The other day I needed to come up with a meal for our family and for a family at church who just had a baby. I asked the husband what their favorite food was and he said spaghetti which was great because the is super easy. Then I thought about how I was going to transport spaghetti without the noodles getting cold or sticky  and couldn’t come up with a solution so I decided to make baked spaghetti. Then I realized I was completely out of the spaghetti sauce I had made and froze and/or canned last year and wasn’t going to have time for a grocery trip before I was taking the meal (we had two jam packed days). Yikes! Let’s just say a very simple meal was turning out to be not so simple so at that point I was determined to come up with a homemade spaghetti sauce using my crock pot. I am so glad that I did because it turned our really good and is something you could make on a Saturday to prepare for a Sunday meal because it was better on day 2.

I used this recipe, Slow Cooker Spaghetti Sauce. My spice estimates are rough estimates so you can add less and then add to fit your taste.

You can also prep a salad on Saturday or use bag salad. Personally I love the salad shown below and try to keep it cut up with some diced carrots, celery, shredded cheese and tomato if I have it. If I am really motivated I will boil some eggs and chop them up, cook some bacon and make some homemade ranch.  When in a major pinch we use bag salad and just add bacon bits and shredded cheese.

When you wake up on Sunday just put the base back in the slow cooker and turn on warm or low. If you are only going to be gone for a hour or two I would do low but if you are going to be gone 4-5 hours I would just do warm. This will warm the sauce back up for you.

When you walk in the door start your spaghetti noodles and preheat your oven for garlic bread. I love the Kroger brand garlic toast so that is what we used.

I took the boiled noodles (al dente) and put them in a baking dish, sprinkled a little olive oil on them and spooned the spaghetti sauce mixture on top and stirred it around. I topped it with some shredded Parmesan, shredded mozzarella and a tiny bit of shredded cheddar.

Pop it in the oven (covered with foil) while the bread bakes. This was the perfect amount of time for us and the cheese was melted at the same time the bread was done.

The amount of sauce I made was enough to make two baked spaghetti dishes, so I was able to feed our family and another family with very little time in the kitchen and the dish was delicious. I can’t believe I hadn’t tried doing that before now! This will definitely be a repeat and a great way to feed our family, to have others over or bless another family with a meal.

For more Cooking on Sundays see below:

• Cooking on Sundays 1
• Cooking on Sundays 2
• Cooking on Sundays 3
• Cooking on Sundays 4
• Cooking on Sundays 5