Living - Whatchya Got Cooking?! Article #2 Spaghetti!

Spaghetti is one of those meals that you can make as plain as you want or as fancy as you want!  And each person can add their own flare to this simple and inexpensive dish.

To get started you will need the basics; noodles and sauce.  You don't necessarily have to purchase 'spaghetti' noodles.  You could choose Linguine, Penne, Rigatoni, and the list goes on, but you would still have a similar flavor for the dish.  The reason you may choose a different noodle could depend on your childrens likes or maybe even what was on sale.  We are trying to save moola here, right!

A simple sauce can be turned into a more flavorful sauce just by adding a few Italian seasonings so you don't have to go all out price-wise here either.  And best yet, you could can your Tomatoes from your summer garden into a nice savory homemade sauce at very little cost.

Cook your noodles and serve with sauce.  Are we done?

You may also want to consider adding hamburger, black olives, freshly grated Parmesan cheese or mushrooms.  Yum!

The best part of adding Spaghetti to our family's menu is that it can pretty much fit any budget.  Just tweak it as you need to in order to fit your budget.

Overall cost of a basic sauce and noodles spaghetti dish without coupons (but includes sale) approximately $2-2.50 for the entire dish.  With coupons and sales, you might find yourself down to about $1 or less!

Additional Information:
*If you didn't grab the $.59 Hunts Spaghetti Sauce last week at HyVee, you could take the HyVee ad over to Target this week and show them the Ragu that is on sale for $1.50 and they will price-match.  Purchase two and use the $.50/2 Ragu Target coupon here to get them for $1.25 each wyb 2.  We love the Parmesan & Romano!

*Coupons available for pasta:
Barilla Plus $.55/1 or $.75/1 SS 1/9
Ronzoni Smart Taste $1/2 SS 1/23 or here
Ronzoni Healthy Harvest $1/2 SS 1/23 or here
Mueller's product $1/2 SS 1/2
Mueller's whole wheat product $.55/1 SS 1/2

*I invested in the Cheese Grater from The Pampered Chef years ago, so we love to have freshly grated Parmesan cheese on Spaghetti night!  The kids find it fun to sprinkle their cheese on their own plate of spaghetti.

*We serve our Spaghetti with a simple homemade garlic bread.  I will feature this recipe and how-to another time.

*I find that I can freeze leftover Spaghetti and it tastes just find later on!  I simply mix all the leftover ingredients together and place in a plastic bag or container.  Instead of microwaving it, I put it in a pan on the stove top to heat it up.  For whatever reason it seems to keep more flavor this way.  Simply grate a little Parm cheese and done!

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