A Healthy Baked Penne

I recently tried a new recipe for baked penne! It is very yummy and I have made it a few times so I thought I would share the recipe!

Baked Penne

• 1/2 lb. extra-lean ground beef or Italian sausage or ground turkey
• 1/2 cup chopped onions
• 1/2 cup green peppers (I left this out b/c I don't like green peppers)
• 1 jar(24 oz.) spaghetti sauce (I used one can of Hunt's Traditional)
• 1 tub(10 oz.) Philadelphia Italian Cheese and Herb Cooking Creme, divided (I used reduced fat)
• 1 cup Kraft Reduced Fat Shredded Mozzarella Cheese, divided
•   4 cups cooked penne pasta (about 3/4 box dry penne)

1. Heat oven to 350°F.
2. Brown meat with vegetables in large nonstick skillet. Stir in spaghetti sauce, 3/4 cup cooking creme and 1/2 cup mozzarella; cook and stir 2 to 3 min. or until mozzarella is melted. Add pasta; mix lightly. 
3. Spoon into 2-qt. casserole; top with remaining cooking creme and mozzarella. Cover. 
4.  Bake 20 min. or until heated through, uncovering after 15 min.

I used a small rectangular casserole dish since it is easier to split it into servings that way. When split into 8 servings it is only 6 WW+ points! Of course that is using 1/2 lb lean ground turkey, reduced fat cooking creme, reduced fat shredded cheese, and whole grain pasta.

Happy Cooking!

No Tricks, All Treats!!

So another Halloween has come and gone! We had a small celebration here to show off our costumes and have some fun! We had our own little parade around the house and the kids just liked being dressed up!

 Cash was a great helper when we made Halloween cookies for our afternoon snack! They love the sugar cookies with the pictures in the middle. This one actually had little Mickey Mouse Jack o' Lanterns on them!

We made Pumpkin Grilled Cheese for lunch. In the words of my husband, that's gross! HAHA, it actually doesn't have pumpkin in it. It is just regular grilled cheese! I gave them some oranges and carrots to keep with the orange theme!  The kids liked the grilled cheese so much that they have requested that I make it several times since then! Funny how just a little food coloring and a cookie cutter can help kids eat their lunch better!

Pumpkin Grilled Cheese

1. Melt 4 tbsp of butter and add 1 drop of red food coloring and 4 drops of yellow food coloring.
2. Have the children paint 2 pieces of bread with the orange butter.
3. Add cheese to middle of 2 slices butter side out and place in pan heated on Med.
4. Grill each side for 1 to 2 minutes until golden brown
5. Cool for a minute or 2 and use a pumpkin cookie cutter to cut out center of grilled cheese

ENJOY!

We also made some fun Halloween trail mix to enjoy with lunch. It included some monster scabs (Cinnamon Toast Crunch), Witch's Warts (Crasins), Ghost Poop (marshmallows), Jack o' Lantern Teeth (Candy Corn), Creepy Crawly (gummy worms), and Scary Bears (mini Teddy Grahams)! The kids had lots of fun mixing it up and eating it!

Somehow we had time to make some crafts too! We used some paint to paint our hands and fingers to make some spiders, add some google eyes for fun! But the fun just began with that. We made our own Mummies! Toilet paper roll, paper towel (cut into strips), and google eyes!

It was a very very fun day!