Ragu Brand Event and Baked Chicken Parmesean {$150 AMEX GC Giveaway} #MomstheWord CLOSED

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In September I had the chance to visit the Unilever corporate offices to attend a Ragu Brand Immersion blogger event. This was a great chance to get a close up look at just how much work goes into creating and making pasta sauce and the recipes that follow to make getting a dinner on the table for our families just that much easier.

If you haven’t noticed it by now on the Ragu packaging, they recently added more vegetables to their sauce to make sure each jar has a full two servings of vegetables in every 1/2 cup serving of sauce, no matter what your preferred sauce style. What veggies make up those two servings will depend on the variety of sauce. This led to a thicker Ragu Old World Style traditional sauce, which I’m personally thankful since I typically lean towards the Chunky Garden or Robusto varieties for that very reason. In fact, I add a small can of seasoned tomato paste & a bit of water to any jarred sauce to really get that thickness I crave. Works like a charm and is still so easy.

As a mother to two rather picky preschool aged children, I can say how much I appreciate having the extra vegetables automatically included.  But I was still shocked to learn at the event:

• Less than 10% of kids are eating the recommended daily amount of vegetables (CDC, 2009)
• According to the Report of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010, children aged 1-8 years have low intake of vegetables with 75% consuming less than recommended levels and median intakes less than 1 cup equivalent per day. (See full Dietary Guidelines for Americans report from the USDA, 2010)

Are my kids one of those consuming the recommended levels? Some days the answer would be no. While my husband and I eat vegetables all the time naturally and offer them at meal times, my 3 year old has decided that he no longer likes vegetables and won’t until he is older (his words). So I’m forced to hide them or buy 100% juices which include them to sneak them in. Trips to the farmer’s market to let him pick out his veggies have failed. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that he outgrows this and loves veggies as much as he loves fruit so I’ll continue to offer them and try new methods to encourage him.

While there we got a demo of the Ragu No-Frying Chicken Parmeasean. This is certainly one easy to prepare dish!

Since we didn’t get a chance to try them as we were given lots of other great lunch choices from the Ragu team, I was inspired to try this easy meal at home. And oh, did I enjoy the results!

I served the chicken over a bed of pasta and I couldn’t get over just how filling this meal was and had plenty of leftovers for our family of four. I’ll admit I was excited to finally have some chicken with my pasta again and loved the addition of the melted cheese. I was worried that the breading on the chicken would get soggy but that was the case. Yum!

When Unilever hosts an event and offers lunch, they offer LUNCH. Holey moley did they feed us well! Some of my favorites included the the Ragu No Boiling Lasagna and this Easy Mexican Pasta Salad which does in fact have Ragu included! Who knew?

One of my favorite parts of this event (besides lunch-ha!) was meeting this great group of bloggers, the Ragu Mom Ambassadors. Can you spot me? (I’m second from the left in the front.)

We’d love you to join the conversation at Ragu’s Mom’s the Word on Dinner on Facebook or on twitter with the hashtag #MomstheWord. Check out more information and find other easy recipes at Ragu.com .

{ Giveaway }

One of my readers will win a $150 American Express Gift Card to enjoy their own meals with Ragu!

MAIN ENTRY: Browse the recipes at Ragu and tell me one you’d love to try!

Want more entries? (Of course!) After answering my question do any of the following and leave a comment telling me what you did. Each is worth one entry unless otherwise noted. Your comment is your entry so please leave the appropriate number of comments for each extra entry.

-Like Ragu on Facebook
-Share or like this giveaway on Facebook
-Join in on the conversation at the Moms the Word on Dinner & leave me a link to your comment
-Follow Ragu Sauce on Twitter
-Enter any of my other current giveaways (leave a comment for each)
-Like Baby Loving Mama on Facebook
-Follow Baby Loving Mama via Networked Blogs
-Subscribe to my feed in a reader (1 entry) or by email (2 entries)
-Follow BLM on twitter and tweet about this giveaway (You can do this 2x daily! Must be at least 2 hrs apart)

#Win a $150 AMEX GC from @RaguSauce to enjoy your own meals with your family! @babylovingmama http://bit.ly/rAncaA #giveaway #MomstheWord

-Blog about this contest (at least 30 words) with a link back here and Ragu (3 entries/5 entries if you include the a picture)

This contest will end on 12/14/11 at 11:59 pm CST. U.S. residents 18+ only. The winner will be drawn via random.org and will have 48 hours to respond to winning notification email before I draw another winner or do a live giveaway.

Disclosure: I am an Ambassador for Ragu Mom’s the Word on Dinner program and have received gift cards for monthly expenses and the cost of this trip was paid to visit Unilever . The thoughts and opinions I’ve expressed are 100% my own and yours may differ.