Company Casserole

I love finding recipe books, especially when they are hand written by my mom!!  I found this particular recipe the other evening in a cookbook I "Borrowed" from my sister (which I am now done pretty much copying the entire thing and will return) and had to cook it. It had me at cottage cheese :) I LOVE cottage cheese! I could eat it everyday...whenever and wherever! So here we go with the Company Casserole!

I cranked up my Nick Drake playlist and got all my ingredients out and entered the cooking zone. As I made this dish, I tried to think of all the times my mom probably made it for church gatherings and company over for dinner. It's fun to cook things when you know how and when they were cooked before. She had noted that this particular casserole serves 6 and was made for church get togethers or easy weeknight meals. We of course have lots of left overs and haven't stopped eating it yet :)

To begin you take 1 8 oz package of spaghetti and cook as the package directs you to. While you have the spaghetti going you will want to take a pound and a half of meat and brown it and drain the grease off. When the meat is cooked, you will add 1 teaspoon of salt and pepper, 1 8 oz can of tomato sauce and simmer this with the meat for about 5 minutes.
NOTE: I added chopped onion to my meat mixture. We love onions :)

When your spaghetti is finished cooking you will want to drain the water and let it cool for a couple of minutes. In a separate bowl you will add 1 cup of cottage cheese, 1 cup of sour cream, a couple of green onions chopped and mix this in with the noodles. I personally would have added a little bit more of each of these just because I love the cottage cheese/sour cream mixture.

To finish this off you layer the meat then the noodle mixture in a casserole dish, and so and so forth until you run out of ingredients. Top the casserole with 3/4 cup of shredded Cheddar cheese and pop it in the oven for 30 minutes at 350.

This is what it looked like before it went in the oven :)

This is what it looked like coming out of the oven :)

~Happy Cooking~

Company Casserole
1 8 oz pkg spaghetti
1 1/2 lb ground beef, browned and drained
1 t. salt
pepper to taste
8 oz can tomato sauce

Combine:
1 cup cottage cheese
1 cup sour cream
1 or 2 green onions, finely chopped

Topping:
3/4 cup shredded Cheddar cheese