So, I know this is a bit of a departure from what I usually post here, but I thought I would talk about how to use up some leftover spaghetti in a way that doesn't feel like you have to muddle through it. This came from the fact that the new Farmville Reality Project is about a fifty minute commute now and when I get home during the week, having something that can be easily warmed in the microwave is very welcomed. It also is very much the philosophy of the project to be creative in how things are utilized. Since the project started with its focus on growing all kinds of food, to its current phase of restoring an old 
farm house, creative utilization of what was on hand has become a necessity. The first two pictures show the starting point for this dish. About once a month, I make a big pot of spaghetti sauce on a Sunday afternoon. It works well with the house restoration activities since the "kitchen" is out in the shop. The shop is where the noisy, loud machines are that cut and shape the wood for the various jobs going on. Keep in mind that a hundred years ago, there was no Home Depot or Lowes to pick up materials at. The majority of material available today is not of the exact dimensions as what was used back then, so just about every piece needs to be custom cut to size match with the existing parts of the house. Throwing together some sausage, ground beef, garlic, onion, herbs, homemade wine, and tomato sauce in a big pot and simmering it with a quick stir every now and then fits perfect with the work going on. As you can see in the second picture, we like to use traditional spaghetti noodles around here. We've tried the fancy little twists and shells, even the whole wheat stuff, but there is nothing like twisting your fork into a pile of spaghetti smothered in homemade sauce and trying to get as much in your mouth as you can and realizing the best you can do is getting slightly more than half of it in and the rest is hanging down your chin. A warning to any subscribers to Miss Manners, you'll probably not enjoy our Sunday night spaghetti dinners because one way or another, the sauce drenched noodles that struggled to make it in the mouth directly from the fork do in time get to where they need to be and it's not a pretty sight...The great thing about having all this massive quantity of spaghetti as mentioned before is it makes for easy-to-heat leftovers during the week when I sometimes don't get home from work until late. The downside is around Thursday, one finds oneself a wee bit tired of leftover spaghetti. One thing growing food instills in you, because of the large amount of physical effort it takes, is to never waste things. After working in the fields as a teenager (meaning I did plenty of grunt work and didn't spend my time on a fancy tractor) I became keenly aware of the amount of resources it took to get a piece of produce to a store shelf. By resources I mean everything from the land and water to get the crop growing, to the fuel to power the tractors that keep the field from reverting back to a jungle. Then there was the manual labor aspect. One of my first jobs was to pass out the boxes the produce would be packed in and then staple the tops shut. After the hundreds of boxes were packed and stapled shut, we would load them onto a truck moving slowly through the field. Sometimes situations would come up so that it wasn't possible to get a truck into the field and we would carry the packed boxes to the truck on our shoulders. This type of work accomplished two very important things for me as a teenager, it saved me gym membership dues which would have been hard to handle making minimum wage, but more importantly, it taught me that every product represents the hard work of someone. And for that reason, wasting leftovers simply because you're tired of them is not a good thing. OK, a bit preachy and long winded but I firmly believe it to be an important thing to practice regardless of how prosperous you become.
The third picture shows the ingredients you need to transform your leftover spaghetti into a whole new dish. Maybe the Food Network will hear about this transformation and give me my own show. Similar to the ones they do on HGTV about whole house makeovers for less than X amount of dollars, mine could be about whole leftover makeovers for less than ten bucks. I'm just joking. I've yet to see anything really useful come from watching a half an hour show that fast forwards through the hardest part of the process and then at the end, everyone is smiling and talking like they truly did snap their fingers and the end result magically appeared. The ingredients for this casserole of leftover spaghetti are pretty simple and most of them I always have on hand. As a matter of fact, that's the reason cottage cheese is used instead of ricotta. Since I have cottage cheese almost daily for breakfast and I just don't see eating ricotta for breakfast as enjoyable, cottage cheese wins this round. If for some reason you have ricotta, it will work too. I chop up a few cloves of garlic and some onion. In the picture you see red onion but any onion will do. Make sure the dice on these is fairly fine so their flavors come out easily during the baking part. If the chunks are too large, the garlic and onion flavor will stay in the chunks and not get melded into the dish. Some might like it that way but I like casseroles that display the flavors of all the ingredients in every bite, not just the bites you happen to have got a big chunk of onion in. The amounts of onion and garlic are not critical and highly dependent on personal preference, so use your best judgement of your tastes or those that will be eating with you. In the mixing bowl with the garlic and onion, add about half of a 24 ounce container's worth of cottage cheese and two eggs. Then take a 9 ounce package of spinach leaves and chop them up so most of the pieces are no bigger than a fifty-cent piece. If you're like me and haven't really seen a fifty-cent piece in many years, as you would expect, it's about twice as big as a quarter. Now you will need to pre-cook the spinach and get rid of the water in it. If you use it without pre-cooking, the casserole gets soggy. I use a nonstick saute pan so I don't have to add any oil. Remember, the other stuff in the casserole already has plenty of fat to keep the dish from being bland. The spinach will wilt down quickly and it helps drive the water out if you push everything to the perimeter of the pan and slightly up the sides. This lets gravity drain the water cooking out of the spinach to the center of the pan where the pan is hottest. You should see the water steam off quickly. Let this cool a little bit and then add to the cottage cheese, egg, etc mixture. The throw in about 12 ounces of mozzarella cheese and mix with a wooden spoon. You can use plastic if you want but the dish won't be quite the same. Not really but it sounds cool when you specify the material people should have their kitchen utensils made of. It takes your expert quotient way up there.
Now for the assembly part. You might think I'm kidding again but this part is important even though it sounds like you could do it another way. When I oil the casserole pan to assemble everything in, I pour a little olive oil in and use a smashed garlic clove to spread the oil all around the pan. It's a little thing and some scientist will do a study to prove there is no perceptible garlic flavor on the bottom of each finished piece of plated casserole, but I still do it anyway. My belief is the little things you pay attention to during prep work add up to bigger things when the dish is finally served. After the bottom and sides are oiled, put just enough red sauce to "paint" the bottom. You want to keep the noodles from getting dry and sticking but the real benefit of the red sauce is to trickle down through the casserole while its baking, so make sure you don't use too much here and not have enough for later. Then put a layer of noodles and smear some of the cheese mixture over that. It's a bit messy and a rubber spatula helps. Then ladle some red sauce and another layer of noodles, repeat the cheese mixture and more red sauce.
When finished, it should look like the fourth picture. I leave the top layer with red sauce so the oven doesn't dry things out. Put this in the pre-heated to 350 degree oven (I know all recipes tell you to pre-heat the oven but I don't, I figure you'll turn the thing on when it makes sense for you) on the middle rack with some foil loosely tented over it. This provides further insurance against the dreaded drying out I seem to be so paranoid about. After about 40 minutes or so, the whole thing should be bubbling and looking like it's getting hot and gooey throughout. This is the time to take the small part of the mozzarella cheese left in the bag, I'm assuming you bought the super convenient 16 ounce size bag, but if not, do the math and you come up with about 4 ounces of cheese to use. Take the foil off and sprinkle the cheese uniformly over the top. If you have some Parmesan, this would also be a good time to sprinkle some on. Keep it in the oven about ten or fifteen minutes more to let the topping cheese melt and slightly brown. Each oven is a bit different so keep an eye on it. You don't want to scorch the cheese or in the case of a cooler oven, let it go so long that the cheese doesn't brown but the casserole starts drying out. I know, the drying out thing again. I guess I've had that happen one too many times and there is nothing enjoyable about a casserole that cuts and eats like rice crispy treats.
The last picture shows the finished product. It also makes for convenient leftovers and is super easy to take in your lunch if you have access to a microwave at work. When I make this, we literally get an entire work week's worth of meals from one afternoon and one evening's cooking effort. The economist side of me could fill up another lengthy post about how efficient this is and could help this country find its way back to a 1950s type of prosperity, but I won't. I'll just let you take my word for it. Enjoy!
