WHAT'S FOR DINNER?

That's a question that ALWAYS comes up in our house. When I had a job that didn't consume so much of my time, I would have dinner plans for the entire week. I love cooking, so it was fun making the plans, grocery lists, etc. But that was then. Now, I rarely have time to cook a meal the way I want, and often, neither my spouse or I have time to cook at all, so we have to eat out.

I don't like eating out very often, so we thought we'd try some prepared foods. We tried everything from burritos to chicken teriyaki. We love to eat pasta, so we ended up trying those packaged fresh raviolis and tortellinis. We tried Monterey Pasta Compan, Contadina and anything else that we might find that looked as if it might be halfway decent. We didn't like anything.

Just the other week, we ran across a grilled chicken, mozzarella ravioli, made by Pasta Prima, at Costco. The package stated that it was all natural and had no preservatives, so we decided to try it, and to our surprise, it was actually good. It doesn't taste as good as homemade, but it was really good for prepared food.

We tried it with some spaghetti sauce. The strong tomato flavor of a thick sauce overwhelmed the ravioli. The back of the package includes recipes that might be worth trying next time, but I found some success with quickly cooked fresh garlic, chopped fresh tomatoes, freshly chopped basil, oregano and parsley and of course, a little Kosher salt (available at your local supermarket). Then I top it with just a little more fesh basil and a splash of some really good olive oil, like Colavita.