Annie's Creamy Deluxe Shells & Real Aged Cheddar

We don't normally buy macaroni and cheese, in fact we have not been buying cheese too often either, however I started thinking it might be a fun and different food to have for my toddler son who recently started eating more dairy. One macaroni and cheese that caught my eye was made with organic pasta. I would have liked to get one that had both organic pasta and organic cheese but I was happy to find one that just had organic pasta. There were a couple different varieties of this organic macaroni and cheese and one of them was Annie's Creamy Deluxe Shells & Real Aged Cheddar. I thought that this sounded like it would be a fun lunch for my son to have and it had 70 % organic ingredients. I wondered if any of the other ingredients other than the pasta were organic.

According to the box of Annie's Creamy Deluxe Shells & Real Aged Cheddar the ingredients were organic wheat shell pasta, cheddar cheese made of pasteurized milk, cheese culture, salt and non-animal enzymes, water, cream, whey, non-fat dry milk, natural sodium phosphate, natural flavor, salt, lactic acid, annatto extract for natural color, sodium alginate and xanthan gum. I was glad to see that the enzymes in the cheese were non-animal, you always have to wonder when they don't specify, or at least I do because I am a vegetarian. As it turned out the pasta was the only organic ingredient but I was glad that it made up seventy percent of the contents. Overall I didn't think that the ingredients were too bad, considering there was unrefrigerated liquid cheese in a pouch in the box. Since I was looking over the ingredients I thought I would see what the Annie's Creamy Deluxe Shells & Real Aged Cheddar had to offer in the way of nutrition.

The nutrition facts of Annie's Creamy Deluxe Shells & Real Aged Cheddar stated that their were about three cups of macaroni and cheese once everything was cooked. This equaled about three servings, one cup each. In each serving of this organic macaroni and cheese there was three hundred and twenty calories with ninety calories from fat. There was also twenty-five milligrams of cholesterol and seven hundred and forty milligrams of sodium in each serving. The remaining nutrition facts included forty-seven grams of carbohydrates for every cup of pasta as well as twelve grams of protein, two grams of fiber and four grams of sugars. In the minerals and vitamins section of the macaroni and cheese's nutrition facts it listed vitamin C with two percent, vitamin A with eight percent, iron with six percent and calcium with fifteen percent. Overall I thought that the nutrition facts looked alright. I thought that my son would be getting some good nutrition from this organic macaroni and cheese.

I wasn't too concerned about whether or not we would like the Annie's Creamy Deluxe Shells & Real Aged Cheddar because we have had other products from the company. This included their Honey Bunny Grahams, Honey Bunnies Cereal and Cinna Bunnies Cereal. The macaroni and cheese was really easy to make. All that I had to do was to bring six cups of water to a boil, stir in the pasta and cook the pasta for eight to ten minutes once I brought the water back up to a boil and then drain it into a colander. Of course you can not really add the cheese with the pasta in the colander so I put the pasta back into the sauce pan and stirred in the cheese. I thought that there was a good amount of cheese, as long as you don't like tons of cheese in your macaroni and cheese.

Me and my son enjoyed the Annie's Creamy Deluxe Shells & Real Aged Cheddar very much. We thought that it tasted really good and I was happy about how easy it was to cook. We also tried it with some cooked peas and I thought that this made an excellent compliment to the macaroni and cheese and made the lunch a little bit healthier. The box that again contained about three cups of cooked macaroni and cheese cost use two dollars and eighty-nine cents. It was on sale at the time making it a pretty good price for what you were getting. I was glad that we decided to try it and I think that I will get another box or two, assuming that it is still on this good sale, to keep on hand. That way if I find myself needing a fun lunch that is fast I'll have some on hand. I don't want to make macaroni and cheese the only thing that my son has for lunch so I don't plan on making it regularly or anything, but I am sure that we will get it and make it again. I would recommend for anyone to also give it a try.