Batch cooking

I'm hosting a meal swap for some of my fabulous co-workers this week, so in preparation for that event, I did some batch cooking last night.

Pizza pasta is my 'go-to' dish for meal swaps. It just is. It's easy to make, most people love it, and I always end up making extra because my family seems to love it (especially Jacey, which is a real treat).

I got the ingredients (buying in bulk for a recipe is way easier than getting a bunch of different ingredients for different recipes!)

Then turn all of those things into a LOAD of food!!

Boil the pasta and separate it into the lasagna pans.

While the water for the pasta is boiling and the pasta is cooking, brown the meat and heat the sauce.  Then mix the meat and sauce with the pasta in the pan (I use 1 lb of hamburger meat and 1 can of spaghetti sauce per pan, along with 1 bag of tri-colored twirly pasta or 1 12 oz box of pasta).  Then layer with approximately 2 cups of mozarella cheese.

Take your pepperoni and layer over the shredded cheese for the final topping.

If you have an assembly line going while you're making quite a few of these, it can look something like this on your table.....

And you end up with something that looks like this....

I made seven of these last night while we simultaneously made dinner to eat, the kids ate, my hubby ate, then I took a quick break to bathe and put to bed the littlest.  And I was completely finished (as in wrapped with saran swap and aluminum foil, labeled and in the freezer) by 9 PM or so. I started with all of this at about 6:30....so not too bad!!

I kept one out for us to eat later this week and also browned some of the 'extra' hamburger meat that I had bought as a started for another dinner for this week.  When you actually cook it, do so on 350 for 25-35 minutes, or until all of your cheese is melted (I leave on the foil until the last 10 or so minutes).

I felt very productive. *grin* The added bonus is that my dear sweet hubby cleaned up the kitchen afterwards. Love that man!!