Is Romano's more help? New Romano's Macaroni Grill boxed dinner mixes ($4.59 at one discount supermarket; add chicken) come from General Mills, which also makes Betty Crocker Chicken Helper boxed dinner mixes ($2 at that supermarket; add chicken). Naturally, Mr. Tidbit wanted to see how the two compare.
He bought Creamy Chicken and Noodles Chicken Helper and Romano's Chicken Alfredo With Linguine. Both prepare five 1-cup servings. Betty provides the pasta and a packet of sauce mix; you add chicken (plus a little butter for cooking it), hot water and milk. Romano's provides the pasta, a pouch of creamy sauce, a packet of Alfredo sauce seasoning and one of grated cheese for topping; you add chicken (plus a little butter for cooking it) and milk.
When prepared, Betty's sauce is very familiar box-of-mix cheezy, Romano's is nutmeg-heavy Alfredo; Betty's pasta is ruffled broad noodles; Romano's is half-length linguine, which Mr. Tidbit found both more grownup-feeling than Betty's and rather difficult to eat. (Mr. Tidbit was surprised to see how empty the Romano's box was: Flat noodles like linguine pack into a very small envelope compared with a similar weight of penne, ruffles or other three-dimensional pasta.)
The sprinkle-on grated cheese that Romano's provides is clearly a step up; whether the combined effect of flat noodles, less-cheezy sauce and grated Parmesan/Romano on top is worth 129 percent more is not for Mr. Tidbit to say.
Two-flavor encounters Mr. Tidbit long ago stopped mentioning new flavors of snack chips; there are far too many. But Frito-Lay just went a step further: Doritos Collisions are two flavors of chips in one bag. (If you find you prefer one flavor, you can take a minute or two to sort them by color.) There's Zesty Taco and Chipotle Ranch Collisions, Pizza Cravers and Ranch Collisions and Hot Wings and Blue Cheese Collisions. Mr. Tidbit confidently expects we'll soon see three or four flavors of chips in one bag: Doritos Multiflavor Pileups With Significant Delays.
AL SICHERMAN
