Dinner

I got one of many, many Southern Living offers in the mail again a few days ago enticing me to "celebrate 40 years of the South's Best Cooking!" by purchasing a cookbook. I already have several SL cookbooks and rarely make anything from it because of the extensive ingredient list. But they gave me a "freebie" on the advertisement which sounded super simple so I thought I'd give it a try. I actually had everything except the pasta on hand which was awesome. It took a little more time to prepare than what I originally thought since you're basically making a parmesan cheese sauce to accompany the meat sauce but it was totally worth it. I doubled the recipe thinking that there was no way that one pound of hamburger would feed the Buttons but I didn't take into account that it calls for a 13 X 9 baking dish. So I seriously had baked ziti (I used Rotini because the only ziti I found was made with white flour) in 3 casserole dishes. Which turned out to be a good thing since my sickness got worse instead of better and everybody was able to eat a decent meal for several days (3 or 4, I can't remember exactly when I made it). Everbody (including the budget- it's pretty cheap for the amount of food you end up with) loved it and demanded that it be a regular on the menu. So since we're all super-busy this Christmas season I thought I'd share a delicious, hearty, and easy to make recipe. Enjoy!