I had a box of Penne pasta I’d gotten at Costco a long time ago, never used any of it since I like the Capellini pasta with my homemade version of meat sauce often, and didn’t want to add another tomato sauce dish into the mix. (All my life I made meatballs to go with my sauce until sometime in the last 5 or so years I did it the “wrong” way and made meat sauce, and only have made meat sauce since, except for one time I forced myself to make meatballs in the last year. That’s a whole topic unto itself for sometime.)

I was out of Capellini though one night in the past couple of months and went looking for ideas online about something besides my normal meat sauce & what to do with Penne.

I found this: simplyrecipes.com/recipes/penne_pasta_with_meat_sauce/

That is similar to what I now make sometimes, using Penne, and my nearly 3 year old loves it the best on anything I make.

I don’t make that recipe, just use it for inspiration. I nearly make my regular sauce, but I leave out olives & put less basil & in it, and put Thyme in it (something I don’t put in my regular sauce ever) and it is good.

I serve my “spaghetti” meals with meat sauce in a separate dish from the pasta. The Penne though, I mix them in the dish.

There is another dish I make using medium noodles. I got the idea from a Cambell’s cook book I have. I’ve been making that more since Winter. Never before that. In the last month I took that idea and pared it with the Penne idea and made a third dish.

I know I don’t have any recipes written out in this post. My recipes are not cook book sort. I cook this kind of thing with my feelings (don’t know that that is the right way to say it.)

When I cook it’s for a larger than many households crowd. Hubby isn’t always here, but the rest of us are: 14 year old boy (eats more than anyone here), 11 year old girl (usually eats way more than me), 9 year old boy (spotty eating habits, getting more sometimes though), Toddler (eats a lot sometimes, not much others) then me and hubby.

I like to cook so that there is some left-over for snacks and lunches, at least 1 or 2 or 3 servings. Sometimes I sort of plan that and make a lot, and often in such a case there are no left-overs at all.

I’ve been stuck in the “what to make” rut a lot the last few years, so this post has progress showing for me. Less “hamburger crap” [ground beef stroganoff) –which is great. That nick name for the dish shows my feeling about it. It’s what I’ve called it for a long time around here, something that doesn’t sound very nice indeed.