New Recipe: Million Dollar Spaghetti

Comfort Food Week continues! Much like Monday night's Chicken & Dumplings Casserole, I wasn't thinking "healthy" when I picked this meal...I was thinking "How much of that can I cram in my face before I hate myself?" 

Spaghetti is pretty basic, right? I mean, who doesn't love spaghetti? 

Me. 

I don't love it. I eat it, I don't hate it or anything. But it's not one of those meals that makes me excited to sit down to the dinner table. But I live with two spaghetti lovers so I make spaghetti (Grant did a serious happy dance in the kitchen when he found me making spaghetti). But that's why I love recipes like this Million Dollar Spaghetti. We can all get excited about it. It's sort of like deconstructed lasagna. Spaghetti casserole. Fancy spaghetti. Spaghetti that got dressed up for a really important job interview. Whatever. It was loved in my house.

Million Dollar Spaghetti
(this is the recipe as I found it; I'll add my notes, as usual, at the end)

Look at those layers...and the cheesy goodness.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. ground beef
• 1 can of spaghetti sauce (I used Hunts)
• 8 oz. package of cream cheese, softened
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 1/2 lb. cottage cheese (I prefer small curd, not low-fat)
• 1 stick of butter
• 8 ounces of spaghetti noodles
• 1 bag of cheddar cheese

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350. Boil your noodles according to the package directions (if you haven't already skipped ahead and done this.
2. While your noodles boil, mix together the cream cheese, sour cream, and cottage cheese. Make sure they are mixed well.
3. Cook your ground beef, drain it, add your can of spaghetti sauce to it.
4. Now for layering: put a few slices of your stick of butter on the bottom of a 9x13 casserole dish; on top of that layer half your noodles; pour the cream cheese mixture (all of it) on top of the noodles and spread it around so it's even; add the rest of your noodles on top of that and put a few more slices of butter on top of those noodles; pour your meat sauce on the top of all that and spread it around so it's even. Bake for 30 minutes.
5. When it's baked for 30 minutes, add your cheese to the top. The whole bag...there's really no point in cutting calories now. Bake for 15 more minutes or until it's a little brown on top.
6. Unless you're starving, I'd let it sit for 5-10 minutes before serving (use that time, like I did, to pop some frozen garlic bread in the oven - its Fall, your body needs the extra carbs).

Recipe Source: being grown up

Notes/Suggestions:

• I omitted the butter entirely from this dish. I guess that makes the above recipe a bit of a lie. I sprayed my pan with non-stick cooking spray and everywhere where it says to put slices of butter...I did not. I've never used butter in spaghetti and it just seemed unnecessary here. I didn't miss it.
• I felt like the cream cheese/sour cream/cottage cheese mixture was a large amount for only 8 ounces of noodles. I cooked a whole 16 ounce package and ended up using almost all of it.
• If - like me - you go with extra noodles, you'll want to up your sauce to. My meat sauce had about 1 1/2 cans of sauce and I ended up heating the extra 1/2 can for us to spoon on top if needed (Husband always likes extra sauce).
• I added some parmesan cheese to my cream cheese mixture and I used and italian cheese blend on top in place of cheddar. It was really good but cheddar would have been too.
• BIG hit in my house! Husband had two servings and Grant couldn't get his into his face fast enough. At one point Grant leaned back, looked down and rubbed his stomach saying "Mmm mmmm. This is good. This is yummy in my tummy."

Enjoy!