Simple Pasta Bake for the Freezer

I mentioned in my previous post that were traveling to the Peterborough area to meet our peanuts boyfriend, Reid. He was precious as can be. Peanut did wonderfully in the car - over 7 hours round trip in one day! Ouch. Needless to say, next week we are taking it easy in hopes that babe gets back into her 'routine'. Anyways, I wanted to provide a freezer meal for the new parents to go along with the batch of cookies I made but it needed to be easy to transport. My husband and I found it so helpful when visitors brought food for us when our daughter first came home so I wanted to do the same thing for our friends.  Since my little one is my number one priority these days and keeps me pretty busy I needed a quick and easy dish to make. I decided on a basic pasta bake with cheese. This recipe made two freezer meals for the new parents.

Ingredients
1 box smart pasta
1 can pasta sauce
1 lb extra lean ground beef (so you don't have to drain the fat off)
1/4 sweet onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon of a mixture of parsley, rosemary, thyme, oregano and basal
salt & pepper
1 cup grated cheese to top
*if I were making this for myself I would have added a bunch of chopped kale or spinach but I didn't know how the new Dad felt about greens :)

Method
Boil water and cook pasta until it's el dante. While the pasta cooks put all remaining ingredients (except cheese and pasta sauce!) in a frying pan over medium heat and cook until the ground beef is no longer pink. Pour in pasta sauce. After draining the pasta pour into the sauce/meat mixture. Transfer to an oven safe dish and top with cheese. If baking from thawed state cover with foil and cook for 45 minutes at 350 degrees. For the last 25 minutes remove foil to allow the cheese to brown. If baking from frozen state cover with foil and cook for 1.5 hours at 350 degrees. For the last 25 minutes remove foil to allow the cheese to brown.

*I got these handy disposable containers from the dollar store. I keep them on hand for times like this.