Spaghetti 3-ways



I believe spaghetti is one of the most frugal of all meals and it's good! You can even invite company over - serve with some green salad and a loaf of San Francisco sourdough -  some green beans with real bacon bits on top and tossed in just enough bacon grease, to give it that yummy taste.

 And if you can afford it, a nice red wine.







 Last night, I made spaghetti and it is a filler - for the budget and it fills up a good-sized appetite. I feed 3 males - and so pasta and those type of fillers, keep them from roaring with hunger.


3 cheap recipes for spaghetti (with ground beef)

There's my easy spaghetti - you know, buy a jar or two of store-made sauce - add a can of tomato sauce - ground beef, onion and green pepper, more garlic, and some Italian seasonings. I'm not a food snob. If it tastes good, so be it. I do try to find good quality and I do have my brand favorites. Check for sales - it can an easy meal - ready in 30 minutes or less.

Homemade - Or I will use either fresh Roma tomatoes or canned and do basically the same thing as above - garlic, seasonings, ground beef, onion, bell peppers, etc. Sometimes I'll add some wine - or mushrooms. You have to cook a little longer and I usually use the crockpot and let the tomatoes cook all day. I think it tastes the same as store-bought but it makes me feel like Suzie-homemaker and let's face it, we all like to do that once in a while.

I like to use vermicelli pasta (it's thinner) instead of spaghetti but we call it spaghetti.



Baked Spaghetti - I usually make the whole 2 lb package. Then I separate it and put the second meal in a casserole. Add the sauce - some mozzarella cheese and bake. (Or you can freeze it for next week) You can also add a can of cream of mushroom over the sauce and before the cheese. Very good.

That old faded red bowl belonged to my Grandma. I still hold on to these things. 






4 comments:

  1. You are so right about spaghetti!! What's not to love?? Tomatoes and red wine are things I usually have on hand. You've been to my blog, you know I'm a food snob (as much as I can afford to be, anyhow) and I used jarred sauce all the time!! I use the white labeled generic cans of spaghetti sauce and I add to it: onions, peppers, carrots, garlic, red wine, lots of ground beef. I have made sauce from scratch, but it's a lot of work of peeling and seeded tomatoes, not to mention, I have a nasty lil citrus allergy coupled with psoriasis on my hands and some days are just torture. So, the less I handle citrus, the more my hands like me ;) Great post!! Oh, yeah...I'm adding you to my favorite blog list.

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    1. Cool, thanks. I enjoy your blog as well.

      I can't find "generic" anything anymore. I used to get them at Lucky's years ago. I would do the same thing. Now I just catch sales but the store-bought or make my own. I always have canned tomatoes on hand!

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    2. I recently used canned spaghetti sauce and was out of ground beef but had a lb. of breakfast pork sausage (hot) which I added instead. The kids gobbled it up and I think it had better flavor than if I had made with the ground beef (cheaper too!). I used to be a die-hard spaghetti sauce maker, but with so many pre-made options available and so little time, I've switched to the canned and jarred varieties--the cheaper the better!

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    3. Kids can be a joy to cook for. They like different combinations. On the other hand they can be picky too.

      My Italian friend always puts sausage in her sauces.

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