Hamburger & noodle casserole

This week has been crazy. I was looking for something easy to cook on Monday, and Hamburger Helper came to mind. Yes, I admit, we have a few boxes in the cupboard- and I've been good about not using them for a while. I know that they're full of salt and other flavorings and colorings that I would probably prefer not to be a part of dinner. While discussing this with a friend, she said she was making a from-scratch Tuna Helper that evening- and then I remembered- I had been wanting to find a quick substitute for the dinner-in-a-box. I googled 'hamburger helper scratch' and came up with this recipe, which looked OK (by 'OK' I mean, I had everything on hand.). Shoulda read it more closely. It wasn't exactly a stovetop Hamburger Helper- it was a baked noodle casserole, and I managed to make a mess trying to get it all in a skillet on the stovetop (I was determined!) Anyway, because of my disappointments, I wasn't thrilled with the meal Monday night. My husband, however, had seconds- he liked it a lot! I gave it another shot last night as leftovers (Another problem with the recipe I should have caught- it says it serves 5. I think we got 7 servings out of it. It filled almost to overflowing a 9x13 pan.) Lesson learned.

I modified the recipe to use what I had on hand, so here's what I did:

Hamburger-Noodle Bake

Ingredients

* 1 pound of ground turkey
* 1 can of corn
* 1 bag of egg noodles
* 1.5 C shredded cheddar
* 1 C shredded mozzarella
* Two cans of cream of tomato soup.
* 2 Tbsp garlic, chopped and minced
* dry parsley

- Preheat oven to 350
- Cook your egg noodles according to package. While noodles are cooking, brown the meat with the garlic. Add herbs toward end of cooking.
- Drain your noodles and your meat, combine in a big casserole dish. Stir in the corn, cheese and tomato soup.
- Put in oven and bake for 15 minutes. Top with mozzarella cheese and raise the temperature of the oven to 400. Cook for an additional 10 minutes.

Next time, I might experiment with adding more sauce or more cheese on the top. I will also cut the recipe in half. so this isn't all we're eating for the week!

Lesson learned: Even if it's the end of the day, and I'm in need of a dinner recipe quickly, I need to read through the whole thing! I was lucky that this worked out in the end.