January 8: Sabra's Macaroni Casserole

Half my family is camping on the Ocmulgee River. I'm sure they're getting something good to eat while they rough it in the bitter cold. My ten year-old and I are enjoying the comforts of central heating and Kingsdown mattresses.

What with hauling boat trailers up and down I-16 and taking my ten year-old to basketball games, I've not been able to cook dinner in the past three nights. But tonight I was back in the kitchen.

Tonight's meal is great for Friday nights when you're tired from working all week and don't feel especially inspired at the stove top. It's also great for kids. In fact, it's easy enough for kids to make, as long as they're tall enough to operate the stove and don't have a tendency to burn things (or themselves).

My sister Sabra taught me how to make this dish when we were on vacation at Amelia Island. I don't know where she got the recipe, so I might be republishing someone else's dish. If I am, I apologize. Here's how to make it.

Ingredients:

1 pkg. macaroni & cheese, prepared
1 lb (or so) ground beef (I get the leanest I can find)
1 jar spaghetti sauce (I use Ragu Light)
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese (I use fat free)

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 360 degrees. While the oven heats, prepare mac and cheese. Brown meat in a 2 qt. pot. Drain fat. Add spaghetti sauce and heat until bubbly. Spread mac and cheese in a casserole dish (I usually spray the casserole dish with cooking spray, just for good measure). Cover the mac and cheese with spaghetti sauce mixture. Sprinkle with the mozzarella cheese. Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

Now, this dish has no vegetables in it (Unless you want to count the spaghetti sauce. Ronald Reagan did it; why can't we?). So if you want your kids to get in some green at dinner, you can serve this casserole with a nice salad. Tonight, I served Viviane's Special Salad.

Viviane is a good friend of the family who always brings salad when she has dinner with us. My boys love her salad about as much as they love Viviane. The salad part is pretty simple--Romaine lettuce with chopped celery--but Viviane makes it special with her secret dressing and her salad crunchy things.

Viviane is pretty tight-lipped about her secret dressing because she might write a cook book one day. So when I make her salad myself, I use Hendrickson's dressing. If you've never used Hendrickson's get some as soon as possible. I used to buy it at Fresh Market, but they've stopped carrying it. If you live in the Savannah area, you can drive out to the Landings and purchase some at Smith Brothers. But I think it's easier just to get on Hendrickson's website and have it delivered to my door. Hendrickson's dressing is an olive-oil based fat-free, gluten-free, preservative-free delight. Try some today.

As for the salad crunchy things, they're so good and so easy to make. Again, they're great for kids to make as well, as long as they can work a stove and won't burn themselves. This is how to make them: Put some sugar in a small sauce pan (it doesn't matter how much, but I use about 3/4 cup). Heat the sugar over medium high heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Eventually, the sugar will melt and caramelize. Once the sugar is liquified, pour it over a sheet of aluminum foil. Then sprinkle chopped nuts over it (Tonight I used pecans). Let the sugar harden. Then break up the sugar into little crunchy things (I break it up with my handy-dandy rubber mallet, which I will write about repeatedly in my blog). Sprinkle them over the salad, which you have already topped with Hendrickson's dressing.

This is a quick, hearty meal, which my ten year-old rates as "Good!" So thanks to and Sabra and Viviane, my son and I didn't starve to death tonight. Try Sabra's macaroni casserole and Viviane's super salad next Friday night.