Food + Foto Week 4: Spaghetti and Meat/Veggie Sauce Recipe

Here’s my fourth Food + Foto submission…semi-homemade spaghetti and meat sauce.

Pasta dinners are a regular in my house and would be equivalent to a Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade recipe.  Nothing fancy, but it’s easy and better than sauce straight out of the jar.  You can even leave out the meat and just have a sauce with veggies. I'm sure sauce from scratch is way better, but I have yet to try that. Since I just made this up, there aren’t any measurements or times – sorry!

1. Get your pasta water boiling and cook according to package directions. 
2. While that’s going, chop up any of these you like: garlic, onions, mushrooms, carrots, zucchini. I use whatever of those I have on hand.  
3. If I have ground Italian sausage or beef on hand I’ll make a meat sauce.  If I don’t, I’ll make the sauce with just veggies.  When I attempted to be healthier (once), I tried ground turkey and did not like the texture or taste at all. But that’s just me, try it if you like. Anyway, if using meat, brown it (and drain the fat if it’s ground beef). If not using meat, go to the next step.

4.  Throw in your garlic and veggies and cook until softened, stirring occasionally. 

5.  Pour in your jarred sauce.  I’m a Prego girl. Even though the sauce probably has all these in it, I throw in some herbs like rosemary, oregano, basil, thyme and some red pepper flakes if you're in the mood for that. Simmer until your pasta is done, stirring now and then. Pardon the out of focus picture. Still figuring out my lens.

Wah-lah! Dinner was just made in 30 minutes, I think.

Another variation I do is to make rigatoni or mostacolli with sliced Italian sausage.  I make the sauce the same way and brown my Italian sausage in another pan.  Slice up the sausage, throw them in the sauce and mix with the pasta.  And top with cheese of course!

This recipe/post was not written very well. Hopefully my recipe writing skills will improve with time. Most importantly though, it tastes good. J