Portable Green

Vegetables are good for you.  We all know this.  We also know that mac n' cheese doesn't pretend to that it's good for you.  Cheese and pasta?  Fat and carbs?  Good in moderation, but not something you should be eating all the time (well except me, I've made it a job of sorts).  I've had a pair of kids meals that come with veggies thanks to Kid Cuisine and Elmo as well as Helen's Kitchen which gave me broccoli and non-meat nuggets but I have yet to experience any that have come with veggies IN the mac n' cheese when all you need to do is add water.  Velveeta has conjured up a broccoli version for those health conscious mac n' cheesers.  Lets see if it's done any better than our other w/ veggies options.

The Review

Brand:
Velveeta Rotini & Cheese: Broccoli



Green means healthy!



Price:
$1.29 at Target

Packaging Description:
(On Front)
N/A

(On Back)
N/A

Preparation:
*Peel the cover off the cup.

A little pouch of liquid gold.

*Remove the cheese and broccoli pouches from the package and place them to the side.

Bagged broccoli ahoy!

 *Take the cup to the closest faucet (or bring water to it) and fill the cup with water to the line on the inside of the cup.  Make sure that you don't go over the line.  Extra water means runny mac n' cheese later.

If only you had learned to swim rotini.  Oh the humanity!

*Once you've added the water, open the broccoli pouch and add it to the cup of mac n' cheese

Not what I was expecting to see when I opened up the broccoli pouch.  I'll leave the jokes about Velveeta pushing less than legal substances and targeting those with the munchies here.

Now it looks like I've put illicit things in my mac... please don't call the cops on me.

*Mix up the dried broccoli pieces and pasta, then cook in the microwave for 3:30

No one ever thinks to hide the stash in the mac n' cheese.

*Once the meal is cooked, remove it from the microwave.


I don't know why I was hoping to see full on sprigs of broccoli, knowing full what I put into the cup before cooking, but I was very disapointed when I saw the final results of the reconstituted broccoli.

  *Open the foil pouch that has the Velveeta cheese sauce and add it to the noodles.


All this talk of green, if it was green cheese I'd have lost you 3 paragraphs ago!

 *Mix up the sauce and noodles.


Not the best way to hide veggies, but since they're small enough... It could still work.

*Let the meal sit and cool for a few minutes.
*Commence with the nomming!

Taste:
Out of the microwave before I added the cheese, I smelled broccoli.  It had transformed itself from that dried up illicit looking stuff and into off colored (ie not a vibrant, fresh green looking) broccoli bits. They didn't have much flavor and they actually gave the mac a funny taste.  The noodles were cooked and while the sauce wasn't runny, it was very lacking in taste for most of the meal.  The parts that weren't lacking in taste however were pretty over powered by the funky broccoli.

Final Score:
I don't know why I was expecting broccoli that wasn't going to be freeze dried for this meal but I was.  I appreciate food manufacturers working to make our packaged meals more healthy, but one would hope that with the addition of the 'healthy' (like the whole wheat noodles) taste isn't sacrificed or in this case completely ruined.  While I'm not normally a broccoli eater, I've now gotten to have it as a part or side of a few mac n' cheese meals now.  Even with the less than tasty meals the broccoli wasn't negatively affecting the meal like it did to this one.

Nutritional Information:
Serving Size 1 package (69g) 

Calories 230   Calories From Fat 70
Total Fat 8g  (12% Daily Value)
Saturated Fat 2.5g  (13% DV)
Trans Fat 0g 
Cholesterol 3mg  (3% DV)
Sodium 600mg (25% DV)

Total Carbohydrates 30g (10% DV)
Dietary Fiber 1g (4% DV)
Sugar 4g
Protein 8g