Recap: Cooking Catelli Healthy Harvest Ancient Grains Pasta with Chef Lynn Crawford

Last Wednesday I had the opportunity to attend an exclusive cooking event with celebrity Chef Lynn Crawford and cook Catelli’s newest product, Catelli Healthy Harvest Ancient Grains pasta. Read on for the recap or click here enter for a chance to win a year’s supply of pasta!

Chef Lynn Crawford

You might have heard of Chef Lynn Crawford, award-nominated cookbook author, chef-owner of Toronto-based Ruby Watchco restaurant, host of the Food Network Canada’s Pitchin’ In and judge of Chopped Canada. To say I was a little starstruck is an understatement. Even my parents were like, whoa. Her enthusiasm about Catelli’s newest pasta throughout the night was contagious, super relaxing, and really fun!

Five Wholesome Ancient Grains

Hosted at Get Cooking, the evening started off with a brief introduction to the new pasta blend, made with 100% Canadian whole wheat with five different kinds of ancient grains: quinoa, teff, amaranth, millet and sorghum. Containing 75% of your daily recommended whole grain servings and 32% of your daily value of fibre per serving, Catelli Healthy Harvest Ancient Grain pasta is wholesome, nutritious, and a great healthy pasta choice!

Chef Lynn Crawford

As a healthcare professional, I’m all about eating a healthy, well-balanced diet and I check nutrition labels for anything that I buy. While Chef Lynn Crawford was going through each of the ancient grains and their benefits (who doesn’t like quinoa’s superfood status?), I was busy squinting at the nutrition facts. I’m not going to lie, my pantry is actually stocked with Catelli Smart pasta (rotini is Joe’s shape of choice!) for days when we crave a good hearty bowl of pasta. In comparison (per serving), I’d be saving 20 calories, maintaining the same amount of fibre, gaining 1g of protein, and an additional 5% of my daily recommended iron intake if I switched to the Healthy Harvest Ancient Grains line. Not too shabby! Alongside spaghetti and spaghettini, the new whole grain pasta also comes in rotini (woohoo!).

Pesto Spaghettini & Marinara Rotini

“Shake It Off” Dance Off with Chef Lynn

But enough about the nutritional facts, what about the pasta? Well it was delicious! And I’m positive that it wasn’t because it was Chef Lynn Crawford that made us the marinara sauce to go with the rotini or the fact that we had a Taylor Swift “Shake It Off” dance-off with making the quick pesto spaghettini. Legit, the pasta has a good texture and very similar to what I already eat at home!

Chilled Noodle Salad with Ginger Wasabi Dressing

Next, we were given a quick demonstration on how easy it was to make chilled noodle salad with ginger wasabi dressing and off we went to our stations to get our hands dirty to make the same dish. Yum!

Typical Rotini Night

I’m not a recipe writer. We all know that. And you’ll be surprised at how lazy I can get when all I want to do is eat something quickly and be on my way! My go-to pasta recipe? Pasta of choice, meat of choice, vegetable of choice, sauce of choice. It really is that easy folks. I always (I mean always!) have Italian sausage and a couple of mason jarsful of homemade or my favourite tomato sauce in the freezer. Cook that up, throw on some spinach, make sure that rotini is cooked al dente and I’ll always have a meal (or four!) ready to go.

Thanks to Chef Lynn Crawford and Catelli for a fun, entertaining, and wonderful night! Catelli was not only awesome enough to invite me to this cooking event, but they’ve given me a year’s supply of Catelli Healthy Harvest Ancient Grains Pasta to giveaway to one lucky reader!

The Giveaway:

• one (1) year’s supply of Catelli Healthy Harvest Ancient Grains (60 boxes, value of $200)

Contest runs from Friday, March 27, 2015 until end of Thursday, April 9, 2015, midnight (MST). Contest open to residents of Canada. Entrant must have a valid email address and winner will be contacted on Friday, April 10, 2015 morning via email. Winner will have until Saturday, April 11, 2015 noon (MST) to respond or another entrant will be randomly selected.

How to Enter:

Using the widget below, you can do each and receive one entry.

• Follow @cindurh on Twitter.
• Follow @letsomnom on Instagram.
• Visit LET’S OM NOM on Facebook.
• Retweet this giveaway on Twitter (limit one entry per day), hashtagged #letsomnom.
• Leave a comment on this blog post on what’s your favourite pasta recipe.

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Disclaimer: I was invited as a guest to the Catelli Healthy Harvest Ancient Grains Pasta, Exclusive Cooking Event with Celebrity Chef Lynn Crawford and given a blogger gift bag. In exchange for this opportunity, I was expected to recap the event with the option of running the giveaway. All opinions are of my own.

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