Monday, April 13, 2009

Baked Pasta

This baked pasta is so easy, you can't mess it up! It's one of the few recipes I make with different ingredients each time depending on what I have in my pantry. I am frugal... hmm, I don't know if I'm frugal or thrifty. What's the difference? I think a thrifty shopper buys cheap things they don't need and a frugal shopper buys items they need at a good price. So according to my definition I qualify as frugal. I fight poor Justin kicking and screaming when he wants to purchase something, I even made him go without a TV for a few months when ours died in a lightening storm. So I LOVE when we skip our grocery store trip and live off what we have in our pantry/fridge. It's like an Iron Chef challenge trying to figure out how to use the food we already have! So if you make this baked pasta all you really need is pasta and sauce, try looking around your pantry/refrigerator to find other ingredients (veggies? cheese? meat?), it's fun! Here's what I used...

Ingredients
1 bag of pasta
1 large jar of spagetti sauce
1 package of shredded mozzarella cheese
1 pound ground beef
Italian seasoning
Minced garlic

Directions
Boil the pasta while you brown the ground beef. I added around a tablespoon of Italian seasoning and minced garlic to my ground beef while it cooked. I would have added an onion or some spinach too but we didn't ave any. When the beef is brown add the spagetti sauce and turn the heat off. Drain the pasta and stir in the spagetti meat sauce. Put it all in a 9x13 casserole dish, stir in the cheese, cover with foil, and bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

4 comments:

Donna-FFW said...

Sounds like the perfect go to weeknight dish, filling and tasty!!

Coleens Recipes said...

Sounds wonderful and I love that this kind of dish makes an excellent lunch the next day.

Crystal Ann said...

This looks like something I could handle now! :)

Lo said...

You can't go wrong with baked pasta, I say! This is the perfect dish for a rainy spring evening.