Casseroles

I was recently sent a few boxes of Jovial Whole Grain Einkorn Pasta to review for Get Cooking and I’m most grateful for the opportunity.  Like a lot of people, I’m trying to feed my family healthier meals and that all begins (and ends) with making healthy, smart choices.

These little choices add up and pay off in a very big way.

If you eat as much pasta as we do in our home, you’re going to love Jovial Whole Grain Einkorn Pasta as much as we do. Finally, you can feed your family their favorite pasta dishes without the guilt.

Wheat pasta served with tomatoes and tomato sauce and/or chopped vegetables makes an excellent, delicious, and healthy meal.  Of course, we just have to remember to go easy with the meat, bread, and cheeses.

Wheat pasta can be used in place of traditional pasta in your favorite recipes. My youngest daughter, Stephany, was my hardest sell on wheat pasta but with the right blend of garlic and herbs, even she’s on board. In fact, she thinks Jovial is the best wheat pasta we’ve tried.

High praise, indeed.

Below is a favorite recipe for Spaghetti Casserole.  Substitute Jovial Whole Grain Pasta and make it even better!

Spaghetti Casserole Recipe

16 oz box spaghetti
1 jar meat-flavored spaghetti sauce (I use Prego)
1 pkg. Mozzarella shredded cheese (I use Sargento’s)
1 pkg. Cheddar shredded chese (again Sargento’s)
Parmesan Cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Boil the spaghetti to al dente. Add a little olive oil to the spaghetti to keep it from sticking as it’s boiling. Drain the spaghetti. I always add just a little more olive oil at this point. I love the flavor, it’s healthy, and it forbids the noodles from clumping up.

Spray a casserole dish with cooking spray. No surprise, I use the Olive Oil variety. Layer spaghetti on the bottom of the dish. Cover spaghetti with sauce. Now sprinkle the cheeses on top of the sauce.

Repeat the entire process and cover with foil. Bake for 35 minutes. Remove foil and bake 10 more minutes.

Serve with some great bread and a wholesome salad.

From Jovial:

When scientists unearthed the body of Ötzi, the Bronze Age man found perfectly preserved in a glacier in the Italian Alps in 1991, they discovered he had eaten an ancient species of wheat called einkorn for his last meal. A group of Italian researchers became curious about the grain and started what would be more than a decade of discovery. Their findings so intrigued the founders of Jovial™ that they began to work closely together to bring the supply of seeds and grain back to life.

Jovial proudly presents First Ever™ Whole Grain Einkorn Pasta, made from the world’s most ancient wheat, first cultivated 12,000 years ago at the birth of agriculture. The resulting products are wholesome, nutritious and surprisingly delicious. Einkorn was lost in time when new varieties of wheat with much higher yields were created by natural and commercial hybridization. In developing the Jovial™ brand, the company’s founders decided it was time to go beyond organic and take a closer look to find the purest of plant varieties.

“Jovial had its official start in 2010, but was idealized for many years,” said Carla Bartolucci, co-founder of Jovial. “It is our dream to change the future of agriculture by creating consumer demand for the purest, most ancient varieties of food. Our sustainable economic model focuses on farming first and then considers the entire process all the way through to the shelf. We believe the purest food we are all seeking can only come from the purest seed.”

Jovial Whole Grain Einkorn Pasta is available in five varieties: Rigatoni, Penne Rigate, Fusilli, Spaghetti and Linguine. The pastas range from $3.39-3.69 per 12 oz box and are available at Whole Foods nationwide.

Ancient grains are inherently more nutritious than modern varieties. Einkorn is the most ancient wheat. It is more nutritious on many levels than modern organic wheat, and even outperforms other “superfoods” including the blueberry in its nutritional value.  Although Einkorn is a healthy source of dietary fiber, it does not have a grainy or gritty texture. Packed with protein, B vitamins and minerals, a meal with Einkorn pasta is very sustaining.

Einkorn Nutritional Highlights

• High in Thiamin, essential dietary and trace minerals.
• Good source of protein, dietary fiber and a number of B Vitamins.
• Higher Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC-antioxidant capacities) twice that of durum and bread wheat.
• Higher content of tocotrienols than other species of wheat, a potent form of Vitamin E.
• Lower percentage of nutrient loss during processing
• One 2oz. serving contains as much of the antioxidant Lutein as a whole egg (which provides nutritional support to our eyes and skin).

Jovial Einkorn Pasta is masterly crafted in Italy by expert pasta artisans, who work to enhance the inherent goodness of this most ancient wheat. Einkorn’s starch is so different from modern durum wheat, it does not crush during milling and does not absorb as much water during mixing, resulting in a superior finished pasta. Jovial uses traditional bronze dies to press pasta shapes, resulting in a coarse surface that better absorbs sauce. The pasta is slowly dried at low temperatures to maintain Einkorn’s exceptional flavor.

Einkorn is innately rustic, with a hardy root system that overpowers weeds, eliminating the need for herbicides. It grows well without fertilization, making it ideally suitable to small-scale, organic agriculture.  Jovial works with a growing network of organic farmers in rural areas of Italy and other parts of Europe to grow 100% certified organic einkorn.

The First Ever™ trademark on Jovial products is the company’s guarantee of the purest Einkorn product and the purity commitment extends from “Seed to Shelf.”  Jovial Einkorn Pasta is packaged in a carton made from 80% recycled cardboard and is 100% recyclable. The window is certified 100% compostable, made from FSC certified wood pulp.

Even the packaging is healthy!

“We believe that the future of our food is a thing of the past,” said Bartolucci. “We were so excited to discover that a food from ancient history was preserved in time and could still be grown today.”

Gorgeous Casserole Dishes on Amazon: