Bottles and Bestsellers

My best friends and I are in a book club that we have labeled Bottles and Bestsellers.  It's a pretty stellar group and I always look forward to the time spent with them drinking wine and talking about books.  This week my roommate and I hosted B&B at our apartment.  This time we had the pleasure of reading Bossypants by Tina Fey.  It was a delightfully funny book with a lot of great discussion topics.  It had been a while since each of us had read it though, due to summer being crazy, so the discussion didn't last as long as our discussion of vacations and weddings. lol.

Typically at book club we just have dessert and wine but I enjoy cooking for this group so much that I decided to make some Baked Ziti for them.  We started with some caesar salad, at the ziti with some delicious rosemary garlic bread that you can get in the freezer section at HEB and finished it off with an amazing creme brulee cheesecake that was an impulse buy at Costco one Saturday.  A perfect meal.  :)

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
1 lb penne pasta
medium container of ricotta cheese
2 cups mozzarella cheese
1 jar of tomato sauce
6 links of mild sweet italian sausage (or whatever kind you prefer)

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Boil the pasta and stick the sausage in the oven on 350 until fully cooked.  While you are waiting on the pasta and the sausage mix up the rest of the ingredients in a bowl.  When the sausage is ready cut it up in small links so that it is spread throughout the casserole.  Mix the sausage and the pasta in with the cheese and sauce mixture.  Take out a 8"x16" casserole dish and spray with PAM.  Spread the mixture into the dish.  Place the casserole in the oven and bake for 45 minutes.

As you wait for the ziti to be done prep whatever else is involved in your meal.  Once finished pair with your drink of choice and ENJOY!