3 .. 2 .. 1 .. SURPRISE!

Did I catch you all of the sudden, preferably with your finger up your nose? Or maybe you were just performing your favorite piano concerto for the queen (Condoleezza Rice -style), when I interrupted your musical musings.

I hope so, because that was my intention. I was just trying to get into mood for writing about this Suddenly Pasta Salad from Betty Crocker. You see, apparently the best kind of pasta salad is the kind that appears suddenly. One minute, you’ve got a bowl of empty and the next You’ve Got Noodles™. BOING!

I’m actually a huge fan of homemade pasta salad - I think I probably posted about it on Cheap Eats several times in the past. You can make a really mean pasta salad with just plain Italian dressing and dry corkscrew pasta. Toss in kidney and garbanzo beans and sliced olives as well. Just remember to make it 1-2 days in advance and add the dressing, seasonings and salt in batches, like twice a day or so, since the noodles keep absorbing the dressing. If you make it in advance it tastes better because the noodles pick up lots of flavor - it also tends to be less oily.

Anyhow, back to the Suddenly Pasta Salad - since I usually make my own, the primary reason I got this was because of the funny title. Hm… that seems sorta un-Cheaplanderish. What can I say - I have many, many moments of weakness when it comes to the Dollar Store.

The pasta salad mix is basically noodles and a packet of dry seasoning mix. You boil and drain the noodles, and then you need to add the seasoning packet, 3 tbsp water and 2 tbsp of vegetable oil. I guess the dry mix may be handy if you’re not in your kitchen - maybe if you’re out camping. However, if I’m going to have oil on hand, it’s not that much harder to have a jar of balsamic vinegar. From there, adding your own spices will make the “convenience” of this package completely unnecessary.

To their credit, the picture on the front doesn’t show all sorts of “added” stuff to the package. The red bell peppers and parsley are dehydrated in the seasoning mixture. However, I wasn’t as honest as them - I just HAD to jazz it up a little with some sliced olivies and real parsley. It just seemed so boring and UNSURPRISING without it.

I followed the directions very closely, boiling the noodles first while adding together seasonings, cold water and oil in a separate bowl. I drained the pasta and then added the bowl of seasoning liquid. After mixing it together I added my extra olives and parsley.

The noodles were pretty much standard multicolor rotini - nothing special, but they didn’t taste bad. But again, I just don’t see what the point is if you already have dry pasta like this at home. Why force yourself to use pasta ONLY for pasta salad? Dry pasta is one of the best staples to have around the house. I’d rather keep it separate than have it locked away in this box.

I expected the seasoning to be overly salty and strong - and it certainly was. If I made this again, I’d only put 1/2 to 3/4 of the packet in. The 2 tbsp of oil was just about right - I actually used olive oil and it added some nice depth to the salad. Cracked a bit of black pepper in there as well.

The “red bell pepper” bits didn’t do anything expect add color to the salad. I guess they get points for at least trying - they could’ve just not put anything else but spices into the seasoning packet. Real red, yellow and green bell pepper is actually a good addition if you make homemade pasta salad.

The acidity of the seasoning was kind of overpowering, and it tasted really “off”. Like you’d expect fake freeze-dried vinegar to taste like, I guess. This was pretty much the low point of the product for me. Everything else was pretty much average, but the seasoning imparted a horrible flavor to the pasta salad. As I said above, refrigerating pasta salad and adding the seasoning gradually makes it taste a lot better. I like making it a few days in advance. But even after I turned this into Not So Suddenly Salad by keeping it in the fridge for 2 days, it still had that nasty flavor.

The best thing about the mix was the olives that I added myself.

That pretty much says it all. I wouldn’t buy this again - even if you’re not such a huge fan of pasta salad, I would seriously consider making it yourself, or even buying it in the deli section of the supermarket. I admit I only bought this because I thought the product name would make a nice review. You can make a better homemade version in the same amount of time required for this package. As it turned out, the only thing Sudden about the pasta salad was the motion of my arm throwing the remainder into the garbage. He shoots, he scores!

[Editor’s Note: Having taken 12 years of piano noodling, I feel somewhat qualified to make fun of Ms. Rice’s ultimate dream job of playing for the queen. However, I’m sure she’s much better than I am.]