Penne with Marinara and Meatballs, Orange-feta salad.

A simple italian-esque meal for a weeknight. Mildly healthy, very yummy, and kid approved. I like kid approved and easy. 

Start with noodles. I picked penne this round. Get your pot of water boiling with a little salt and oil added to it.

Because it keeps noodles from sticking, makes the water boil faster and adds an little something extra.

Geez! So many questions!

Ok. So while the water is getting all bubblyish, chop one onion, 2-3 mushrooms, 1/2 bell pepper and 1/2 a summer squash into chunks. You can add whatever veggies you have in bits and pieces. 

You know the ones. There is not enough to make a side, but too much to just pitch.

This is one of those later in the week meals to get rid of the bits and pieces of other stuff you made.

Throw the veggies into a skillet with a little olive oil and a sprinkle of salt and pepper.

The water should be close to ready now, so add in your noodles.

Un-bag some meatballs too and get those in a pot or in the nuker. Add a little sauce to them to keep them form getting dry on the edges.

Meatballs you ask?

Costco carries in giant bags. You can also get them from a normal grocer. I like the big bags because we use them for all sorts of meals.

Next add a red sauce of choice. This one was the 3 cheese by Ragu.

Remember that blue cheese and garlic butter you made waaaaaaay back when?

Probably shoved in the back of a drawer in the fridge completely forgotten. 

Ya. I do it too. 

Fish it out and throw in the sauce mix. May as well use it for a good purpose right?

By now it smells yummy and you need a snack.

Have a snack.

If you haven't had this before, you must. It's crack in popcorn form. Don't get out the whole bag. Trust e. You won't eat dinner.

Now you cut up the veggies and stuff for the salad.

I generally use, for the 5 of us, 1/2 head of romaine, 1/4 onion, 1/2 bell pepper, some sort of fruit  (in this case and orange) and a sprinkle of a salty cheese like gorgonzola, bleu cheese or feta. In this case, it's feta.

Oranges

Oh. Tomato and cucumber too. 1/2 of each. If you have them. 

Assemble to make this gorgeous salad.

Have another bite of popcorn.

The noodles should be done by now, so drain them.

Put a few in a dish, top with meatballs and sauce. Get your salad on there too. A vinaigrette works the best IMO. But if you are a hard-core ranch person, I won't tell.

Now go sit down and watch some Big Bang Theory. Try not to snort sauce out your nose. Trust me, it hurts.

Homemade Marinara Sauce

This is a long task. Be forewarned. Long task.

Its worth it though. This is one of those things you start on a Saturday morning and let cook all day as you do your weekly housecleaning.

It makes the house smell yummy too.

I suppose you could do this as a slow cooker thing. No reason why not.

First and foremost, pour yourself a nice tall glass of Wild Cherry Pepsi. Or wine. Wine is good too.

Ready?

Ok.

The ingredient list is long.

Tomatoes-Roma 6-10.

1 onion

1 bell pepper

5-6 cloves garlic

Some sort of squash, zuchinni or yellow squash. 1 should be fine

Carrots, 2-3.

Celery, 1 or 2 stalks

Mushrooms. 5 or 6 pounds. Just kidding! Geez! 5 or 6 should be fine. Baby Bella's if you can find them for a reasonable price or wild mushrooms work well too.

On occasion I will throw in broccoli, artichokes, sun dried tomatoes, or eggplant. This can totally be one of those whatever is left of my veggie drawer kind of thing.

Wine. A little for you, a little for the sauce.

So let's start with that.

Chop onion, pepper, and celery (trinity) into bits. Chop garlic coarsely.

Saute in olive oil until translucent and smelling yummy. Sprinkle some salt and pepper in there.

While getting all happy, chop everything else into bits or chunk. However you like your veggies. I like mine chunky.

These are examples of chunks. 

Asparagus. I totally forgot to mention asparagus. This works too, or you can use it as a side for the noodles later.

Toss everything else but tomatoes in and saute for a few minutes. 

Put in tomatoes. I usually end up using more than I think I need. I said 10 above. Sometimes its more. Depends on how many other veggies I put in.

Beautiful makings this is. In the above picture, I cheated. I used some tomatoes and a can as well. I didn't have a ton of fresh left and didn't feel like getting out for just mater's.

No worries. You can do the same. I won't hunt you down, I promise. (Fingers crossed behind back)

Add a dash of red wine. Take a sip. Ok another. Maybe one more.

Add a tablespoon of sugar.

Now on to the herbage.

Important stuff, herbage is.

Here we have...

Oregano

Basil

Garlic powder (cause you can never have too much garlic)

Lemon Pepper

Here's how much to use of each.

About that much. Can you tell I don't like measuring herbage?

Measuring is overrated. 

Ok. Baking is the ONLY exception.

Err on the side of too little and you'll be fine.

If you are anal about measuring...this is about 1.5 tsp, give or take.

So for the oregano, 1 of those is fine. For the garlic 2-3, basil 2-3, lemon pepper 1 or 2. If you have rosemary, 1 is good. 

Fresh is always better, but its not quite time yet to be able to have fresh unless you want to pay out the nose at the store or have and indoor herb garden.

Sigh.

One of these days.

Cook the sauce slowly, on lowish for awhile. The longer it cooks, the better it is.

When you are ready to use it, cook your noodles in salted boiling water (I used ravioli this night)

Fix a veggie (Asparagus this time)

And maybe some bread - Freddies had foccacia in the used bread section so I used that. Have I mentioned my love of used bread? Seriously. Why pay full price?

This is what the whole she-bang looks like. So worth the wait. 

I generally make a huge recipe and freeze it for later. The measurement above feed a fam of 5.