Baked Penne

Yeah, yeah.  It was supposed to be Baked Ziti.  Apparently, the Sorta Super Target by my office ran out of room before they got to "Z" on the pasta aisle.  Not my fault.  So, this has become one of those throw together what you have meals.  I'm okay with that.  Some of the pictures of baked ziti remind me of artery cross section pictures, anyways.  Mmm..appetizing. 

My inspiration this week is from Erin's 5 Dollar Dinners.  This was supposed to be Sharon's Baked Ziti.  We already covered that.

So here's what I actually used:

 2 1lb boxes of penne pasta

1lb ground beef

1 jar spaghetti sauce

1/2 an onion, chopped

minced garlic (I used what was left in the jar..about 2 tsp.)

1 tsp oregeno

1 cup shredded cheese (I had several partially used bags, I used the rest of 3 of them)

Cook your noodles as usual and drain.

Brown the ground meat and onion together while the noodles are going, then drain.

In the pasta pan, combine the spaghetti sauce, garlic and oregeno.  I think red pepper flakes would be really good in this too, if you can handle the spice.  My kids would disown me if I ruined their "spaghetti", though.

Add the ground beef and onion back, then the noodles.  My pan wouldn't hold it all and give me room to stir comfortably, so I ended up doing the stiring in my big orange bowl.  I also added the leftover mozzarella to the bowl at this point.

Carefully pour the entire thing into a baking dish, cover with the rest of your cheese and bake at 350 for about 20 minutes or until the cheese melts.

2lbs of pasta makes A LOT of dinner.  You can freeze half of this if you don't want to make it all at once.

Enjoy!

Christi