The pasta express
Aa seen in the garbage can
BEN POGGEMILLER STAFF
Thursdays in my house are like Christmas in that it’s my mom’s grocery shopping day. Being from an extremely food-centric family, it’s always been fun to pour over the snacks and treats my mom has bought us for the week. This time, however, she brought home something interesting that I could not eat. It was supposed to revolutionize the way I thought about pasta though. It was the illustrious Pasta Express, and its most attractive feature was that it was $7. As soon as I saw it I knew that I should carefully document (on the back of a napkin) its use and performance.
The Pasta Express is essentially a long plastic cylinder with a slotted lid for straining the pasta, and according to the box there is also a “revolutionary thermal lid” which is actually just a lid. It’s only revolutionary in the sense that it you have to turn it to put it on and it’s thermal in the sense that it keeps steam in. Also included in the box was a thermal wrap to be placed around the Pasta Express when it comes time to pick it up to strain the pasta.
The instructions assured me that should a monkey learn to operate a kettle, it could easily master the Pasta Express. It also gave me helpful tips such as, “use caution when transporting kettle of boiling water” and “do not use product if unit is damaged or cracked as this will cause water to leak.” What’s supposed to happen is that you place the pasta inside the cylinder while boiling water in a kettle, then pour the boiling water into the cylinder and close it off with the straining lid and the revolutionary thermal lid. Once the pasta appears cooked, you remove the revolutionary thermal lid and drain the cylinder into the sink, leaving you with delicious cooked pasta that may or may not be edible.
I thought this was a swell idea so I decided to try it with Kraft Dinner. Everything went fine, until it was time to actually get the pasta out. I had managed to strain without burning myself, but getting the pasta in a bowl was a different story. It had all clumped together at the bottom in a gluey, cohesive lump and I could have held it upside down like they do with the Blizzards at Dairy Queen. I grabbed a spatula and tried to scoop it out, but of course it wasn’t long enough so I ended up burning myself on the sides of the cylinder. After prodding, scooping, mashing, and jamming the pasta with the spatula, I finally got it out and of course it was a mangled, disgusting mess. Now it was time to mix the pasta with the butter, milk and cheese sauce. Since it took me so long to get the pasta out, it wasn’t really hot anymore, so the butter wouldn’t melt.
In the end I had a cold, cheesy disaster with butter chunks all over it. Now it came down to the taste test. The Kraft Dinner I made with the Pasta Express can be best described as the best thing Trident would aspire to if they ever decided to make a cheese flavour. It was gummy, chewy, and borderline inedible. It was so bad that I couldn’t finish it, which says a lot.
My family has yet to try it with spaghetti, which was the type of pasta they used in the advertisement. I can’t imagine the outcome will be much better. In the end the Pasta Express makes an expensive pasta storage container. Just don’t expect it to revolutionize the way you think about pasta.
