This was a fun night! We had all three of the recipes Chery picked for me in one night.
First up, Pork Spaghetti Bake.
I was SO skeptical! Sorry, Chery! First of all, I try to stay away from recipes with more than 5 ingredients. It's a sickness.
This one looked to have approximately 75 ingredients. I helped it out by omitting some of the gross things. There are two foods I hate: mushrooms and olives. This recipe calls for both. Needless to say, I omitted them. I made a few other changes. You can see the original recipe and how I changed it here.
The cast of characters: See that green lid in the background? That's the olive oil. Let's see...I'm sure a few other things are hiding (or somehow missed the photography session), but you get the idea.
I started off by cooking the meat, green peppers, garlic, and onion in olive oil as the recipe directed. I just put in half of the green pepper. I saved the other half for the quick corn fix-up that I was planning as a side dish. It says to cook this stuff in a dutch oven. Okay. Fine. I admit it. I had to google it. I always thought a dutch oven was a big pot. Which it is. Basically, it's a heavier big pot. I don't have one. (Christmas? Sisters?) Although, really I don't think it's a needed thing. I have two big pots and that's probably one more than is needed! I don't know what kind of benefit you get from the pot being heavy anyway.
Here's everything mixed together about to head for the fridge. Minus the Parmesan cheese because I forgot to put it on until later.
At this point I was beyond skeptical. I started to think I made a big mistake by not cooking the noodles. I looked back the recipe. It didn't say to cook them, but it didn't say to NOT cook them. Oh well. I looked skeptically again at all of the crunchy spaghetti noodles poking out of the casserole dish. You can see them looking all crazy in the picture! I started brainstorming things I could do to save the dish if the noodles were crunchy at dinnertime.
In the end, I put my worries aside and put the lid on the casserole dish and threw it in the fridge. I think I had nightmares about crunchy noodles.
Well, I shouldn't have been afraid! This. Was. Awesome. Everyone loved it. Although, J-boy had two negative comments: 1. "Why is there a stick in my meat thing?" (Well, Son, it's a hard dried up spaghetti noodle. Eat it. You'll be fine.) 2. "It's so spicy it's burning my mouth." (Maybe I should have gone with mild sausage...)
Here's what was leftover (about half of the casserole dish. The boys eat adult sized portions).
I guess I was falling when I took the picture. Maybe from shock of the dinner being a success! Or from the shock of the noodles actually being noodle-y instead of hard and crunchy. (With the exception, of course, of the noodles that were poking out during the baking process.)
The quick corn fix-up was a great success as well! The Hubs LOVED it. He said it was a really great way to eat corn. The kids complained about the green peppers (surprise!).
On to dessert! I made Frosted Carrot Cookies.
They were actually pretty good! Again, I was really skeptical. Everyone preferred the cookies without icing. The Hubs said it depended on what they were for. He said the icing helped it be more dessert-like, but that without it they would even be good for breakfast. All three of my taste-testers said they couldn't taste the carrots.
The final overall verdict:
Pork spaghetti bake will definitely make a reappearance on our menu. First, it was SO easy to fix because I was able to put it together after all the kids were in bed. Then I just had to preheat the oven and stick it in to be ready for dinner. Second, everyone loved it. That's hard to do around here. And third, it made enough for two dinners! Leftover night = Major Mom score!
Quick corn fix-up will make a reappearance as well. Primarily because the Hubs said he liked it better than regular corn. And it adds something green, but not overwhelmingly green, so that's a win-win!
Carrot cookies...not so sure. If I ever make them again, I won't make the frosting.
Precious!
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