be a bit over cooked!

At a cost of $2.49 for a 12 ounce (340 gram) package, the pasta is a bit on the expensive side. Nutritionally, each ¾ cup (56g) serving has 200 calories, so after adding some pasta sauce the total caloric impact can get up there! I generally like to make my own pasta sauce from scratch using low sodium tomato sauce and simple ingredients like onions and bell peppers. This keeps the overall calories in check, although the serving is rather small.