Baked Ziti

Cooking should be pleasurable, not a chore. Here is one of hopefully many more ideas for cooking a great and easy meal which you can enjoy with family and friends. Leave your money in your wallet for better things like tuition.

So I'd love to say I'm a great cook...but that would be a lie. I do love to cook however. I love to put things together and see if they work. Most of all I love cooking for others and see them enjoy it. That's my favorite part.

I've really gotten into it for the past few months. One of my close friends says I'm going through a "phase" because it started out of nowhere. (Plus she's a good cook, and probably thinks I can't learn anything because I haven't been cooking since I was little...as she has)

Even since I starting dating my boyfriend (about 1 year and 3 months) I've had the opportunity to taste different kinds of foods. Maybe not that different from my own home cooking--but a different way of putting things together, and slightly different ingredients.

Ever since I had lunch at his step-mothers place about a month ago I starting loving baked ziti. I'm sure she's using some recipe that's been passed down in her family (being Italian and all).

I on the other hand, don't have time for recipes. They require going to the store to get ingredients you've maybe never heard of--plus gas is really expensive now-a-days.

I just put together whatever I had in the house, and to my amazement it came out great! I'm sure I used the wrong kind of cheese...not enough or too much, but that didn't matter.

For some reason I have a problem with eyeballing how much pasta is really going to be on the plate after it's boiled. So when I first made baked ziti I used an entire box. Putting it in a pan I realized that that's a huge amount of pasta. Adding an entire jar of sauce and a bag of mozzarella cheese, it was so heavy.
I thought we were going to have left-overs for 3 days--but guess what?

Me and my boyfriend loved it! We ate the entire fricken pan of ziti. What was wrong with us? It was 9 p.m. --- so much for my diet.

I advise anyone to try and make this. All of you college students out there who are tired of campus food, or if you live off-campus, if you hate take-out and ramen noodles---please try and cook. It's really not that hard. It's JUST food. It can't really come out wrong. If you don't like the taste, add something else. Just keep an eye on the oven or the stove (don't get lost in those video games) and you'll be just fine. Take-out, frozen pizza and Subway sandwiches are very expensive. You think its worth $5 but at the end of the month it really adds up.

So get your lazy butts off the couch, put that controller down, turn off the tv, get to ShopRite (not Acme, too expensive) and get a couple boxes of pasta, a jar or two of pasta, and some cheese, and you're all set. Cook with your family, or roommates, and you'll have a night to remember---even if it's just a Wednesday night.