What is Ziti?

My niece is an art teacher and has a lot of creative ideas. She uses all different kinds of pasta noodles to create noodle art. She uses a lot of ziti noodles when she is creating something. Her latest creation was a wedding cake made out of pasta noodles and it won a blue ribbon at our state fair. She has also started teaching this to her students in art class, and they just love it.

With many pasta recipes, it is easy to substitute whatever pasta you may have on hand. If I don't have ziti noodles I will often use penne pasta. I don't think this really affects the taste and it comes down to personal preference.

When I make a ziti casserole I will often make two of them. One to eat that evening and I put another one in the freezer. This makes a great dish to heat up on evenings when I don't have time to cook.

If I am traveling out of town it is also easy for my husband to take this out of the freezer and heat it up on the oven. The casserole will freeze well and this is one dish that everyone in my family loves.

You can find a lot of ziti recipes online but they are all pretty much the same. Depending on what kind of sauce you use, and if you use meat or not, there isn't too much variation.

Sometimes when I make ziti I won't use any meat at all, and other times I may combine some sausage and beef. The one thing you don't want to forget when making ziti is the cheese. We like a lot of cheese, so this is something I don't skimp on.

One of the biggest reasons I like to make my own ziti is because I can make it exactly how I like it. If I order this from a restaurant and have any leftovers, I will always add more cheese when I heat it up at home.

My grandmother used to make an amazing sausage ziti. It was one of the staples of our big family dinners.

She was actually from Italy and she did everything from scratch. She made her own marinara and even her own sausage. I wish that everyone could have tried it because it was better than anything I have ever had in an Italian restaurant.

When she passed on she took a lot of that care and effort with her. It is really unfortunate, but we still meet for Sunday dinner and I think that is the most important part.

Has anyone ever tried making a ziti recipe that uses white sauce?

I am a vegetarian, so I don't use meat, but it still comes out delicious and decadent. Plus, you can add almost any vegetables that you have in the fridge.

Baked ziti is absolutely delicious and an easy ziti recipe, but ziti is also a really good pasta to use in pasta salad.

The tubes hold a bit of salad dressing quite well and they are nice and chunky to go with the other ingredients.

You can just make the salad ahead of time and keep it in the fridge as well. It's one of our summer favorites, and I make it with mayo, onions, cherry tomatoes, and Parmesan cheese as well as anything else in the fridge that looks likely.

Even kids tend to like it and we hardly ever end up with leftovers.

Dry ziti is quite good for your kids if they are making pasta decorations. Just because you can get it in various lengths that can then be snapped down to size.

Of course, it can be quite difficult to get the longer ziti now, but you still can in specialty stores and such.

I find that if you are careful, you can split the tubes in half and use them as borders in pasta mosaics.

It's probably better if you do this yourself, rather than getting your kids to do it, as you need to use a knife, and aside from safety reasons, it might take a few tries to get right!