Leftover Spaghetti

My 14yo son is doing a three year 4-H project where they raise funds and study the United States government and end with a three week trip to Washington DC.  One of the fundraisers that the group does each year is Spaghetti dinner.  It was a huge event where we served dinner for 500 people.

At the end of the night, there was a ginormous amount of spaghetti sauce and spaghetti left over.  (There were sausages, salad and bread too, but those were pretty easy to take care of.). Of course, I couldn’t turn down an industrial size pot of spaghetti sauce as well as several gallon bags of cooked spaghetti for free.

I made up dinners for my college kids and kids at home out of them.    I have two recipes that freeze very well with cooked spaghetti.  The first one is Spaghetti pie.  There are dozens of recipes on Pinterest for it, but this is what I did (I didn’t use any measurements, because I was using several different size containers):

Spaghetti Pie

1. Spray the pan.  (I used disposable pie plates for this). I mixed an egg and 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese into enough spaghetti to cover the bottom of the pan.  The put it in pan and spread it out in the bottom.
2. I mixed together a big container of Sour Cream, 16 ounces of cream cheese and 32 ounces of Cottage cheese for all of my recipes and then layered this cheese mixture on to spaghetti pie.  I used around a cup or so on top.
3. Next I layered a generous amount of spaghetti sauce on top.
4. Top with shredded cheese.
5. To freeze, I covered with 2 layers of foil and labeled them with directions for cooking.
6. To bake: Thaw.  Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes until completely warmed up.

I made 4 of these pies.  I figured these would be great to give to sick singles or couples as well as giving a couple to my college student son for meals.

The next recipe I made was my own version of Million Dollar Casserole, which you can get exact measurements from Pinterest.  The only thing I left out was the stick of butter.  The better makes it wonderful, but I just didn’t know where to put it for the freezer version.  Here’s what I did:

Million Dollar Casserole

1. Spray pans.  I used a mixture of my own 9x13 metal pans and disposable pans for my college age son.
2. Spread a layer of spaghetti in the bottom of the pan.  
3. Layer in the cream cheese/ sour cream/ cottage cheese mixture.
4. Layer generous amount of spaghetti sauce (keep in mind, I’m trying to use up a ginormous pot of sauce here!).
5. Repeat these layers another time.
6. Top with shredded cheese.
7. To freeze: Put 2 layers of foil on them and label for baking.
8. To Bake: Thaw.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes. 

For this recipe, I made 3 single serving pans for my college student son, 3-8x8 pans for my kids that are home, and 2-9x13 pans for when everyone comes home to visit.  We found the small single serving pans at our local Family Dollar three for $1.

In addition to these 12 meals, I froze the rest of the spaghetti sauce in 16 quart ziplock freezer bags.  This we will use in meals as needed.  (Wasn’t that a ginormous pot?).  

This was a great used of free leftover spaghetti and sauce!  I love it when you get free food given to you and your an reuse them in freezer meals!  What sort of things have you made from leftovers?