I'm a lazy cook sometimes, and one of the easiest dishes I have ever made is simply boiled pasta with cream cheese generously stirred in to make a nice creamy sauce. Ok, sometimes I add onions, peas, and bacon for a little extra flavour, but a lot of the time that simply seems like an awful lot of effort, and I opt for a cream cheese that already has some flavour in it . Enter Philadephia with Garlic and Herb, normally costing me about £1.45 for a 200g tub from my corner shop . I do rather suspect the corner shop of being a little pricey, so perhaps it costs less in supermarkets.

This comes in an oval tub, with a clear plastic lid with foil lid beneath . It's nice to have both a foil lid and a plastic one, as it keeps the cheese fresher after opening . The packaging has all the relevant nutritional info on it , as well as info about the ingredients. Common sense will tell you that this cheese contains milk, but just in case you didn't figure that out, the tub tells you too, in big scary CAPITAL LETTERS just to make sure!

It also tells us that each 30g serving contains Calories 47 ,Sugar 1.2g and Fat 3.5g. Not at all bad, but then it is a 'light' version .

The spread inside the tub looks a creamy white colour with a few green flecks in it. It's quite thick in texture, and has a rich yet delicate garlic smell, although I can't personally detect the smell of any other herbs.

This spreads easily on bread with a nice thick consistency, and taste's wonderfully thick and creamy, albeit with a slightly drier texture than many cheese spreads. - it certainly doesn't taste 'light'. I do enjoy this on toast, or spread generously over a slice of thick crusty bread. Most of the time though, I simply stir this through hot pasta until it melts, creating a rich and creamy sauce within a matter of minutes, and personally I think this kind of use is where it excels, as it already has plenty of garlic flavouring. In just a couple of stirs, plain pasta becomes a full meal, with minimal effort from me.

As a cream cheese, it's good . As something that can make pasta into a full dish in a couple of minutes, it's wonderful, hence the full 5 stars from me .