Baked Ziti

I love the fact that Italian food is basically the same 5 ingredients just mixed together in different ways (the same principle applies to Mexican food). So I was looking for new ways to mix them together (and really had a hankering for ricotta cheese) and stumbled upon this. One reason it intrigued me: the recipe was sized out for a small army. And who doesn't love Italian leftovers? Another reason: it had sausage in it. I don't usually cook with sausage, so I thought it would be interesting to try.


Result: amazingness. I've actually made this three times now, it's so good (yes, we're that behind on posting). What I've learned from these different attempts:

• use sausage. it makes all the difference. The second time I did it I used ground beef and it wasn't as awesome.
• the more garlic the better (but I think everyone knew that already)
• it tastes better with smaller onion chunks, and since I love big slices of onion in my spaghetti sauce, I was surprised by the revelation
• use as much cheese as you want. Do not skimp. Also, I have never measured the noodles out. I just dump until it looks good.

I basically followed the recipe, except for one thing. Instead of following the guy's instructions on the sauce, I just made sauce like we were going to eat straight spaghetti, which had a few different ingredients. The first time I made it Jeff walked in when I was cooking noodles and making sauce and said "How is this different from regular spaghetti?" I then told him about the pounds of cheese I was going to add and he approved.


Recipe: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/baked_ziti/ (I'm being lazy today, so this is what you get).