Regular spaghetti sauce with anything but spaghetti

Sometime very early in mom-life, I realized that children with forks could handle almost every kind of pasta better than than they could manage spaghetti.  Somewhat later, I realized that Susans with forks also benefit from this strategy.  

Ingredients
1 pound ground beef (Your mom strongly recommends for Laura's Lean or explicitly organic, on account of hormones and slime and ugh.  She even more strongly recommends the kind that's at least 90% lean, meaning no more than 10% fat.)
1 large jar spaghetti sauce
1 pound pasta (gemelli, rotini, fusilli, bow-ties, elbow macaroni, etc.)

Steps
Put the pasta water on to boil.

Put a dutch oven on another burner, turn on the heat high, and put the ground beef into the pan right away.  After a minute or two, start breaking it up with a spatula.

When the beef is all in little pieces, make sure you can get the lid off the spaghetti sauce.  If brute strength is not an option, try whapping the edge of the lid with the side of a knife a lot.

Go back to flipping and stirring the ground beef, watching for red and pink bits until there are absolutely none in sight.

If you took your mom's advice and got the lean beef, there won't be much grease in the pan. You can just add the sauce, stir a couple of times, and move the pan off of the heat.  If you didn't, go to the serpents' tooth directions below.

Put the pasta in the water and set a timer for the recommended number of minutes.

When the timer goes off, use a spoon to take out one piece of pasta, drop it in the colander, run cold water over it, and bite it to see if it's right.  

If yes, drain all the pasta.  

If no, cook another minute and check again.

Serpent's tooth directions
When the beef is cooked, if you didn't take your mom's advice and there's lots of grease, run the hot water in the sink until its really hot.  Leave it running while you put a colander into the sink and empty the beef pan into it.  Put the pan back on the stove, shake the colander once or twice, and then quickly toss the beef back into the pan.  Now you can add the sauce, stir a couple of times, and move the pan off the heat.

Put the pasta in the water and set a timer for the recommended number of minutes.

Remember the greasy colander?  Go back to the sink and run hot water all over the colander to get the grease off of it.  Now you can turn off the hot water. (If you turned it off before your mom said to, you'll get what you deserve and I won't even bother explaining about grease in sink pipes.)

When the timer goes off, use a spoon to take out one piece of pasta, drop it in the colander, run cold water over it, and bite it to see if it's right.  

If yes, drain all the pasta.  

If no, cook another minute and check again.

Tuna-Pasta Salad

This actually started out as Grandma Charlotte's recipe, and I think she started out with a potato salad idea from The Joy of Cooking.

Ingredients
1 pound spiral pasta
1 cup Wishbone Italian Salad Dressing Accept No Substitutes
13 ounces of white tuna in water
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup of chopped celery
1/4 cup of chopped up sweet gherkins
Anything else you like in a summer salad: canned corn, fresh cooked corn, green pepper, red pepper

Steps
Cook the pasta according to the package

While it cooks, do any needed chopping.

Open and drain the tuna, then empty into a large mixing bowl and break it into small pieces.

Add the mayonnaise, celery, gherkins, and anything else you like to the tuna and mix well.

When the pasta is done, drain it, then instantly shake up the salad dressing and pour it on to the pasta, stirring well to spread it around.  Let it sit for a couple of minutes for those flavors to blend.

Add the pasta to the tuna and again mix well.

Eat warm or chill and eat later.

Oven Roast

Shopping thing: you have to figure out which beef roasts only work as pot roasts and which work as oven roasts. Pot roasts go in a pot with liquids and a lid on top to help them stay moist and become tender enough to chew.  Oven roasts are the kind that can be cooked pretty much dry in an open pan because they're more expensive meat that won't dry and be tough that way.  At Danville Kroger, the roasts just say "oven roast" or "pot roast" on them, so you know.  If you're elsewhere and don't have hints that obvious available, ask a butcher or someone standing next to you.  Or call someone who reminds you of Hermione and ask that person to look the information up on line.

Ingredients
An oven roast (pretty much any size)
Chinese hot mustard (My no-longer-secret ingredient)

Equipment
A baking pan--like one you'd use for brownies or a cake, with sides
A meat thermometer (or a knife to cut the meat open and look at it)

Steps
Multiply the pounds of your roast by 20 minutes a pound, and then add 20 more minutes. That's how long it will cook.

Garlic and little potatoes (two ways)

Both recipes involve two to three pounds of little potatoes and two tablespoons of minced garlic.  My brown-eyed children have two different preferences about how they combine.

Molly's Way
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Put the potatoes in a 13 x 9 baking pan.  If the biggest ones are close to twice the size of the smallest, cut them in half.

Combine the two tablespoons of garlic with three tablespoons of olive oil, and drizzle over the potatoes.

Roast for twenty minutes and then start checking with a fork. When they feel like they'll taste good, they will.

Rebecca's Way

Roast Cauliflower

Ingredients
A head of cauliflower
Olive oil

Option 1: salt

Option 2: salt, cumin, cardomom, coriander, turmeric, cayenne

Equipment
13 x 9 baking pan

Steps
Preheat oven to 400.

Cut the leaves off the bottom of the cauliflower so you can see the stem.

Cut the big stem off so you can see the florets.

Break up the florets into chunks the size of golf balls.  The ones that won't break you can halve with a knive.

Arrange the florets in the pan with the florets up, ideally with very little of the pan bottom visible (but it's not a big problem if some shows.)

Choose an option:

• Option 1: Sprinkle the tops with about two tablespoons of olive oil, not worrying about covering everything.  Sprinkle the tops with salt.
• Option 2: In a little bowl, combine two tablespoons olive oil, half a teaspoon each of salt and cumin, a quarter teaspoon each of cardamom, coriander, and turmeric, and a pinch of cayenne.  Use a fork or a tiny whisk to mix them together really well.  Dribble that over the florets.

Roast for 20 minutes, then poke with a fork.  If they feel like cooked broccoli feels on your fork, take them out.  If not, roast a little longer.  It's really nice if some of them have brown, slightly crispy bits on the bottom.

Mouse Galore

Ingredients
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 can milk
13 ounces of tuna (one big or two small cans)
1 pound egg noodles
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Steps
Preheat oven to 350.

Put  noodles on to boil according to package directions.

In the casserole dish, mix the soup and and the milk.