Soup, Salad & Breadsticks Featuring Newman’s Own

We are a family that appreciates awesomeness, and Newman is about as awesome as it gets…

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Whoops…wrong Newman. We meant this Newman:

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So it should really be no surprise to anybody that Paul Newman’s food product line, Newman’s Own, is also awesome. We’ve been big fan’s of Newman’s Own for quite some time now and have featured his products in Italian Dunkers, Spaghetti Squash with veggie ragù, and a frozen pizza food face-off (Newman’s won, of course). We love the products because:

1. They are all-natural
2. They are affordable
3. All proceeds are donated to charities
4. They taste amazing!!!

When the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program offered us the opportunity to receive a selection of Newman’s Own products, we were stoked!!!

Oh yeah…they also threw in a free flip cam, which means we will be doing some videos in the near future.

They sent us various salad dressings, marinara sauces and a coupon for a free pizza. They challenged us to make a healthy and delicious family-friendly meal in under 30 minutes, using one of the products. We decided to take it one step further and made a meal using a salad dressing, a marinara sauce and a pizza!

Our master plan was to have soup, salad and breadsticks. It’s such a simple and satisfying meal. There’s something for everyone!

Creamy Tomato Basil Soup
Our soup was made using only three ingredients! We LOVED this! All we did was heat one jar of Newman’s Own Tomato & Basil Marinara, one 32 oz. box of vegetable stock and 1/4 cup half and half in a saucepan over medium heat. This was so simple and so, so flavorful. The flavors of the marinara morphed amazingly into this soup! It was seriously one of the best tomato soups we’ve had. And only three ingredients!!

We topped the creamy soup with crunchy Parmesan croutons.

For the croutons we followed our Jimmy John’s homemade croutons recipe, but used whole wheat bread and sprinkled grated parmesan cheese on top of the bread before it went into the oven. They were perfect on the soup (and the salad, aaaand as an appetizer).

Italian Salad
The salad was mixed greens tossed with grape tomatoes, kalamata olives, cucumber and pepperocini. Then we drizzled the salad with Newman’s Own Italian Family Recipe salad dressing. This dressing tastes exactly how you want an Italian dressing to taste. It was bright and fresh without overpowering the veggies. Dave even got seconds on salad. That is not normal.

Cheesesticks
The soup and salad were begging for something cheesy. So, for the breadstick portion of our meal we took a Newman’s Own Four Cheese frozen pizza, baked it, and sliced it into sticks. Tough, we know. But really, this pizza is so good that you don’t need anything else. It was the perfect way to round out our Newman’s Own Soup, Salad and Breadstick dinner.

Thank you Newman’s Own and Foodbuzz for giving us the opportunity to use these fantastic products!