Crockpot Baked Ziti

I've had a long afternoon, so this will be pretty short and sweet as I don't have the mental capacity to do much more after having dealt with my unruly almost three year old son all day. To get a better appreciation of how may day has gone, I'll tell you that I spent a good chunk of my afternoon getting purple Sharpie marker out of the carpet on our stairs. Sigh.

I came across this recipe while looking at vegetarian recipes on the Year of Crockpotting blog. I had everything on hand for it, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Crockpot Baked Ziti
(link takes you to the post on the blog)

1 bag of your favorite pasta
1 jar of marinara sauce
Any vegetables you might want to throw in
Cheese odds and ends

Rinse pasta in a colander (just so there's some added moisture). Add a handful of pasta and a bit of sauce to your crockpot stoneware insert. Put in a bit of cheese and keep layering ingredients in until you run out. Cover and cook on low for 4-5 hours.

*****

I forgot to rinse the pasta, but after reading the reviews/comments I added in 1/4 cup of water because a lot of the comments stated that the pasta was crunchy because there wasn't enough liquid. Someone else suggested stirring it partway through cooking so the pasta on the sides wasn't crunchy, so I need to do that. I used a bag of penne pasta that somehow snuck into my most recent Trader Joe's purchase (the downside of letting your kid push one of their kid carts around the store. I almost came home with a papaya and three bags of pistachios, but luckily I caught those. Wonder why they all start with the letter P?) and a bag of mozzarella cheese. For the sauce I used what was leftover from my ravioli dinner last week because I was lazy and never put it in the freezer. Oh, I also diced up the portobellos that were left over from last night and stuck them in one of the sauce layers. I think we'll just have some bread and salad with this. i don't think I can manage much more than that.