Baked Spaghetti & Meatballs / Baked Vegetarian Spaghetti

It's been a rough week for me this week and after eating out or ordering in way too much I decided to whip up something for dinner last night. I've been meaning to make Spaghetti and Meatballs for about a month but didn't have the ground beef and kept forgetting to pick some up. So now that I was equipped with some fresh ground beef I decided to go ahead and make it. But I didn't feel like spaghetti...I was actually more in the mood for a lasagna, of course I lacked the lasagna noodles so I compromised. Here's what I did...and remember I'm also cooking for a vegetarian so that meant I was cooking two seperate meals. However, this meal is so simple that it didn't make a difference.

Meatballs:

1 1/2 lbs of beef
2 eggs
1/4 cup of milk
1/4 cup of dry bread crumbs
1 tbs parsley
3 cloves of finely chopped garlic
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Heat oven to 400. Saute garlic in olive oil. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and roll into 1-1.5" balls and place into a lightly greased pan. For this recipe I recommend 1" balls. Place into oven for 15-20 minutes or until no longer pink in the center.

Spaghetti:

1 package spaghetti

While cooking meatballs cook the Spaghetti noodles as directed on the package.

Sauce:

1 jar of your favorite marinara or spaghetti sauce (reserve 1/2 cup)
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 cup of Ricotta cheese
1/2 cup of parmesan cheese
2 cloves of finely chopped garlic
1 tbs Olive Oil
1 1/2 cups of your fave brand of "meatless" crumbles (optional)
2 cups grated Mozzarella

Set oven to 325. Saute garlic in olive oil. If you are going for a vegetarian dish you can add the crumbles and saute with the garlic and olive oil and omit the meatballs. Once the noodles are cooked thoroughly drain the noodles and combine with all the sauce ingredients except the mozzarella and 1/2 cup of marinara. Mix well and transfer to a baking or casserole pan. Place the meatballs onto the mixture and nestle them into the spaghetti. Pour remaining sauce over the spaghetti and meatballs and top with the mozzarella cheese. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes or until bubbly.

NOTES: Even though it's a lot of steps this actually didn't take much effort to make...and I was exhausted by the time I started. The best part is that you can make the meatballs ahead of time. This made one large pan of baked Spaghetti and meatballs and 2 small pans (bread pans) of vegetarian Spaghetti. What I did was combine the sauce with the noodles except for the meatless crumbles. I poured the mixture into the large pan then mixed in the crumbles and poured into the smaller pans. I put the extra small pan into the freezer along with a freezer bag of extra meatballs. This will help when I'm too tired to cook but too broke to order in.