Ragu Traditional Pasta Sauce

This is a sponsored review from BlogHer and Ragú.

While I've had the opportunity lately to do a few fun review posts, my husband recently asked me "How come you don't ever get to review stuff we already like? That would be fun."

So when I got the email about the new Ragu campaign, I was rather excited to tell him "See, this is something we use!" We actually are pretty much exclusive users of the Ragu Traditional Pasta sauce. I don't make my own sauce, that's much more work than I like to do in the kitchen and we've always loved the flavor. We have Italian dishes probably once a week, I love a quick pasta meal because we're on the go so much--two kids with Brownies, martial arts and church classes means we're eating in the middle of many activities most nights. Needless to say, there are always a few jars in the house!

A peek in my pantry, there's another open jar in the fridge too!

Now, if you've been following along on my bento blog, you may very well have noticed that we are trying to limit HFCS. Thankfully (for all of us), we discovered that Ragu Traditional Sauce does NOT have HFCS in it! I really did not want to be searching for a new favorite pasta sauce.

So, back to our taste test and what's new? The new Ragu Traditional has 2 servings of veggies in every half cup, versus 1 serving in the old formula, sounds great to me. I'm a big fan of extra veggies, no matter how we get them in. They suggested we do a side by side taste test. F&B were more than game for that, so I gave them each a spoon and we sampled. Per Faith (almost 8), "I can't taste the difference." As for Ben (age 5), "Does this mean we can have spaghetti tonight?" Two down, one comment and one starving boy. I recruited Shaun for the taste test as well. He wasn't game for the spoonfuls, so I handed him a zucchini parmesan muffin and told him to use it to mop up the sauce. Another vote for "it tastes the same," and, of all of us, he was going to be the one to figure it out. I tried it too, and one last vote for "just the same flavor!"

Mr. Ben making his zucchini-monterey jack strombolis
We used a bit of Ragu traditional inside and served with a side of Ragu for dipping!

We also decided to go ahead and try it with a few recipes--a simple spaghetti & meatball recipe for dinner and one of the kids' favorites, pizza biscuit cups for lunch. The recipes were both a hit, no one noticed anything different about the sauce and it was still just as yummy as ever. The spaghetti was perfect and the sauce was the right texture, texture being very important for me especially. The pizza biscuits are still a favorite, they even took a separate little container of Ragu Traditional to dip their biscuits in.

We used our leftover meatballs & sauce
as meatball subs for bento lunches!

Needless to say, we're all quite happy with the new Ragu Traditional. I'm always a bit apprehensive on "new & improved" when I already really like the old product, but I'm happy to say that there is no taste difference between the old and the new, and that the extra veggie serving is a great bonus. We'll still be buying it, frequently! I'll also be checking out the Ragu site some more too, lots of neat looking recipes for busy nights, and Lord knows we have those! There's a skillet pasta dish and a chicken parmesan one that are calling my name.

BlogHer is also giving away a $100 Visa gift card to one lucky winner.

To enter, leave a comment and share with me your favorite quick, easy and *healthy* busy night dinner

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Ragu is also offering a separate giveaway on their Facebook page, for a Meal Makeover Kit. Visit Ragu on Facebook to find out all the details.