Baked Spaghetti

For Mother's Day I asked for Whitney to cook me a meal. I figured I would use her labor and get her to learn how to cook another meal before we leave her to fend for herself for two weeks while we go on vacation. (Don't worry I'll leave plenty of food). After the Crazy Cooking Challenge a couple of months ago for spaghetti with red sauce, I really wanted to try a baked spaghetti. I had never had it so figured this would be a good thing for her to make because there would be lots of leftovers we could freeze. I chose the recipe from What's Cooking Love? and Whitney (along with Dan's help) followed it pretty close.

Baked Spaghetti
(Recipe adapted from Plain Chicken and Life as a Lofthouse)

12 ounces whole wheat spaghetti (can use regular spaghetti)
1 (28 ounce) jar spaghetti sauce
1 lb ground turkey (can substitute ground beef)
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons Italian Seasoning
8 ounces cream cheese
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2.  In a skillet, brown the ground turkey over medium-high heat.  Add 1 teaspoon of both the garlic powder and Italian seasoning to the meat.  Cook the meat until it is cooked through.  Drain the fat and stir in the spaghetti sauce.  Then remove from heat and set aside. 

3.  Meanwhile, cook the spaghetti in a large pot of water according to the package directions.  Drain the water and place the hot spaghetti in a large bowl.  Add the cream cheese and 1 teaspoon of both the garlic powder and Italian Seasoning to the spaghetti.  Stir until the cream cheese has melted and the spaghetti is covered. 

4.  Spread a small amount of the meat and sauce mixture on the bottom of a 9x13 greased baking dish. Pour the spaghetti over the sauce and spread out evenly.  Pour the rest of the meat and sauce mixture on top of the spaghetti, then sprinkle both cheeses on top. 

5.  Bake uncovered for 30 minutes or until hot and bubbly.

Of course they added more cheese to the top because we love cheese. And we didn't have Italian seasoning so they used a mixture of dried basil and oregano. This turned out really moist. The cream cheese kept the noodles soft. You couldn't even tell it was whole wheat pasta (not that I know what it tastes like normally since this was the first time we used it.) Turns out we have enough for 12 servings of spaghetti. So that means we froze 6 servings. Did very nice little individual ones so she can just pull one out and microwave it.