The Cookbook Experiment: Beef A Roni

Hello! Another recipe from the church cookbook. This one was submitted by Mary Grode who is the mother of Judy Mastros. Great families, all of them!

I was looking for a fast dinner tonight and as I poured through the cookbook this one jumped out at me.

Beef A Roni by Mary Grode

1 pound ground beef
1 cup Elbow macaroni
1/2  onion, minced
1/2 green pepper, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1-15 ounce can tomato sauce
1 cup water
2 - 3 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

Cook ground beef. Stir in macaroni, onion, green pepper, salt and pepper; cook stirring until macaroni is transparent.  Add tomato sauce, water and Worcestershire sauce and cover. Simmer 20 minutes. Stir then let stand 5 minutes with heat off.

My take-aways from this recipe:

1. I could not wrap my head around adding the macaroni at the stage it said in the recipe so I did not. I boiled my macaroni noodles separately.
2. I increased the amount of sauce and noodles because I have a house full to feed.
3. I also used ground turkey in lieu of hamburger because we have someone in the family who is allergic to red meat.
4. It was really good however I am going to talk to the daughter of the recipe writer and see if the macaroni really goes in before being cooked.
5. I really wanted to add cheese to this...blame the Italian in me.

Until tomorrow!! Take care.

If "Chopped" can do it, so can I! (In other words, making something new out of leftovers!)

I had a mess of spaghetti with meat sauce leftover from just a few days ago and I absolutely was not going to let it all go to waste. One of my favorite new episodes of "Chopped" on Food Network had leftovers in each mystery basket. It was very intriguing how they re-worked the various items into something new. It was a challenge I was ready to take on!

My pursuit began at the grocery store. Strolling through the vegetables and various other rows with my beautiful red-headed daughter Paulina, I was looking for something to inspire me.  Inspiration came in the form of my girl pointing out the pre-made pizza crusts and suggesting we do a spaghetti pizza! Grabbing the crusts, some extra tomato sauce and some shredded Parmesan, we headed home to make some magic!

I put some butter (yes, butter - sometimes it is the only thing that will do) in a saute pan to melt and added one large yellow onion chopped with three smashed and chopped cloves of garlic to get soft and yummy. Next I chopped some fancy Italian zucchini into small chunks and put it into the onions and garlic to soften up as well.

While the zucchini and onion and garlic married in the pan and embraced the butter, I began to prepare the crusts for their toppings.  I spread the crust with a very thin layer of spaghetti sauce.

Next came a layer of the leftover spaghetti and meat sauce.

Following this was a layer of freshly chopped white mushrooms, a layer of shredded Parmesan cheese, and then a heaping spoonful of the sauteed zucchini, onions and garlic.

Then more Parmesan and a heavy layer of sharp Cheddar cheese.

Now, as many of you know I have quite a few carnivores in my household. There is one in particular who wants to eat healthier but just can't seem to go "green" with her vegetables - literally. Therefore I made a second pizza that was strictly for the meat-eaters.  It started with the same base of the pizza crust, a little sauce, the spaghetti with meat sauce but then I added a healthy topping of pepperoni.

I added the Parmesan and Cheddar cheese to the top of this and threw them both in a 450 degree oven for about 10-minutes to heat through, crisp the crust and melt the cheese. While the pizzas were baking, I put together a salad of mixed greens, chopped red, yellow and orange sweet peppers, chopped fresh mushrooms, grape tomatoes, a chopped apple, Parmesan and Cheddar cheese.

And finally on the plate:

The vegetable pizza was my favorite.  The zucchini and onion blend mixed with the pasta and the crisp crust was dancing across my palate. It was so very, very good. I preferred it to the all meat version.  Overall I believe this leftover experiment was a success.