Ground Beef Spiral Bake

I had a crazy week... lots of thoughts, emotions, and events occurred... Oh! And there was a potluck on Tuesday, I brought homemade mac & cheese - and I ate it with Japanese curry. And I ate a bunch of other sweets & carbs too... oh boy. This week was probably a big fat fail, but I'm just going to focus on one thing I did well for the moment. A food triumph moment I had last weekend when I spent the day cooking for a rare meal together with Will. Yay!

Ground Beef Spiral Bake
Cook a 16oz. package of Spiral Pasta. Now... if you're living The No Fun Food Life, then skip this step. For my mixed family meal, I cooked 3/4 the amount of pasta - 12oz.

Cook 2lb Ground Beef w. 2/3 cup chopped Onion until no longer pink. Add 1 tbsp Minced Garlic, cook 1 more minute then drain. Stir in 2 jars Spaghetti Sauce, 2 tbsp Tomato Paste, 1 tsp each of Oregano & Dried Basil. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes.

Stir Pasta into meat sauce mixture. Transfer everything into 2 greased baking dishes. Sprinkle liberally with as much Mozzarella Cheese as your heart fancies. Bake one dish at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Freeze one dish for later.

The No Fun Food Life version: Now... if you are cutting out the pasta completely... you can just spoon the meat sauce mixture into the baking dishes, top with cheese, and bake. Then heat up a packet of Miracle Noodles and spoon the hot meat sauce & melted cheese onto the noodles. Mix well and eat immediately. Then you can refrigerate leftovers and just heat as needed with your Miracle Noodles.

For my particular family meal... I followed the classic recipe for 3/4 of everything for Will... and then I reserved 1/4 of the meat sauce + melted mozzarella and made 3 meals for myself out of it. :)

So, here's an example of how I make my family meals work out. In the middle of the week I ran out of the carb-free version and took to work a full-carb version... but it was super delicious and I limited the meal to a 12oz. portion (if you don't have a food scale, buy one!) so I didn't feel too bad.

I love how I can freeze basically a huge meal for later, too. Anything to save me time and effort in the middle of the work week is awesome!