I’d say I wasted a significant amount of money at university on food that ended up being thrown in the trash.

In hindsight, it would have made sense to better manage the food in my fridge by looking for leftovers (or food on the verge of spoiling) each week before ordering take-out or buying more groceries.

Wow…good I thought of that now that I’m no longer a student. Doh!

Oh well…a good thought should never go to waste, so today I’m sharing what I recently made using leftover spaghetti. It’s a super easy pasta dinner I would have most definitely made as a student. I call it Venerdi Notte Speciale Spaghetti. 

Translation: Friday Night Spaghetti Special (yeah, couldn’t come up with anything better than that…but hey it has a nice ring to it in Italian!!!!). 

What Was in My Fridge and What I Made

On the second shelf in my fridge I had about 2 cups of plain cooked leftover noodles in a container.

My pizza-tooth was acting up so I searched the fridge for my favorite pizza toppings (pepperoni, green pepper and mushrooms). Found the first two! I chopped the pepperoni and diced the green pepper before frying them with a teaspoon of oil in a non-stick skillet over medium heat. Took about 4 minutes.

In went the leftover spaghetti! I gave it a quick toss.

I wasn’t in the mood for tomato sauce, so I poked around the fridge for the low-fat Italian salad dressing I knew was in there. Three tablespoons did the trick to give this amount of pasta some bright zesty flavor (add less or more based on the amount of pasta you’re using). Tossed it again with the tongs…

And wound up with this tasty looking number in about 7 minutes!

Extra Cooking Credit

Because of the salad dressing, I thought this pasta deserved to be treated more like a salad. So I tossed on a few good looking cherry tomatoes I had quartered.

Voila! Here’s what your bland looking leftover spaghetti can look like in the bowl!

On your fork (or spork)!

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Thanks for stopping in at the cafe. Cheers!