EASY-DOES-IT-SPAGHETTI

For several weeks we have been trying to have our larger meal for lunch and then eating less for dinner. That's the way it was when I was growing up and it was dinner and supper. I've wanted to do it since we retired, but my husband often skipped lunch and snacked and then wanted to eat at night. 

I saw this recipe in Taste of Home the NEW POTLUCK cookbook in the "slow cooker sensations" section. It looked so good in the full page picture. The only problem was trying to get it made to eat around noon. (It had to cook 5 hours in the slow cooker.) I considered precooking the spaghetti and then adding it to the sauce in the slow cooker, but there was so much liquid, I decided we could just an hour late and I let the spaghetti cook in the slow cooker. I broke the spaghetti up in thirds instead of half. I am not sure if it was because I was using some gluten - free spaghetti or not, but the spaghetti was done in 45 minutes so we only had to wait 45 minutes to eat. 

I cut the recipe in half because I froze my ground beef in 1-lb packages and I didn't want to thaw two of them. I left the garlic powder the same for the full recipe though and omitted the mace because I didn't have any. We really enjoyed it. The nice thing about cooking in the slow cooker is we were able to leave to run some errands while the sauce was cooking. When we came back in the house, it smelled so good cooking.

Click here for a printable copy of just the recipe.

EASY-DOES-IT SPAGHETTI

1     lb ground beef, cooked and drained
23   ounces tomato juice
1     8 - oz can tomato sauce
1     4 - oz can mushroom stems and pieces, drained
1     tablespoon dried minced onion
1/2  teaspoon salt
1     teaspoon garlic powder
1/2  teaspoon ground mustard
1/4  teaspoon each ground allspice, mace, and pepper
1/2  (7 - ounce) package spaghetti, broken in thirds

Cook and drain ground beef and then

in a slow cooker, combine the beef, tomato juice and tomato sauce, mushrooms, and seasonings;

mix well. 
















Cover and cook on HIGH for 4 hours.

Stir in spaghetti.

Cover and cook 1 more hour or until the spaghetti is tender. (Mine would have looked as good as the picture in the cookbook if I had not cut the recipe in half.) Stir it well before serving to distribute the spaghetti.