Easy no hassle baked pasta dish

Posted on November 9, 2008 by jackieinpdx

I am really a pretty good cook. I am innovative; I love to try new combinations of herbs and seasonings. I grill all kinds of food almost year round. However because I live alone sometimes I get just plain lazy. Yesterday I was looking in my freezer to see what I could thaw out for dinner. I came across a bag of pasta that I had purchased online and had delivered with a bunch of other stuff from Safeway. A couple of weeks after I tore the ligaments in my knee I was so frustrated with how difficult it was to shop for groceries and carry multiple bags into the house that I shopped online at Safeway.com. I bought a lot of stuff that I may not have otherwise bought because it was so convenient. One of those items was Safeway’s Select brand Stuffed Rigatoni with Spinach, Feta Cheese & Artichoke. I was just going to toss some of the pasta in boiling water and heat up some sauce until I noticed on the back that there were oven cooking directions. They referred to baking the “casserole”. So that got me thinking about what else I could toss into make a baked pasta dish. I looked in my veggie crisper and found zucchini and broccoli. I had some Asiago cheese and basil and garlic pasta sauce. Then I thought about adding some meat. I had a slice of meatloaf in the freezer which I thawed out and crumbled. I tossed all of these items together and baked covered for about 50 minutes. This easy to fix casserole turned out to be quite tasty.

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Whoo hoo! I hit the gas pump jackpot!

Posted on November 1, 2008 by jackieinpdx

Why do I feel like I hit the jackpot on a slot machine when I filled up with gas today? I buy my groceries at Safeway because the store is so convenient for me. It may be one of the more expensive grocery chains but this store is new, clean, airy and the employees are very friendly. They have a gas station on the premise and a program to earn money off at the pumps. Their program is somewhat complex but basically for every $50 spent in the store you get $.10 off a gallon. The discount accumulates for three months then ends at the end of the quarter. I had to get gas today as my gas empty light was on. Premium was $2.68 a gallon which considering how high the prices were earlier this summer this was relatively cheap. Boy was I pleased when the attendant told me I had the big ticket item and would be getting $.70 off per gallon. That brought the price down to $.198 a gallon for premium. Wow! When was gas that cheap in recent years?

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