Baked Ham and Cheese Spaghetti

First of all, I hope you all had an amazing Easter! Jon and I cooked a ham yesterday using this recipe. Yes, I said Jon AND I. He actually helped me in the kitchen guys! He put the cloves in the diamonds and helped me dress it with the pineapple and cherries. Win!

We actually got the ham for free! How awesome is that? Foodland (our grocery store) always has a deal around holidays where if you have 2 of their reward certificates you can get an item for free. For Easter it was a ham! I got a 12 lb beast of a ham. Hi, there are only two of us. So we had some yesterday for Easter dinner then I packed the rest away in EIGHT gladware containers.

I was driving home today and trying to think of ideas of how I could use this ham. I remembered I watched Paula Deen the other day and she made a baked spaghetti and I thought I would give it a try with my favorite cheese sauce. It worked out wonderfully! So, if you guys ended up with lots of leftover ham, give this a try!

1/2 lb fully cooked spaghetti
1 serving Cheese Sauce
3-4 cups fully cooked ham, chopped into cubes or shredded
4 slices American Cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly spray casserole dish. Spread a little cheese sauce on the bottom of baking dish. Layer spaghetti, ham then cheese sauce twice. Top with slices of American cheese. Bake for 20-25 minutes, just to heat through together.

Easy enough right? Here's some pictures I took yesterday from our walk with the dogs :)

Mozzarella Stuffed Meatballs

My last few posts have been chicken based so I figured I should maybe switch it up. I was watching the Food Network the other day and they had one of those quick recipe commercial type things. Melissa what's-her-face was making meatballs with Italian Sausage. I always had made ground beef or ground turkey meatballs, so I was curious to see how they'd turn out with the sausage. My mom makes these delicious meatballs stuffed with mozzarella. So, I stuffed some mozzarella inside the Italian sausage meatballs and they turned out AH-mazing! I served them up with some whole wheat spaghetti, marinara sauce and parmesan garlic bread. It was the perfect Sunday night dinner.





1.235 lb package of Italian sausage, casing removed

2 cloves garlic, hand grated or finely minced

1/2 cup carrot, hand grated or finely minced

1/2 cup onion, hand grated or finely minced

1/2 tbsp parsley, finely chopped

1/2 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1 cup grated parmesan cheese

1 egg

1/2 cup milk

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 cup breadcrumbs

1 cup mozzarella cheese, chopped into cubes

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheet with aluminum foil. In a large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients besides mozzarella cheese until well combined. Take meat about the size of a golfball. Press into patty form. Place mozzarella cheese on it and form meatball around it until cheese is fully covered and sealed in. (See picture below) Place on baking sheet and cook for 30 minutes.

Almost Whole Wheat Spaghetti and Marinara

Hey Everyone!

So this year for my birthday my parents surprised me with a beautiful Kitchenaid mixer. I know most "normal" 24 year old girls would have just wanted a Coach purse or a gift certificate to get a massage or something. I guess I'm not normal. For the past couple years, at the top of my "wish list" was the Kitchenaid mixer. It's just such a beautiful machine. A couple years ago Jon finally got me a hand mixer for my birthday. Up until then, I had been doing everything by hand, from beating egg whites to making mashed potatoes. Obnoxious!

I decided since I was so excited about this machine, I would borrow my parent's pasta attachments and make some fresh pasta from scratch. The nicest part of the mixer is you can buy additional attachments. They have meat grinder, pasta maker, ice cream maker... My parents had bought all the attachments for theirs and never used them. They said the pasta didn't come out like it should and the instructions weren't helpful. I included here a YouTube video of a guy who works for Kitchenaid showing how to roll out the pasta and then turn it into ravioli. I made spaghetti for this recipe, but once you get how to form the dough and roll out the pasta sheets, making the spaghetti is simple.

The thing I truly love about making your own pasta is you control the ingredients! If you want organic pasta, you can make it! If you want whole wheat, you can make it! You can throw some spinach in there and then cover it with my marinara sauce and your kids might not even know its good for them.

The first time I made this pasta last week I made it with all purpose flour through the whole recipe. Today's recipe is for an almost whole wheat spaghetti. Jon wouldn't let me do ALL whole wheat flour and he was watching me like a hawk in the kitchen last night. So, I semi-listened to him. He said to do half and half but I did 3/4 wheat and 1/4 all purpose flour. The results were really good and he said next time I can kick it up to all whole wheat. I've actually come to prefer the taste of whole wheat pasta because it has a nutty flavor to it. It stands up to most sauces. I think with regular pasta you really lose the flavor because the sauce becomes the star. Whole wheat is more like a co-star with the marinara. :)

Anyways, enough about my love for whole wheat pasta. On to the recipe...

Almost Whole Wheat Spaghetti

3 cups All Purpose Flour

1 cup Whole Wheat Flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 teaspoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil

4 eggs + 1 egg white

3 tablespoons water

In bowl of mixer, sift together flours and salt. In a separate bowl, beat together the olive oil, eggs and water. Form a well in the flour mixture and pour half of the egg mixture into it. Beat on low with dough hook until texture appears like one of a pie crust. Incorporate in last batch of egg mixture until dough forms. At this time, I refridgerate the dough for 1 hour wrapped in plastic wrap to make it easier to work with. In the video, he uses the dough immediately.

Follow this video to roll out pasta sheets. Once all pasta is rolled into 5-6 sheets, cut sheets in half if they are too long. **At this time, start boiling your water** Place spaghetti attachment on mixer and cut into long spaghetti. *Tip: keep a bowl under the attachment so they can just drop into the bowl for you.* 

Once water is boiled, season with salt. *I also season with some chicken bouillon for extra flavor, you could also cook in chicken stock.* Drop spaghetti in boiled water and allow to cook for 4-5 minutes to desired tenderness. (Yeah, thats right ONLY 4-5 minutes! Isn't fresh pasta a beautiful thing??)

This recipe makes about 8 servings of pasta. You can reserve some to dry or freeze or just cook all of it. Every serving has 264 calories.

This picture is of my first batch of spaghetti, the standard white pasta. I was too excited to eat the whole wheat that I didn't get a picture, haha.



Next up on the lineup is my Marinara sauce. Now, you're gonna notice I threw a bunch of veggies in there. The beauty of this sauce is you can totally get away with throwing whatever veggies you want in it. After the sauce is cooled a little off the stove, you blend it up to make it a smooth consistency. That means noone will ever know they're getting a really healthy sauce, they just think its delicious. ::evil laugh::

I added some zucchini in this one, but if you don't have zucchini, don't make an extra trip to the store. I just love zucchini and always have it in the house. Another way to get away with adding veggies that noone knows about is to use a hand grater to get them into fine pieces. Thats what I did with the garlic, carrots and zucchini. Its so quick and actually a ton of fun!

The other awesome part of making your own Marinara is that you control the sugar. Adding the carrots bring a natural sweetness to the sauce. So, start with 2 tbsps of sugar and add up to 1/4 cup to taste.

Marinara Sauce

3 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

3 cloves garlic, grated or finely minced

1/2 onion

1 green pepper, finely diced

1 carrot, grated

2 tomatoes, diced

1/4 cup parsley, chopped

1 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes

1/2 cup Chicken Stock

2 tbsp tomato paste

2 bay leaves

1/4 cup Romano cheese

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

1 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

1/4 cup granulated sugar *start with 2 tbsps, and go up depending on taste*

2 tsp oregano

In a skillet, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Sautee garlic, onion, green pepper, zucchini and carrot. After 2-3 minutes, add in diced tomatoes and parsley. Next, add in crushed tomatoes, chicken stock, tomato paste, bay leaves, Parmesan, Romano, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, sugar and oregano. Bring to low boil and then reduce heat and let simmer for about 1 hour. Using blender, puree to smooth consistency.

Recipe yields about 6 cups. Each 1/2 cup serving is 95 calories!

At this time, you can add in some browned beef, meatballs or shredded chicken if you'd like. If you want to keep it simple, you can just serve the spaghetti and marinara and you're only at 359 calories per serving. Not to mention, you have tons of fiber from the whole wheat and lots of nutrients from all the veggies in the sauce.

I hope you guys enjoy the pasta as much as we did. As usual, send me those pictures, comments or questions to cookingwithcait@gmail.com

Love you all!