By Halloween week. Tuesday October thirty-first. The lopsided FaceTime pumpkin on the porch lasted the full week without softening. I sat on the porch with a big bowl of candy from six to eight-thirty handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters. Forty-eight kids this year. More than last year’s forty-one. The neighborhood has decided this is a porch worth walking to.
The most-of-the-night moment for me was Eli, Mrs. Henderson’s grandson, who came up the walk in a fox costume. The same fox — orange, with tall pointed ears and a white chest and a long puffy tail — that I had put on the cake at the First Baptist harvest party three weeks ago. Mrs. Henderson told me Saturday afternoon, when I dropped off some macaroons at her place, that the cake had been Eli’s entire fall personality. He had asked his mom for a fox costume the same night he ate the cake. The mom had ordered the costume off Amazon. Eli had been the fox for three weeks.
And the recipe Sunday was the simple weeknight spaghetti from the Best Pasta Dinner Ideas roundup. The pasta was a simple thing — spaghetti, browned ground beef, marinara from one of my home-canned jars from March, garlic, fresh basil from the windowsill plant. The whole dinner happens in twenty minutes.
The math: a pound of spaghetti $0.89, a pound of ground beef from the markdown rack $1.99, a pint jar of homemade canned marinara from the pantry shelf (free, made in March), four cloves of garlic free, basil from the windowsill free. Total: $2.88 for a dinner that fed Mama and me for two nights.
The technique is the simple build. Brown the ground beef in a large skillet over medium heat, breaking it up with a wooden spoon. Drain the fat. Add four cloves of minced garlic for thirty seconds. Add the pint jar of marinara. Simmer for ten minutes while the pasta cooks. Toss the cooked drained pasta with the sauce in the skillet. Tear in fresh basil leaves at the end.
The marinara is the part that I want to keep highlighted. The jar I used was from my March canning project — one of the twelve pings, one of the twelve pint jars on the pantry shelf. Eight months later the marinara still tastes like the Roma tomatoes I rough-chopped on my own kitchen counter, and the dinner I made Sunday night was, in some real way, my own work going back in a circle.
Mama said, eating, baby, your sauce holds up. The math the math.
The recipe roundup is below. The trick I want to add from my own work: home-canned marinara from your own kitchen is the best jar of sauce you will ever pour over pasta. If you have not canned, this is the year.
Best Pasta Dinner Ideas: Crockpot Mac and Cheese
Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 2 hours | Total Time: 2 hours 10 minutes | Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 2 cups elbow macaroni, uncooked
- 1 (12 oz) can evaporated milk
- 1 1/2 cups whole milk
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
- 2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- 1 cup shredded mild cheddar cheese
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard powder
Instructions
- Combine. Add the uncooked elbow macaroni, evaporated milk, whole milk, butter, salt, pepper, and mustard powder directly into the crockpot insert. Stir to combine.
- Add cheese. Sprinkle the shredded cheddar cheeses over the top of the mixture. Give everything one more gentle stir to distribute.
- Cook. Place the lid on the crockpot and cook on LOW for 2 hours. Do not cook on HIGH — the dairy can scorch.
- Stir and check. At the 2-hour mark, remove the lid and stir well. The noodles should be tender and the cheese should be fully melted into a creamy sauce. If the mixture looks too thick, stir in a splash of warm milk until it reaches your preferred consistency.
- Serve. Serve immediately straight from the crockpot. Season with additional salt and pepper to taste.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 420 | Protein: 18g | Fat: 20g | Carbs: 42g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 480mg