Pizza Casserole (Food Storage Style)

I don’t know about you, but some days I just see the same recipes going around Facebook and/or Pinterest over and over again. It’s like a conspiracy to try to get me to make something naughty. A couple of weeks ago this delicious looking pizza casserole was making the rounds:

I thought it looked easy and yummy but I was missing a few of the ingredients for it … so I decided to make an adventure of it and try making a food storage version. I have to say I was pretty thrilled with the results, and it was a winner with my kiddos. That doesn’t often happen when I’m trying new recipes. So here is MY version of the pizza casserole. Enjoy!

Ingredients:
1 16 ounce package rotini pasta
2 c. freeze dried sausage crumbles
1/2 c. freeze dried green peppers
3/4 c. Thrive Tomato Sauce Powder
3 c. water
2-3 c. freeze dried mozzarella cheese
1 small package sliced pepperoni

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a 9X13 casserole dish. Cook rotini noodles until slightly underdone. While pasta is cooking, lightly brown the dried sausage crumbles (before reconstituting). Mix tomato sauce powder with water until smooth, add browned sausage and freeze-dried green peppers. They will rehydrate in the sauce so no need to do that beforehand. Combine the sauce and the noodles and pour into the casserole dish.

Lay freeze-dried cheese out on a plate covered with a paper towel. Spray it with water using a spray bottle until the cheese is fully hydrated and not crunchy any more. Sprinkle over the top of the noodle/sauce mixture. Top with pepperoni slices. Bake 20-25 minutes in the oven.

There you have it, an easy yummy dinner that could be made totally with shelf stable items. Who wouldn’t want “pizza” in an emergency? And this is a lot easier than grinding wheat to make homemade pizza dough 😉