Confetti Macaroni

I'm all about quick meals on weeknights. This is a simple and delicious pasta dish which really gets the kids to eat their vegetables. It's quite easy to make with pasta with items you may have in the pantry and freezer. A great time saver for this recipe is to brown your ground meat ahead of time and keep it frozen in portion packed freezer storage bags. I personally like to use macaroni because it's shape is easy for little ones to manage.  I used lean ground beef, but you can easily substitute turkey. Serve with a bagged salad and garlic bread and everyone will be seventh heaven.

Ingredients;
1 lb Macaroni pasta cooked al dente and drained reserving some of the salted pasta water
3/4 lb lean ground beef seasoned and browned
1 small white onion chopped
2 ribs of celery chopped finely
garlic salt and pepper to taste
4 cups of California Blend vegetables. I used fresh but you can easily use the frozen kind.
1 16 oz jar of Bertoli Alfredo sauce
Parmesan cheese for garnish

Direction;
Saute celery and onions in grape seed oil and season with garlic salt and pepper. Cook until translucent and add pre-browned ground beef along with a 1/2 cup of pasta cooking water. Alternatively you can start your celery and onions and add raw ground meat and cook until browned. Toss vegetables in the pan with ground meat and cover allowing vegetable to steam. Once the vegetables are tender combine meat and vegetables with cooked macaroni and add Alfredo sauce. Serve hot with plenty of Parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes.