Tuesday, January 26, 2010

What's For Dinner: Fake Homemade Spaghetti & Meatballs

I'm on a roll this morning! I even have a "What's for Dinner" post! This one is kind of cheating. It's kind of like fake-homemade. Not even semi-homemade, I'm no Sandra Lee or anything!

Fake-Homemade Spaghetti & Meatballs:
1 box spaghetti noodles
1 jar store-bought spaghetti sauce
1 green pepper
1 onion
1 red pepper
salt
pepper
olive oil
Frozen meatballs (I don't remember how many I used, these were leftovers from our Ugly Christmas Sweater Party)

I like to serve spaghetti with salad and garlic bread on the side. Natch.
Chop up your peppers and onion, these are essential to making your store-bought spaghetti sauce look, taste and feel "homemade."

Boil your noodles with a little salt, according to the package.*

*Please do not judge me by the spots on my dishes. I blame the dishwasher, and I lack the time and follow-up effort to combat the spots.


Get the meatballs going in a pan with some olive oil, salt & pepper. I like to cook them until they look more like edible meatballs, and less like snowballs.

Then, mix in the freshly chopped vegetables and the jar of sauce. Let it simmer for about 5 minutes, covered. During this time, you can drain your noodles, and pop some bread + garlic salt + butter in the toaster oven. = Garlic Bread!

I get bonus points here for using the last of some sub rolls we had in the pantry. We are trying not to waste food. :)

Toss up a salad to your liking. Serve your sauce and meatballs over the pasta with fresh parmasean cheese (so much better than the shake stuff) and you will have............. drum roll please................

One. Happy. Husband. At least I did. Try it, it really is worth the 10 minutes it adds to just having jar sauce and noodles, and it will really take your meal up a notch!
The leftovers are yummy, too. Even cold. Cheers!

1 comment:

Becky said...

Love it! I do a similar thing...I use store bought sauce and add ground turkey (flavored with red pepper flakes!). Mmmm.

And totally agree on the fresh parmesan...def. worth it!