Recipe: One Skillet Pasta

Have you ever come into your kitchen, dreading not the actual cooking of dinner, but instead the cleaning up afterwards? Have you ever moaned about how many pots and pans get dirtied just trying to make a simple pasta dish?

I have.  So when I found a recipe that dirtied one and only one skillet, but gets me a fabulous pasta dinner, I copied it into my homemade cook book faster than Speedy Gonzalez.  I use this as a meal anytime I want a break from doing a huge load of dishes.  I also began to teach my son how to make this, because it's that easy.

One Skillet Pasta

Ingredients:
1 lb. of ground beef
2 c. of hot water
26 oz. of spaghetti sauce
3 c. of  some other small pasta, uncooked
1 c. of ricotta cheese
1 c. of mozzarella cheese

Directions:

1. Cook the ground beef in a skillet.  Drain out any excess fat.
2. Add the water and spaghetti sauce to the beef, mix together, and heat until boiling.
3. Add the pasta, turn the heat down to a simmer, and cover.  
4. Cook for 15 - 20 minutes, until the pasta is tender.
5. Add the ricotta cheese, stirring to incorporate.  Cook for an additional 5 minutes.
6. Stir half the mozzarella into the mixture.  Spread the rest of the cheese over the top. Cover the skillet one more time, and wait until the cheese melts before serving.

Emergency Dinner: Chicken and Rice

We all know what an emergency dinner is - you've gotten home from either work, shopping, or some other errand and it's dinner time.  Actually, dinner time passed you by 30 minutes ago, and now everyone (including you) is hungry and cranky.  You want to get food on the table as soon as possible, and you want to avoid hitting the local fast food restaurant again.

When our oldest son was seven, I worked in Denver and lived in Colorado Springs.  That meant I had a very long commute home, after which I needed to get dinner ready.  Let me tell you, cooking is definitely not one of the top 10 things I wanted to do after a commute.  So, I cooked extra on weekend and we ate leftovers at the beginning of the week.  Sometimes we ate pizza (he was seven, so we could not eat enough pizza for him).  But other nights, I'd whip up an emergency dinner.  No, it's not the healthiest dinner on the planet, but it beats fast food.

Tonight's Dinner:

Chicken and Rice

Ingredients:

• 2 c. of water
• 1 can (16 oz) of chicken, drained
• 1 can of cream of chicken soup
• 2 c of instant rice
• 1 c. of shredded sharp cheddar cheese (optional)

Directions:

1. Put water, chicken, and soup into a skillet.  Heat until the water boils.
2. Add the rice, mix well and cover.  Remove from heat and let sit for 5 minutes.
3. Spread the cheese on top of the mixture in the skillet and let sit another minute or until the cheese melts.

Voila!  Dinner is served.  I used the first five minutes of sitting time to set the table and finish the rest of dinner, and the last minute to call everyone to the table to eat.