Pasta Me Now

That's the tagline for a product for all those who find life just way too hectic to make pasta. Thank GOODNESS someone came along to shave 4-6 minutes off my pasta time. SHEW!

New World Pasta Company offers this products under 3 different names, I guess depending on where you live. Ronzoni, San Giorgio, and Prince all give you Pasta Portions. Curly elbows, penne, or rotini. Quick, easy, dare I say convenient? See, the pasta comes in a perfect portion for one in a self-straining pouch, just drop it in boiling water for 3 minutes.Just drop that plastic pouch in the water and 3 minutes later pull it on out and there ya go. Hell, you saved valuable time there not actually pouring pasta from an actual box and having to wait, oh, SEVEN whole minutes for your pasta to be done. Wow! Revolutionary!

Is it me, or didn't we just pass through this whole BPA thing where it made us think that the heat of, say, like, for example, boiling water caused that bad thing to leach into our food/beverage? I'm not saying there is BPA in these pouches. I'm going to say I'm sure there is not. It's not the proper application for that chemical. But... now bear with me here... there was BPA, what else could there be that we don't quite know about yet? Boiling out into our pasta? Maybe? Maybe, just in case, shouldn't we skip the whole boiling-in-plastic thing? You know, because it's not really necessary anyway?

Is pasta really that hard to cook? I never thought so. We seem to keep inventing things we don't really need. A review: "Great while camping!" Great. You are out camping because, I don't know, you appreciate Nature or some such, but have no qualms about extra non-recyclable just-plain-garbage-into-the-ocean plastic pouch? Why not stand on a sea cliff and just toss it in? Save us all some time? Instant gratification littering?

Each box has 3 great pouches in it. I wonder how much more they charge for these than your average box of actual *loose* pasta... you know, that pain-in-the-ass stuff that is SO inconvenient. I could look it up but I stopped caring about half a sentence ago... ANYWAY... I would laugh if they charge more for this product. I guess it makes up for those 4 minutes you save. 3 pouches per box, you love this stuff at work or for the kids (Geez, do they have to EAT everyday? It's so time-consuming and inconvenient.), and so you get a couple a week. That ads up on a product that has ZERO chance of going anywhere but the landfill or Gyre.

Just so we can have extra chemicals in our pasta. Yum. Line me right up all on up in there.