Recipe: Cheesy Bowtie Pasta Bake

My mom was out of town last week (She flew to Florida. Don't even get me started...), and while she was away I made sure to cook a lot for my dad. Before she left, my mom had bought two boxes of bowtie pasta, so I thought I'd make dinner using one of them. I found this recipe on the Lil' Luna blog, and it seemed straight forward enough. I haven't made a pasta casserole in years: I rarely eat pasta, since there's really no nutritional value in noodles. But I used to make casseroles all the time when I got my first real job out of college; I'd bake a casserole on Sunday night and pack it every day for lunch for the week. So this was kind of like a throwback Thursday recipe. 

Ingredients

• 16 oz bowtie pasta
• 14.5 oz tomatoes, diced
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1 tsp garlic salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1 1/2 cups mozzarella cheese, shredded
• 1 1/2 cups Three cheese blend
• 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup parsley fresh, chopped
• shaved parmesan for topping, optional

Directions

• Cook pasta as instructed on package.
• While pasta is cooking, drain tomatoes and reserve ¼ cup juice. Set aside.
• Preheat oven to 375°F.
• In a large pot, melt butter on medium meat. Add flour, salt and pepper and whisk until smooth. Add milk and reserved tomato juice. Bring to a boil. Cook until sauce thickens.
• Remove sauce from heat and add drained pasta, tomatoes and cheeses. Mix well and pour into a greased 9x13 dish.
• Bake for 30 minutes and garnish with fresh parsley and Parmesan. 

I mostly stuck to the recipe. I didn't quite drain the tomatoes, because honestly there wasn't much liquid to come off of them in the first place. And I didn't have garlic salt, so I just used regular salt, and I skipped the parsley and parmesan. I did add spinach to the sauce to get some sort of veggie in there. All in all, the recipe takes about 50-60 minutes to make, which was perfect since my dad was working late. It finished just as he was walking through the door. And now he had leftovers to eat all week 😊