Sauce-icity

I took a chance on a sale and bought a jar of Barilla Formaggi Italian Cheese tomato sauce. (I’d link to the site but it has annoying flash-based navigation.) It was definitely more orange than other jarred pasta sauces, and I have to say that the first thing I thought after my first taste was ‘Spaghetti-O’s’. The second taste said, “Hmmm – a bit tangy?” And the third taste insisted, “Salty! Way too salty!” It was an extremely weird combination when you were expecting a reasonable tomato-based pasta sauce but you couldn’t really taste any tomato directly. In the ingredients, it lists hard grating cheese, and cheddar cheese, and Italian style pasteurized process cheese, and as the last cheese – romano. I think I must have bought this sauce in a alternate dimension where there are Italian products that have never heard of parmesan, ricotta, or other delicious cheeses and where 620 mg of salt per serving is ‘normal’. To sum up… the other Barilla pasta sauces we’ve tried have been fine, but this one was just way out in left field.