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Leftovers

Leftover spaghetti, to be exact.  Truthfully, I'm not a big fan of spaghetti in the first place.  There have only been a few times in my entire life that I've actually enjoyed spaghetti.  There are so many variations to this classic, yet for me it comes down to the noodle.  Might sound strange to some, but I don't care for the spaghetti noodle, even though I love pasta in every other form. Last night, my hubby made dinner and spaghetti was on the menu.  In our household, we have a problem gauging the amount of spaghetti to cook.  I generally don't cook enough spaghetti to feed all seven of us, which is not intentional, but works in my favor because then I serve myself the least amount.  On the other hand, my hubby generally cooks too much spaghetti and then there are leftovers.  Spaghetti leftovers, ugh.  We hate to waste food, but I couldn't bear having spaghetti two nights in a row, so I decided to get creative.  I made, lets say, a spaghetti casserole???  I'd like to say that I'm pretty good at reinventing our leftovers into a new meal and I think tonights meal is proof of that.  If I can get myself to eat spaghetti, leftover spaghetti at that, and actually like it, I think thats pretty awesome!  Let me tell you about it.... If you've ever had leftover spaghetti sealed up in a tupperware you will know that when it comes out its quite different from how it went in.  It kind of resembles a gelatinous mess of noodles all stuck together in a rectangular shape, and very well will stay that way unless you deconstruct it.  I basically took our pizza cutter and just chopped it up inside the tupperware until the majority of the noodles looked like they were roughly in the range of two to four inches in length.  In a saucepan, I combined a jar of 3 cheese spaghetti sauce, a generous handful of chopped pepperoni and one large zucchini roughly chopped into bite sized pieces and let simmer over medium low heat.  In a second pan, I browned some ground beef, drained it and added to the pan of simmering sauce.  Next, I spooned some of the sauce into a 13x9 glass dish and evenly spread over the bottom, then added a layer of chopped spaghetti about an inch thick.  I topped the spaghetti with a layer of the sauce mixture then a thin layer of shredded mozzarella, and repeated these layers once more finishing with a slightly more generous sprinkling of mozzarella over the top.  Then I popped it in the 400 degree preheated oven and let it cook through for 15-20 minutes.  It really was quite delicious.  If I hadn't made it myself, I would've never known this meal was actually repurposed leftovers!

Back to School

It's that joyous time of year!  The summer heat slowly starts to decline, the days get a little shorter, the nights get a little longer, there's anticipation of fall colors and pumpkin spice lattes, and most importantly, the kids go back to school!!!!  They reluctantly return to school for 180 days of instruction, seemingly endless hours of homework, early bedtimes and the house fatefully regains a few hours of silence. Back to School is the best time of year.  Don't get me wrong, I love having the kids home for the summer.  Love the days at the beach, evenings at the movies, later bedtimes, and family vacations, but the return of school is also the return of quiet, the end of bickering, and the sibling quarrels. Okay, maybe not the 'end' of bickering and quarrels, but their occurrence is greatly diminished. Eventually, the sparkle will fade and tarnish with rushed evenings to get homework, projects, dinner and showers taken care of before a bedtime that slowly gets pushed back, because there is always another excuse or request that the kids will have to stretch their bedtimes and our patience.  Summer was a lovely guest, but Back to School and Fall are more than welcome!!!