Baked Penne Fun!

I’ve had this recipe “pinned” for months on Pinterest and never made it.  It’s from marthastewart.com.  I’m not that great of a cook, but how could I screw up Baked Ziti? Let me tell you how!

Click here to see the recipe: Baked Ziti

This probably shouldn’t be on my “Fit for Life” Tuesday but I had originally thought that this would be a healthy vegetarian dish.  But I messed it up.

First, it called for “best-quality” tomato sauce.  What is that?  I bought a can of tomato sauce with a fancy Italian name brand on it.  But when I started making the dish I realized that since it didn’t call for any spices–perhaps Martha meant a “best-quality” pasta sauce.  All I had was Ragu and Prego.  Not the best-quality. And also not fitting into my “Fit for Life” non-processed food living.  Sigh.

Then I realized I had purchased penne, not ziti.  At least it was whole wheat.  And I had intended to get fresh mozzeralla and slice it into the ziti.  Forgot about that.  So all I had was Kraft.  More processed food.

Ingredients
Here’s some of the ingredients. Lots of “processed” food which I’m not supposed to be using anymore! The wine is for the chef, not the penne.

 

Grating Parmesan
Terry always does the grating.  We like to call him the faux chef.  Even though he’s a better cook than me.
Ouch
Oh no, accident in the kitchen! Grate the parmesan–not the knuckles!

 

Dishes
The recipe called for 8 ounces of ziti, but the box was 13.25 ounces. We both decided that we shouldn’t waste those 5.25 ounces of penne! Now that I made the entire box, it didn’t fit in the casserole dish. So we dug out a bigger dish.

 

Terry
Since we made all of the penne, we needed more sauce.  No more Ragu so we mixed in some Prego. That’s the faux chef’s other important job, opening jars and bottles of wine for me.
Spoon rest
Okay, this has nothing to do with the recipe, just wanted to show you the cutest spoon rest ever.

 

Me
Me, trying to pretend that I have a clue about cooking.

 

Oven
Casserole just fits into the upper oven. Hmmm, since I made more than the recipe called for, do I need to cook it longer?

 

Finished Penne
Wow! That looks remarkably yummy!
Yum
And it was yummy! Despite all the changes, even I can’t screw up baked penne!
Maggie
And where’s my dish?

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