THAT'S using your noodle (Weight Watchers' and Bertolli Pasta Dinners)

One of the main stories in today’s daily newspaper has a headline that reads: “Make-a-meal Business is Cooking,” as if the rest of us didn’t already know this. The focus of the article, a woman who owns a “My Girlfriend’s Kitchen” franchise here in the Valley of the Sun, goes on to relate that she is so busy preparing ingredients for other people’s meals (500 of them a week) that she and her kids were walking around a Target at 9:00 at night eating hot dogs and popcorn. This woman creates menu plans, recipe hunts, grocery shops, prepares the ingredients and preps the meal for you to then take home and “cook” yourself – all for a “mere” $4.00 per serving.

Four bucks a head? Let me see if I have that right –a family of four would cost $16.00 a night for dinner? $112.00 a week? $140 a week for a family of 5? All things considered, that’s actually pretty cheap, but I think most folks would find that amount off-putting. It’s all well and good here in Scottsdale, but $448-560 a month in grocery bills, just for dinner (not including breakfast, lunch, snacks or beverages, remember) is probably more than normal people can afford. It might be worth a look for an occasional break from kitchen drudgery, though, or a once-a-week thing.

An Auntie Tip: Speaking of taking a break from kitchen drudgery, I don’t know if you hungry readers know that you can cook and then freeze pasta (spaghetti, macaroni) without any type of sauce and it keeps beautifully. Simply cook your spaghetti for dinner one night, making some extra servings; toss the extra pasta with a light coating of olive oil or margarine (whatever you usually use) and when cool, put it into a freezer bag and freeze. When you’re in the mood for pasta, take the bag out of the freezer and defrost…if you’re in a hurry, you can run the spaghetti under hot running water. It’s then ready to eat, covered with your favorite sauce. When you're tired, (or just lazy) this is a real time-saver.

More about pasta….our couponing affiliate is having a special on Bertolli’s frozen pasta dinners for two – a whopping $3.00 off coupon is yours for the asking. Just click here to download and print the coupon. That’s about 50% off the regular price, and the Bertolli dinners always get 4-5 fork ratings both here and at the Icebox Diner. Personally, I would avoid the Spinach and Ricotta Cheese Ravioli dinner, though; when I tried it I thought it was dreadful.

And making this a pasta trifecta: our latest review at the Diner from chemeg72380 is for Weight Watchers’ Smart Ones Three Cheese Ziti Marinara, rating it a walloping 5 forks. Chemeg72380 says: “Ziti is one of my favorite dishes and this ziti doesn't disappoint.” To read the rest of Chemeg’s review, click here.

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