Spaghetti...It's What's For Dinner...All Week...

I am feeling less than creative, and not much into cooking this week. Ugh. That's how I feel. It's for a reason, though--this is the fifth week in a row of hubby traveling for some portion of the week. I am all about easy dinners when I'm Solo Mama, so Lainey and I are definitely are getting our fill of pasta lately. I made an entire box of spaghetti on Sunday with the plan of just eating it every night this week. In college, my room mate made an incredible spaghetti pie (basically an yummy mess of spaghetti and lots of cheese), and I figured I could make a Sort-of Spaghetti Pie, with some cheese and throw in some veggies. Here's what I came up with: (no photo of this one because we ate it all before I remembered...trust me, it looked good!)

SORT-OF SPAGHETTI PIE

3 medium carrots, sliced thin

1 leek, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

8 button mushrooms, chopped

3 kale leaves, finely chopped

1 jar pasta sauce

8 oz cooked spaghetti

about 1 1/2 c cottage cheese (I didn't measure....)

about 1 c shredded mozzarella cheese (again, didn't measure)

2 tbsp olive oil

In a small skillet, saute all veggies in olive oil until tender. **Add the garlic near the end or else it will burn. Set aside.

Mix a little sauce into the cooked spaghetti (just enough to coat it so it won't dry out).

In a small baking dish (I used the one a size down from my 9x13), coat the bottom with a layer of sauce. Put a layer of half the spaghetti on top, then top with half of your veggie mixture. Top with half the cottage cheese, and half the mozarella cheese. Repeat layers once more, and top with a bit of sauce and a light shake of parmesan cheese.

Bake, uncovered, at 350 for about 20 minutes, until bubbly.

Like most of my recipes, you can obviously just use whatever veggies you have...you could even just throw in a bag of frozen mixed vegetables.

Please stay tuned for a (hopeful!) return of creative cooking and more enthusiastic blogging!