This is how the week looked:
Yes, it's only 6 pictures. I don't have the attention span today to find the website that created the last one. LOL You see, S and I took a long hike today. Well "long" is a relative word. Long-ish for us. We're not the best of hikers cause I have crap-tastic feet...and knees. These usually happen on Saturday's, but he was called in for a brief stint that would have been longer, but he conned someone into filling in the rest of the shift he was filling in for. He's so resourceful. I wrote the post this week if you want to read about our hiking
Pantry cleaning is going well. Except for the baking part, I think I will have the pantry pretty cleaned out before we move at the end of April. The freezer, well that's a different story. I'm addicted to marked down meat. It's just too easy to purchase and throw in the freezer to do something with later. S was victim to that this weekend. He went with me. He doesn't usually go with me. He's usually doing the laundry when I go grocery shopping. He found the flat-iron steaks and decided we should purchase them to make something with later. No clue what yet, but I'm sure I'll come up with something.
And speaking of which, the menu looks like this:
Sunday - Mock-sagna
Monday - Artichoke and Olive Bruschetta Chicken with fettucine
Tuesday - Shrimp Caesar
Wednesday - Macaroni and Cheese with Hot Dogs
Thursday - Hot Hamburger
Saturday - Cheddar Chicken Chowder
This is not how the pantry gets full, thankfully. But it is how the freezer gets fulled up. One or two packages on top of what you're planning on purchasing anyway and well, you have a months worth of meat in the freezer. It's a mindless thing that I don't really pay attention to. That's how it gets so full. I need to be more mindful when I'm making the menu and inventory both pantry and freezer to use what we have before just buying more. BUT *I* am lazy.
*I* am also too tired to make lasagna. I mean, it's lazy lasagna at that. Yeah. Too lazy to make that today, but I wanted lasagna today. So, I thought we'd throw together a Mock-sagna. What's mock-sagna? Well, it's a wanna be lasagna, but without all the structure of real lasagna.
I started with about a pound of ground beef and browned it with some onions and garlic. Then we drained it and added the spaghetti sauce and pureed tomatoes. While all this was going on, we started to cook the no yolk noodles. While they were cooking, we simmered the beef with the sauce.
Once the noodles were cooked, we drained them and let them set a minute. We added 2/3 cup each of fat free cottage cheese and fat free ricotta to the meat mixture.
Um...yeah. I coulda face planted in the pot at this point, but I didn't....cause it gets better. We poured it into a casserole dish coated with cooking spray and topped it with 1 cup of part-skim mozzarella cheese
and baked it for about 20 minutes or until the cheese was bubbly and melted. I was baking a cake at the same time, so it was a whirl wind of activity in the kitchen at that time. LOL That's a teaser for later. :)
This came together quickly and it was yummy. It had all the flavors of lasagna without the time consuming assembly. It doesn't REPLACE lasagna, but it was perfect for our tired hineys to through together without messing up the pantry cooking menu.
Mock-sagna
- 8 oz egg noodles
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1/2 c onions, chopped
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 t extra virgin olive oil
- 28 oz spaghetti sauce
- 8 oz canned pureed tomatoes
- 1 T Italian seasoning
- 2 t garlic salt
- 2/3 c cottage cheese, fat free
- 2/3 c ricotta cheese, low fat
- 1 c part-skim mozzarella cheese
- Preheat oven to 350.
- Cook pasta according to package directions; omitting salt and oil.
- Heat a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. Crumble the ground beef and cook about 4 minutes. Add onion and garlic to pan. Continue to cook until the ground beef is no longer pink. Drain in a colander. Return to pan.
- Add the spaghetti sauce and pureed tomatoes to the ground beef mixture. Simmer 10-12 minutes.
- Add the cottage cheese and ricotta cheese to the ground beef mixture. Add the cooked noodles and stir until combined.
- Pour into a 9x12 casserole dish coated with cooking spray. Top with the mozzarella cheese.
- Bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until the cheese is melted and bubbly.
- Serve immediately.
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