Thrown Together Pantry Pasta Bake

So while I was watching the Blauwkamps house, I was charged (okay, i volunteered) with the task of making their meals for the week they returned. With a brand new baby, plus a five year old in tow, you don't want to be wandering around the house all jet lagged trying to figure what in the world to make at 4am.

So, Mahi and I set about to make a few meals that would be ready upon their return. Here are two of the recipes we made that were particularly easy and quick.

THROWN TOGETHER PANTRY PASTA BAKE
1/2 a box of penne
1/2 a box of those spirally noodles.
1/2 jar of Newman's pasta sauce (forget which kind)
1 cup of shredded cheese (we used a 4 cheese blend)
1lb ground beef
italian seasoning

So first, boil yourself up some water. When it's a nice and bubblin, toss in however much penne and spiral pasta you could find in your pantry. (I found about a half box of each)

While they're in the bath, take your ground beef and start cooking it up in a frying pan. Nothing fancy. Just cook it. Maybe add a little italian seasoning if you want.

Once your pasta is nice and al dente, drain it and add some pasta sauce to it until the whole mixture is a healthy redish color. (I think we used about half a jar). Now take your ground beef (drain the fat) and stir it into your pasta.

Dump the whole concoction into a casserole dish and spread it evenly. Then take about a cup of shredded cheese and cover the whole mixture with it. (If you use more than 1 cup I won't tell anybody...)

Now stick it in an oven and broil it on low until your cheesey top layer is nice and bubbly. When it's good to go, take it out and sprinkle the top with some more italian seasoning while the cheese is still nice and goopey. Voila! You hardly did any work at all!

we also made....
Egg Noodle Turkey Bake Throwdown
1 bag of egg noodles
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can cream of celery soup
1lb pulled smoked turkey leg meat
1 small package of crushed cheez-its.
1 small can of green beans

Take pot you were already boiling water in earlier (see previous pasta bake) and get it ready to go again! Start boiling up those egg noodles, and while they're doing that, find yourself a nice big smoked turkey leg. We got our turkey legs from BJ's and they were MORE than enough for a meal, so we used the rest of them in this. Pull the thick pinkish chunks of meat off the turkey leg until you have a nice sizable pile of meat. (maybe a poundish). It should kinda look like ham.

Once the noodles are alllllllll dente, drain them and spread them in a 9 by thirteen baking dish. Pour the cream of chicken AND celery soups over the noodles. Drain a can of green beans (or a similar green vegetable from your pantry) and dump'm into the dish as well. Throw in your turkey meat and mix it all around.

At this point, you can take your inner most anger out on a small pack of cheez its. Just crush'm up real good. Open up the bag and sprinkle their pathetic remains over the top of your turkey bake. Perhaps you find yourself thinking, i wish there were more cheez its on top. Well. Get yourself another small bag and repeat the process! Coat the top until there's a healthy layer of orange over the whole thing.

Shove that sucker in the oven at 350 for about half an hour. But you should probably keep an eye on it cuz I'm not totally sure it was half an hour. Sometime before the whole thing goes up in flames, take it out using an oven mitt. You can either eat it right away (as we wanted to) or cover it in foil and store it in the fridge for an easy meal at any time of the day (as we did :( )

What's nice about these meals is that all we had to buy was meat. Pretty much everything else was just sitting around the kitchen/pantry.

Even after making these 2 dishes we still had ground beef left that we threw together with some various cans of beans to make a chili. See what you can create from goodies already in your own cupboards. Let us know if you find anything good!

General Tso's Kabobs with Asian Guacamole

It's been a while! To backtrack... through one of many daily conversations about food, we decided to try to put Chinese food into kabob form somehow (because everything tastes better on a stick). Thus, General Tso's kabobs were born! To pair a side, we thought we could put a twist on guacamole by using Asian-inspired flavors instead of traditional Mexican.

A trip to Safeway gave us the necessary ingredients - canned Chinese stir fry vegetables, Iron Chef brand General Tso's sauce (yes, we cheated... if you want to make your own, be our guest!), avocados, broccoli, onion, and red bell pepper. We already had chicken breast, rice, and some other sauces and spices on hand. We also stopped by the Chinese food restaurant in the same shopping center to buy 2 bags of the crispy wonton noodle chips for dipping (only 50 cents).

To prepare the kabobs, we cubed the chicken into 1-2 inch chunks and marinated it in the General Tso's sauce. We cut up the broccoli (which is a bit difficult to skewer... make sure you leave a thick enough stem on each piece!), bell pepper, and onion and marinated them as well. When we were ready to create the kabobs, we discovered we only had 4 skewers (and Jaime didn't bring more over like she said...), so we grilled them in 2 batches, with each skewer PILED with meat and veggies. We forced it to make 8 packed kabobs, but it would easily create more!

While the first kabobs were heating up, we prepared a cup of rice. We began our Asian quac so we could snack until the kabobs were done! We mashed up the avocado and stirred in some gyoza and soy sauces from the fridge. We drained and diced half of the stir fry veggies into tiny pieces to add texture - the water chestnuts were great. If we did it again, we might add some fresh pressed garlic, sea salt, and a tiny bit of wasabi to spice it up. With the crispy noodles, it was a fun change from cilantro and tortilla chips!

Once the rice was cooked, we heated oil in a wok to make fried rice. We craked an egg to cook in it first, then added the rest of the stir fry vegetables and the rice and kept it moving over the heat. I don't think our oil was hot enough... we didn't quite achieve the texture we were looking for, but it was still an edible rice side!

We flipped the kabobs once during cooking and left the grill lid mostly shut, using a flipper on its side to prop it open a bit (what Jenna's mom always did). Jenna was ecstatic to FINALLY grill chicken perfectly, without it being dry and overdone! The sauce coated everything well and made nice seared lines from the grill bars. (As we've learned from our bff Alton Brown, blackened coating on grilled food isn't burned meat, it's the sugar in the sauce!)

We plated the kabobs on top of the rice and served more guac on the side with the crispy noodles. YUM. It was a fun way to enjoy some General Tso's chicken without the breaded coating, without paying for take-out, and enjoying the last warmth of fall weather!

General Tso's Kabobs
2 large chicken breasts
1 head of broccoli
1 red bell pepper
1 onion
10+ kabob skewers
bottle of General Tso's sauce

Asian-Infused Guacamole
2 avocados
1/2 can of Chinese stir fry vegetables, drained
soy sauce to taste
gyoza sauce to taste
(fresh pressed garlic)
(pinch of sea salt)
(wasabi to taste, not much!)
crispy wonton noodles