Italian Cavatini-Family Favorite

Scrumptiously easy and easily scrumptious!

The Good: Delicious, easy to make for groups, low cost and freezes well.
The Bad: Unfortunately the sauce is not homemade.
The Ugly: If you are not good at multi-tasking it may be difficult for you to cook the sausage and the mushrooms at the same time.

Suggestions before starting:
Feel free to add or subtract ingredients to this recipe.  It is also great with onions and peppers.  Just remember if sauteing all the vegetables together be sure to cut them the same size so they saute evenly.
Our family traditionally uses Prego for the sauce.  My favorite is the Mushroom Prego.
It has become increasingly hard to find Tri-Noodles.  Any noodle will work but I still like to mix at least shells and rotini (50/50).
If it is too difficult to cook the sausage at the same time as the mushrooms, precook the mushrooms before even starting the water.
To save time warm the sauce up in the microwave before putting in casserole dish.


Cavatini

Recipe Total Time: Approx 45 minutes

Recipe Yields 8 servings

Preheat oven: 350

Ingredients:

• 1 large jar of your favorite marinara
• 1 box Tri-Noodles
• 1 pkg Italian Sausage
• 2-4 T butter or margarine
• fresh mushrooms
• Italian blend shredded cheese

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350.  In a large sauce pan, bring water for the noodles to a boil.  While waiting for water to boil, begin cooking the Italian sausage at medium to medium low heat in a large frying pan.  Add noodles to boiling water and boil until tender or follow instructions on box.
2. In a separate frying pan, melt butter on high.  Once the butter is melted add the mushrooms to begin sauteing.  Mushrooms should be a dark grayish brown and jumping out of the pan when they are done.  Fun Fact: Saute means "to jump".
3. In a large casserole dish, pour 1/4 of the sauce in the bottom of the pan.  When sausage, noodles and mushrooms are fully cooked begin placing in the casserole dish layering with sauce.  Mix sausage, noodles, mushrooms and sauce so all ingredients are covered in sauce.
4. Place casserole dish in the oven for 10-15 minutes.  Cover with cheese and place back into oven until cheese is melted.
5. Enjoy :)