Creamy Tomato with Pasta and Meatballs

So the weather here in NYC has gotten substantially colder since last week, and that usually drives me to want soup. Today there were a couple very intriguing options on the menu, not least of which was one of my all time favorites, Yucatan Chicken, Lime, and Orzo. However, the one that really caught my eye was this creamy tomato with pasta and meatballs. They describe it as "This creamy tomato soup with round pasta O's and mini meatballs will take you back to your childhood but leave a better taste in your mouth!"

Now, that's a pretty tall order since I ate a TON of those tomato sauce, pasta, meatball cans when I was growing up. I used to love the different shaped ones like sharks, TMNT, etc., and it would be really nice to be able to sit back and reminisce on simpler times gone by.

First things first, the neon orange coloration told me that this was more like the shapes without meatballs since those advertised tomato based sauce with cheese added to make it creamier. I was never as much a fan of those as I was with the straight up tomato based sauce with meatballs. I wasn't going to let that cloud my judgment, though, so I started to dig in.

The soup itself is sweet from the tomatoes, but it's definitely cut a bit by the creamy cheese/cream addition. That added a nice, velvety richness to the overall feel of the soup. I'm still always going to be a bigger fan of the more straight up tomato sauce, but this was really good. The pasta was a touch on the mushy side, but there's not a lot you can do about that. The shapes of old tended to have a little more bite, but that's because they were thicker so that they could keep their form. The meatballs were spot on. They had just the right amount of sponge-y bite to them, and you could tell that they were much much better quality meat as opposed to those old cans.

This was a tasty and fun trip down memory lane. It reminded me so much of being off from school in the summer and sitting in front of some cartoons and eating my old lunches. Nostalgia aside, I would definitely get this soup again unless I wanted something a little healthier.