Easy Turkey Penne Pasta

I think I've said before that I have a love-hate relationship with cooking.  I'll go a couple weeks where I get really excited about trying new recipes and getting all the ingredients.  Then I'll go through a little phase where I absolutely dread dinner time and cooking is the last thing I want to do.  I'm in the latter phase now, hence my lack of recipe posts.  I suppose I could still post cooking blog entries even when we aren't eating anything particularly interesting.  I know there are people out there just like me, and when you don't feel like cooking, you still need an idea for dinner that night.  I find that when I look up recipes for dinner, I get really frustrated that things require so many ingredients.  When I'm in a cooking funk, I don't want something that requires fresh ginger, or lemon zest.  I want something that I can make in 20 minutes using the canned whatever that I have in my pantry.

So for all of you out there who don't feel like cooking dinner tonight, make this super easy Penne Pasta!  I didn't have time to take a lot of photos, but here's what you need:

• Ground turkey (or ground beef, or no meat at all if you prefer)
• A box of Penne pasta (I made the whole huge box so we would have leftovers)
• A jar or can of your favorite pasta sauce (I used Hunt's Traditional.  It's good and has the lowest calorie count per serving compared to Ragu and Prego)  
• Half a bag of frozen spinach (I always keep this on hand, but if you don't have it and don't want to go to the store, just leave it out.  No big deal!)
• Parmesan cheese (also optional)

1.  Boil your water and cook the pasta according to the directions.

2.  Cook the meat.

3.  Sautee the spinach in a little bit of oil.

4.  When the meat is done cooking, pour the sauce in the same pan and let it warm up a little bit.

5.  Drain the noodles and return to the pot.  

6.  Stir in the spinach.  

7.  Stir in the meat and sauce mixture.  

8.  Add some parmesan if you want.  I think freshly grated parmesan on top would probably be good, but I didn't have any.  I added the powdered kind, but I couldn't even really taste it.  It probably needed more.  

9.  Enjoy!  

We had so many leftovers, and this literally took me about 20 minutes to make.  Boiling the pasta is what took the longest.  I did this while Little H napped, and still had time to eat it before she woke up!