Baked Penne

5/12/2025

We celebrated all the things last weekend - mothers, birthdays and graduations. Woohoo!! What better way to spend a weekend? 🧑🏼🎂🎓 My mom and I have birthdays that usually fall within a couple of days of Mother's Day and this year we had the added bonus of adding a graduation into mix.😅

The timing actually worked out pretty perfectly. We all gathered together in South Georgia to celebrate our youngest receiving her Masters degree and then we extended our stayed an extra day to celebrate the moms. I'm a girl who loves to celebrate all the things in life - even the little things - so this was such a fun weekend for me.

We divided our meals between sampling the food at local restaurants and eating at our Airbnb. We had some outstanding restaurant meals but we also ate some pretty tasty homemade food.😂 My mom graciously offered to take care of breakfast while we were on our trip and I brought a baked penne for us to eat for dinner on Saturday night.

Since the weekend was all about the graduate and the moms - I chose a meal that I knew they would both enjoy - Pasta!!🍝 I made this meal the day before we left on our trip and transported it to our rental house in a cooler. All that was left to do was pop it in the oven for 30 minutes when we got to the house. I served it with sourdough bread, a Caesar salad and cupcakes of course. 😂

Baked Penne
1 pound penne, uncooked
6-8 slices provolone cheese
1 1/2 cups sour cream
3 cups shredded mozzarella
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Sauce
1 pound lean ground beef
1 pound bulk Italian Sausage
1 onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
1 15 oz. can tomato sauce
2 Tablespoons tomato paste
1/4 cup water
2 Tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons beef bouillon
1 Tablespoon basil
1 Tablespoon parsley
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon pepper
pinch red pepper flakes