How to use a freezer full of ground beef

Richard found this recipe online, I revamped it to have more nutrition - less fat - and to taste ALOT better. As you can see from the directions, I am not so good at writing out recipes. Basically, you make a meat sauce, and then you layer the meat sauce with pasta, pesto, and cheese - sort of like a lasagne, but with shell noodles. You can buy pesto sauce premade or you can make your own - if you need a pesto sauce recipe, let me know.

INGREDIENTS

3/4 # shell pasta
1# extra lean ground beef
1 onion
1/3 cup red cooking wine
1 can tomato sauce
1 can stewed tomatoes
1 tsp italian seasoning
fresh ground pepper
2 zucchini's, sliced as thin as you can get them
1 cup spinach, chopped very thin
1/3 cup pesto sauce
1/2 cup mozzerella cheese

1. Cook the pasta according to pkg. directions, drain, and set aside.

2 Brown the ground beef and onion in a large skillet. Drain off the fat once it is done cooking.

3 Deglaze the pan with some red cooking wine. If you dont have cooking wine, just skip this step. (deglazing is pouring the liquid over the browned bits stuck to the bottom of the pan and scraping them up off the pan into your meat). Cook for 1-2 minutes to let all of the wine cook off.

4 Sprinkle the meat with 1 tsp italian seasoning

5 Add 1 can tomato sauce and 1 can italian style (or whatever style) stewed tomatoes. Add zucchini and spinach. Continue to cook the sauce over medium heat until most of the liquid is gone and it looks like a thick spagetti sauce.

6. Put a thin layer of meat sauce in the bottom of a casserole dish. Spread 1/2 of the noodles over meat sauce. Dallop 1/2 of the pesto sauce over noodles. Sprinkle with 1/2 of cheese. Repeat layers once more ending with the cheese on top.

7. Place in the oven, under HI broiler until the cheese on top is melted.

Walaa, dinner. Took me 15 minutes from start to finish, and if we weren't such oinkers, then it would feed us for at least 2 days.

My new favorite vegetable: Mustard Greens

Most of my classmates in dietetics probably remember my love for squash. Often times, I was even referred to as the squash queen due to my over exubarance for the flesh of the fall bearing fruit, but let it be known......I have found a new vegetable passion.............MUSTARD GREENS. Mustard greens, if you didn't know, are a spicy green which is hard to eat alone and uncooked when it is a full grown plant (but good alone when it's a baby-younger things are less bitter, its a fact of life). But when you cook it and add some cheese and onions......it becomes delicous beyond all belief. Plus mustard greens come with all sorts of green vegetable goodness: LOTS of vitamins A&C, some folate, some calcium and a bunch of maganese, and of course - countless things our body needs that only the man upstairs knows about. My favorite and introductory recipe for mustard greens comes from Mollie Katzen's cookbook The Vegetable Dishes I can't Live Without. It only takes like a 1/2 hour to prepare this dish and if you serve it over pasta, you'll be too stuffed for dessert, so please.......go to the farmers market........get some FRESH mustard greens........and come to know why Mollie describes herself as LEAF GEEK.




BITTER GREENS with SWEET ONIONS and TART CHEESE

• 2 T extra virgin olive oil
• 3 cups slice SWEET onions (like vidalia)
• 3 large bunches fresh mustard greens, stems removed and coarsely chopped (12 cups)
• salt (to taste)
• up to 1 cup FETA cheese, crumbled
• freshly ground black pepper (to taste)
  
  
  
  1. Place a large, deep skillet over medium heat. After about a minute, add the olive oil and swirl to coat the pan. Add the onions and saute over high heat for about 5 mintues. Reduce the heat to medium, cover the pan, and let the onions cook until very tender, about 10 more minutes.
  
  2. Add the greens in batches, sprinkling very lightly with salt after each addition and turning them with tongs, brining up the wilted ones from the bottom oto the top of the pile.
  
  3. When all the greens have wilted, stir in the cheese and cook for just about 2 mintues longer.
  
  4. Transfer to a platter and grind on a generous amount of black pepper. Serve hot or warm, on or next to pasta or grains, or by itself. (I like it on bowtie pasta)