by Brenda Kohlmyer

3) Spaghetti and Cooked Vegetables

Cooking time: 7 to 10 minutes Clean-up: 5-7 minutes
Easy to Increase for more diners.

Basic ingredients for this dinner are bottled spaghetti sauce, pasta and frozen vegetables. If you’re really prepared, you may even find parmesan cheese in the back of that empty fridge.

OK, so bottled spaghetti sauce isn’t how Mama Sophia fed her family, but if you don’t have hours to simmer the sauce to perfection, pick up a jar of quality red marinara and stash it for emergencies. She’ll never know.

Pasta for this dish is usually of the long thin, spaghetti-ish kind, but shells or rottini (spiral) will do just as well.

Basic instructions:

Bring 4 cups water plus 2 tsp. olive oil to boil in 2 qt. kettle. Gently drop in 2-3 ounces dry spaghetti noodles. Boil 7 to 10 minutes until a cooked noodle sticks to the refrigerator when flung at the appliance. (Remove the noodle while it’s still wet otherwise it’ll be a nightmare to clean off.)

Pour ½ cup to 1 cup bottled spaghetti sauce in a 1 qt. pan. Heat to just barely boiling. Reduce heat and simmer one minute.

Cook ½ cup to 1 cup frozen California mixed vegetables or frozen green beans seasoned with garlic. Defrost and cook the vegetables on your dinner plate in the microwave to save making another dirty dish.

Drain spaghetti, cover with sauce and enjoy.

After dinner take your pantry dinner shopping list back to the store so you remember to restock the "nothing in the fridge" dinner items while you're buying fresh food to serve tomorrow.

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