11th Day of Thanksgiving, plus baked ziti

Today I'm thankful that my late mother was such a good cook. I know that's the reason I became a good cook, too, and that's something I've really enjoyed.

Truth be told, I believe I care way more about it than she did. I think she found it gratifying to cook good food, especially for her loved ones, but I don't think you could have classified her as a foodie or anything. (Though, really, if she had had more leisure time to spend exploring food, and if all the options we have today were open to her, she might have been. There were, literally, only two foods she said she just didn't like: head cheese and hominy. Someone like that seems perfect for sampling and appreciating new cuisines, right?)

In any case, I've always been impressed by my mother's cooking. She made great holiday and special occasion meals, and spectacular candy & cookies, but the thing that strikes me as most remarkable is the sheer number of nightly dinners she prepared. Every week night, she came home from work and got an excellent dinner on the table within about an hour. Every night. For, oh, maybe forty years…?

I truly never really appreciated what an accomplishment that was until I had spent a while doing it myself.

So today, I'm grateful that I had her example, and her level of quality, to aspire to. And today I also made Baked Ziti. Oy, did I make baked ziti!

I normally make casseroles (the quantity that's designed to cook in a 9"x13" pan) and divide it into two pans. I cook one that night, and freeze the other, so we have a future meal stored away in the freezer (almost as good as money in the bank, I tell you what). For some reason, this batch of ziti kind of expanded.

Well, I had half a pound of home-ground pork in the fridge, in addition to the pound of ground beef I normally use, so I threw that in. And we had half an opened half jar of Classico, ditto, in addition to the two full jars I usually use. And I found some black olives, and since I had opened and chopped up one of the 1-pound balls of Costco mozzarella and it didn't seem like quite enough, I went ahead and opened the other ball. One thing kind of led to another, and I ended up with three casserole pans full. (It really probably could have stretched to four, since I couldn't put any of the slightly-concave lids on.) Two of them are in the freezer right now, and we'll be having the third one (the one in the Pyrex dish) for dinner. After the two in the Glad SimplyCooking OvenWare 8x8 Pans freeze solid, I'll pop them out of their pan and vacuum seal them to freeze until we're ready to have Baked Ziti again. Seriously, good as money in the bank!

(BTW, I would have taken photos of the ziti project, but I was so astonished by the seemingly ever-expanding volume that I forgot. Next time—which will probably be in about eight months!)