Trader Joe's Frozen Spinach & Ricotta Ravioli

This week is pretty much the week of frozen meals, because I haven't had time to cook.  Yesterday I had my step brother's graduation in Westchester, and today I was working all day, so I haven't really had the time to even think about preparing dinner.  This is when the stash of frozen meals in my freezer comes in handy.  Confronted with options ranging from Amy's frozen lasagna or teriyaki wrap, to a frozen burrito or ravioli, I ultimately decided to have the ravioli.

I picked up this bag of frozen spinach & ricotta ravioli on my last trip to trader joe's and have been looking forward to trying it.  When I was younger, there was an italian restaurant in my town, Il Bigatto, that my family would always go to for special occasions or when we had people visiting, and my sister and I ALWAYS ordered the spinach ravioli.  Neither of us particularly liked spinach, or even ricotta cheese for that matter, but there was something about the ravioli at Il Bigatto that seemed special.  Unfortunately, a few years ago the ownership changed (multiple times), the quality of the restaurant began to dwindle, and it eventually closed for good.

Maybe its because I am still mourning the loss of Il Bigatto or because I fear that no other ravioli will compare, but I haven't ordered it in a restaurant since their closing.  So, when I saw the frozen variety in Trader Joe's, I figured it was time to give it a shot.

The bag comes with 3 servings at about 190 calories each.  On weight watchers, each serving is 5 points.  I usually try to have dinners that range between 7-9 points, so I opted to have 1 1/2 servings.  After counting out the ravioli (yes, I have a lot of time on my hands, but I decided to count out the number of ravioli in the bag so that I could make sure I was eating 1/2 of the bag), I was able to split the bag into two equal portions of 16 raviolis and sauce.  Trader Joe's frozen italian meals are a little odd in that the sauce is frozen into cubes and the pasta is not covered in the sauce, so I also had to make sure that I only took half of the sauce cubes.  It looked like a lot more at first, but after putting the ravioli in the microwave they shrunk considerably, as did the sauce.  

You can choose to either heat it up on the stovetop with some olive oil, or simply in the microwave, so I of course went the easier route and put it in the microwave for 5 minutes.  

While it did not nearly compare to the delicious spinach ravioli that my sister and I used to order at Il Bigatto, I do have to say that this is a solid dish.  The ravioli are pretty small and there is not much filling, but the filling does taste pretty good.  I liked that you see more of the spinach than you do of the ricotta cheese inside the ravioli, but I definitely tasted the cheese more than the spinach.  The sauce was also really good, I just wish that there was a bit more of it.

Overall, this is a product that I would most likely buy again because even though it is not nearly as good as regular ravioli, it is very good for frozen ravioli.