Crockpot Pasta Fagioli

This soup was amazing!  It really did remind me of the Olive Garden soup I used to love.  The one I ate before I had children and actually went to Olive Garden.  Not much to tell on what I did, since crock pot meals are so easy there are not really any tips or tricks I have to share.  So here it is.  I had company this weekend and forgot to get any pictures of this soup.  I plan on making it again in the next couple weeks though, so I will try to update this post with pictures next time we have it.

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Crockpot Pasta Fagioli
From A Year of Slow Cooking

1 pound ground beef, browned and drained

1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup carrots, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
2 cans (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes do not drain
1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 can white beans, drained and rinsed (I use northern)
4 cups beef broth
1 jar (16.5 oz) pasta sauce
2 tsp oregano
1/2 T Tabasco sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup dry pasta, to add at end of cooking time


Brown your ground beef and drain well. Let it cool a bit.

Place your chopped carrots, onion, and celery in a 6 quart crockpot.

Drain and rinse the beans then add them. Add the tomatoes, pasta sauce, and beef broth.  Season with your salt, pepper, oregano, and Tobasco sauce.  Stir in the meat.
Cook on high for 4 hours or low for 8 hours.  About 45 min - 1 hour before you are ready to serve, add the dry pasta and cook til tender.

I served with garlic bread, and a little parmesan.   This makes a lot of soup so we even had leftovers with grilled cheese a few nights later.

Baked Ziti

Well, I am getting good use out of my new freezer.  I made baked ziti Saturday night and froze half of it for later.  Since this dish serves 12 then it is perfect for freezing.  Sometimes I will just keep a 1/3 out for us and freeze 2/3 for when I have company or just do it in half and Matthew will get to take leftovers once or twice.  This is another dish that takes some planning as the cooking time is long but your actual time in the kitchen isn't bad.  You can get other things done while it's going, but it's not a good meal to make if you've been gone all day.  It is absolutely worth it though if you have the time.  The sauce is best if it simmers for a few hours, or even all day in the crock pot, and it takes an hour in the oven.  Ok, I won't make you wait any longer here's the recipe.

The sauce!  Brown you meats with the onion and garlic.  Drain if needed.  Then you're gonna stir in your spaghetti sauce and tomatoes.  Then the simmering begins, let it simmer, stirring every once in a while for about 30 minutes.  I have learned with any tomato based sauce the longer it simmers the better, I sometimes make the sauce earlier in the day then put it in the crock pot to simmer til I'm ready for it.

While that's simmering, cook your pasta and then mix your cheese mixture.  Mix the ricotta, Parmesan, half the mozzarella, the egg, salt, and pepper in a medium bowl.

After that you just need to layer the ingredients in a 9x13 pan (or two 8x8's if you will be freezing half) and top with the remaining mozzarella.  Bake at 350 for 1 hour and you have plenty of time to clean up and even get something else done before dinner time. 

This is very good with Quick Bread Sticks, and a salad.

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Baked Ziti
Serves 12

1 lb ground meat (1/2 beef, 1/2 pork sausage)
1/2 medium onion chopped
1 garlic clove minced
1 26-28oz jar spaghetti sauce
15 oz ricotta cheese
16 oz tubular pasta, cooked and drained
16 oz Mozzarella Cheese, divided
1 can petite diced tomatoes (drain half the juice)
1 egg (or 1/4 cup egg substitute)
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese


In a large saucepan, cook meat, onions, and garlic over medium heat until meat is no longer pink; drain.
Stir in spaghetti sauce and tomatoes, cover and simmer 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

Cook pasta according to package directions; drain.

In a bowl, combine ricotta, 8 oz mozzarella, Parmesan cheese, egg, salt and pepper.

In a greased 9x13 baking dish, spread 1 cup meat sauce. layer 1/2 the pasta, 1 cup meat sauce, and one half the cheese mixture.  Repeat layers (pasta, sauce, and cheese).  Top with remaining sauce.  Sprinkle with remaining cheese.

**sometimes I will put a grated zucchini and/or carrot in the sauce during the simmering to add a few more veggies to the dish, just depends on what I have on hand.  If you add vegetables though, drain both cans of diced tomatoes.


Cover and bake at 350 for 1 hour.

Quick Idea: freezer burrito mix

I love to cook and I love to freeze meals.  It's always nice on a busy day to not have to do a lot of extra work.  Days like that is when my freezer is my friend.  I actually just upgraded to a huge upright freezer today, I love it!

Well, earlier this month we had some family over and per Anthony's request I made tacos.  We ended up with quite a bit of leftover meat, refried beans, and rice/bean side.  So I put it all together in a ziploc bag and stuck it in the freezer for later. 

I told you there was quite a bit leftover

Tonight we are having freezer burritos, from the above referenced ziploc bag mix that is.  All I have to do is pull out the ziploc bag, defrost, and assemble with some flour tortillas and a little cheese.  So easy and you're not throwing away a bunch of leftovers.  Plus it's a nice cheap meal to use at the end of the month (especially if your at the end of your food budget like me)

I hate throwing food out.  It feels so wasteful, so I try to repurpose food when I can.  I freeze individual portion sized meals for Matthew to take to work.  I'll also freeze small amounts of meat to add to quesidillas for the kids lunch or individual portions of veggies for me to have with my lunch.  Don't get me wrong we actually like eating leftovers but this was on a weekend and I knew we wouldn't eat all that was left within the next couple of days, so that's when things go in the freezer. 

The only thing I don't like about this kinda cooking is about 4:30, when I normally start cookng, I'm walking around the kitchen feeling like I should be doing something, but have nothing to do.  So I may just organize my pantry tonight, who knows. 

Spinach Stuffed Manicotti

Spinach Stuffed Manicotti

I love manicotti and typically I see it without meat, but our family are big meat eaters, so I came up with this recipe and added hamburger to it.  Manicotti used to intimidate and frustrate me, till I learned a few tricks anyway.  So here is how dinner went for me.

I started off by browning 1 lb hamburger (actually I only did 3/4lb but didn't get to fill 2 of my noodles so changed the recipe to include a little more meat and ricotta for your benefit.) 

After the meat was browned and drained I added about 2 cups of fresh baby spinach, 1/3 jar pasta sauce,1/2 tsp Italian seasoning, 1 cup ricotta cheese, and 1 cup Italian blend shredded cheese to my skillet. 

I cooked this mix till the spinach was reduced and the cheese was melted.  Then I set it aside to cool so it is easier to handle while stuffing. 

While the meat and cheese mixture was cooling, I boiled the pasta making sure not to overcook it.  I cook mine for about 6 minutes so they are still a little firm.  I drained, then rinsed the pasta with cool water to stop them from cooking.

I placed the remaining sauce in the bottom of a 9x13 dish and started stuffing the shells.  Using a gallon sized ziploc bag with one of the bottom corners cut to pipe the mixture in the shells.  This method is a little messy and  I should of made sure to let my meat and cheese mix get cool enough but I was impatient and just held my ziploc bag with a towel to help with the heat.  You can also rip your noodles down one of the seams, spoon some the mixture in, and roll them up.  Place them in the pan seam down and no one will know the difference.  These two methods have helped keep my sanity with stuffing manicotti. This time I piped them because I had never tried it that way before.  If any started to split while I was piping, I just finished off the split and rolled them instead.

After all the noodles were stuffed and in the pan I topped with the remaining 1 cup of shredded cheese.  All that was left to do was bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

We had this with salad, fried zucchini, and Quick Bread Sticks

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Spinach Stuffed Manicotti
Serves 6-8

1 box Manicotti noodles

1 lb hamburger

2 cups fresh baby spinach

1 jar pasta sauce, divided
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 pkg Italian blend shredded cheese
1/2 tsp Italian seasoning

Brown hamburger, drain and return to skillet.

Add about 2 cups fresh baby spinach, 1/3 jar pasta sauce 1/2 tsp Italian seasoning, ricotta, and 1/2 pkg of shredded cheese to skillet.  Heat until cheese is melted and spinach is reduced.

Set aside to cool.  Boil noodles for about 6 minutes make sure not to over cook or they will be difficult to stuff.

Pour remaining pasta sauce in the bottom of a 9x13 dish.

Put meat and cheese mixture in a gallon ziploc bag and cut a corner to pipe into the noodles.  You can spoon it in, its not as messy but the noodles tend to rip more for me with a spoon.  Also you could tear down a seam of the noodle spoon in the mix then roll and place in pan seam down .  No one will know you didn't "stuff" them, it can be our little secret.

After all noodles are stuffed and in pan top with remaining shredded cheese.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Sloppy Joe Sandwiches

    Oh wow, what a day!  The girls are still sick and clingy so I decided to do a crock pot meal that I could start during their nap time and just put some tator tots in the oven about 20 minutes before dinner. 

    This is just how cooking dinner went for me, it will give you an idea of how the rest of my day went.  I started by browning my meat, which I forgot to pull out of the freezer to defrost, not so bad but all the mishaps add up.  Then I drained the meat and decided to dump some on the counter and spill grease all over the place.  I cleaned that up and then put the garlic, onions, and green peppers in the skillet cooking them till they were tender.  Normally I would put the salt that the recipe called for in here too, but I just now realized as I was typing this that I forgot it.  We never noticed it was gone so I took it off the recipe (its not really needed with all the sodium in the ketchup anyway.) 

    After that I placed all of the ingredient in the crock pot and finished off the ketchup bottle with only 1/2 a cup instead of the 1 cup I needed.  I was just going to put tomato sauce in for the rest of it till I realized I didn't have any of that either.  Luckily I found a new bottle of ketchup while looking for the tomato sauce, whew.  I think I need to clean out and re-organize my pantry, but that is a project for another day.  So now I have all my ingredients in the crock pot cooking on low for 4-6 hrs til dinner time. 

    Also just a couple tips: this can be done in the skillet if you don't want to use the crock pot or don't have the time,  just make sure to use the full 4 Tbsp of water.  In the crock pot don't put too much water in or they will be really "sloppy" joes as the liquid won't evaporate like it will in the skillet.  Also you can put in a few shoestring carrots if you want to add more veggies to this dish, I meant to, but of course forgot till it was too late.  Make sure to cook the carrots in the microwave til tender before adding to the dish, you don't want crunchy carrots in there, or I wouldn't anyway. 

    This is such an easy meal and if you've never had homemade you won't go back to the can after trying this.  I serve this with tator tots, sometimes green beans or a salad.  And if you've never tried it this sandwich is really good with cheese, pickles, and mustard as condiments or that's what my family likes anyway.
 

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Crock Pot Sloppy Joes

1 lb ground beef, browned and drained
1/4 diced green pepper
1/4 cup diced onion
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 cup ketchup
2-4 Tbsp water
2 Tbsp brown sugar
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp mustard
1/4 tsp salt


Brown your hamburger along with the garlic, onion, and green pepper.

Place all ingredients in the crock pot for 4-6 hrs on low.

I like to serve on hamburger buns or occasionally just over tator tots with cheese.