Pizza Casserole w/ Ground Beef

Make-ahead dinners, I am all about them! Sure, my evenings are pretty free to be able to make a nice dinner every night, but sometimes it's nice to see that time where you need to stop what you are doing to prep for dinner, cook dinner, clean up from cooking dinner, then clean up after dinner...blah blah blah...come and go. It's nice to think to yourself, "dinner is already done, the clean up was done yesterday and all I need to do is pop it in the oven (and let my husband do the clean up after haha)"

This casserole was not intended as a make-ahead but it worked out that way as other plans came up instead, (like making that Triple Chocolate Cheesecake from yesterdays post late at night at my friends house!) 

Pizza Casserole w/ Ground Beef 
          adapted from unknown source

8oz ground beef
1 C chopped onion
14oz pizza sauce (I made Simple Pizza Sauce and weighed out the 14oz needed)--worth it over store bought 
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
4 oz dry rotini noodles
2oz pepperoni slices
1-1/4 C shredded Italian cheese blend
Italian seasoning, to taste/sprinkled over top

Preheat oven to 350º. Cook ground beef with onion until onions are tender and beef is cooked through over medium-high heat, 8-10 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook noodles according to package directions, drain.

Add pizza sauce to meat mixture, add salt and pepper. Fold in the pasta, transfer to a greased 9" round pan. Top with cheese and pepperoni (full 2 oz or just what you would on a pizza). Generously sprinkle with Italian seasoning ( I used basil, oregano, garlic powder, and onion powder).

Cover with plastic wrap and store in fridge until ready to make, uncover before baking

Bake 30 minutes, if desired put under broiler for a few minutes to get the topping nice and golden brown--yum! Allow to cool about 5 minutes before cutting into.

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Simple Pizza Sauce

Lately my most recent "health kick" has been trying to get my family out of the habit of purchasing ingredients from the store (with all their mystery additives)that we could just as easily make at home. For instance, as previously posted, switching from instant oatmeal to the real deal (check out Pumpkin-Blueberry Chia Oatmeal). While I have yet to stumble across a go-to spaghetti sauce recipe, I have finally come across a pizza sauce recipe that is to our liking. It is simple in the sense that a young child will have no complaints, and ridiculously easy to prepare that it could be done in the amount of time for you to be ready to use it. In addition, you probably have all the ingredients on hand in your pantry!

 This batch makes about 26oz of sauce. Much more then what you will need for a pizza pie. I divide the leftovers to freeze, and after about 20 minutes of the tupperware used for the sauce thawing in warm water, it's ready to use. Another idea we most recently decided to use the extra sauce for, was to make homemade "pizza lunchables". My son loves the lunchables from the store, but I loathe the ingredients. So we store the sauce in these little containers to freeze, have some sandwich thins on hand, some pepperoni and cheese, and he has himself a "lunchable pizza". Mother kid approved!

 Simple Pizza Sauce
- source unknown-

 Ingredients 

2 6oz cans tomato paste

2 tbsp fresh parsley 

1 tsp basil 

1 tsp oregano 

1-1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

1/4 tsp fresh pepper 

1 tsp minced garlic (about 2 cloves) 

3 C water 

Whisk all ingredients together, put over stove on medium heat. Once simmering, lower heat to med-low and simmer 20 minutes. 
 

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