Foodbuzz Tastemaker - Newman's Own

I received quite a nice package of goodies from Newman's Own as part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker program - 2 jars of pasta sauce (Tomato & Basil and Roasted Garlic), 3 bottles of salad dressing (2 Family Recipe Italian and 1 Lighten Up Raspberry and Walnut), and my favorite item, a Flip Video Camera. SP has been bugging me to do some video how-to posts and now I have no excuse not to. Look for those, probably in the spring when I've got daylight on my side again.

I needed an easy weeknight meal recently so I went into the pantry for a jar of sauce and bottle of salad dressing. I had made garlic and parsley butter over the weekend so all I had to do was cook the pasta, heat up the sauce, toast the bread and cut up some veggies for a quick salad.


First, the salad since we ate those as an appetizer while we waited for the garlic bread to toast. In addition to the spring mix greens I grated some carrot, chopped mushrooms, cucumber and tomatoes and finished with croutons.


I absolutely LOVED this dressing. It was tangy and I could actually taste the oil, vinegar and seasonings. But my favorite part was the cheese. The ingredient list says Romano cheese is included, which was very exciting for me since I love grating cheese over my salads dressed with oil and vinegar.

Next up, the pasta. I topped my bowl with a dollop of ricotta cheese leftover from a lasagna SP and Baby Girl made as a welcome home dinner after my latest work conference.


Notice the basil leaf on the left side of the picture? The sauce was full of real pieces of basil, which was great to see but unfortunately made the sauce overly sweet. I don't put basil in my tomato sauce for this reason. Lots of extra grated pecorino helped tame the sweetness a bit, but this sauce wasn't our thing. Baby Girl, however, loved it. She slurped this one up, literally, and said "yummy" after each bite. I'm hoping the roasted garlic one has a more tangy flavor.