$5 dinners' Garden Fresh Pasta Dinner

More great stuff from $5 dinners. I have to say, even my hubby will love this one! Of course, prices vary according to your location, and fresh tomatoes aren't free to everyone, but it's still quite frugal and tasty at the same time!

Aunt D's Garden Fresh Pasta Dinner
Ingredients
1 box Bowtie Pasta ($1.25)
3-4 Fresh tomatoes from the garden, diced (Free!)
3-4 FreshBasil Leaves, finely chopped (Free!)
1-2 cup mozzerella cheese ($1.67)
4 T EVOO ($.25)
2-3 garlic cloves, chopped ($.10)
1 zucchini ($.79)
1 T EVOO or Butter ($.10)
Directions
1. Marinate diced tomatoes and basil in EVOO and garlic.
Add a splash of vinegar to the marinade if you like!
2. Cook pasta as directed.
Drain.
Pour marinating tomatoes over pasta.
Srinkle cheese throughout.
Let cheese melt.
Serve warm.
3. Saute zucchini in EVOO or butter.
Serve with pasta!
Cost $4.16

My Variations:
I guess you could call me the queen of using what's on hand.
I'd made up a balsamic vinegar/EVOO dressing for my MIL the other day and couldn't for the life of me imagine what I'd use the rest for. Enter Marinade!
The only cheese we had on hand was parmesan, so I shredded up a bit of that and it was fantastic!
My hubby's a meat & potatoes kind of guy and although I've been able to convert him to a meat & most anything else kind of guy, I haven't had any luck with leaving out the meat, so I grabbed some leftover steak tips, cut them up in teeny tiny pieces, and added them to the pasta mix. He loved it, and went back for more!
I'm sure it ended up being a quite different taste than the original recipe, but it was still quite good.

Pasta Salad

As well as how to make C.O.R.N. for dinner!

Check it out!

Macaroni and Cheese

Seriously.
Wow.

Jenn's All day Mac N Cheese.

I talked about it here on my blog.

10/19/08:
I made this again yesterday with a few twists. First, I can't stress enough how important it is to mix all the ingredients together in a huge bowl before putting it in the crockpot. I don't know why it works, but it was even better this time than ever before! (I've made this quite a few times in the last couple of months.)
Second, I mixed with the milk before adding to the noodles:
1/4 tsp white pepper (I'll probably use 1/2 tsp next time, I couldn't tell it was there.)
1/2 tsp ground mustard (I love adding mustard to my mac n cheese, I've never measured before though. I'll probably use a whole tsp next time.)
And the flour.

Then I took a tip from Rachael Ray and toasted up a couple pieces of bread, slathered them in butter, and chopped them up for breadcrumbs. I would have used a food processor to make them finer, but I don't have one, so that's that.

I wasn't 100% sure I could do this, but I took the "crock" out of the "pot" and slid it under the broiler for a couple minutes and it was ... Scrumptious!!