Light baked rigatoni and roasted root vegetables

I wasn't feeling particularly ambitious, so I wanted to make something that didn't need to be "inspired" by something, for which I could make a recipe off the top of my head, and, perhaps most importantly, would use up all the slowly-softening root vegetables we had laying around.

Voila! Roasted things and casseroles are not usually very photogenic, but they were both very good.

We had roasted root vegetables. Michael was kind enough to chop up very large quantities of sweet potatoes, redskin potatoes, carrots, and red onions (and I mean very large quantities--we have two quarts of the chopped vegetables that we didn't have space for in the oven sitting in the freezer still).
And then all we did was drizzle on a little bit of oil, generously salt and pepper, and bake at around 425 until they were soft and fork-tender. One of my secret tricks for roasting vegetables is to add some vegetable broth halfway through the cooking--it keeps them moist and adds a whole new dimension of flavor. Halfway through roasting (so maybe after twenty minutes or so), I stirred the veggies around and poured about a cup of vegetable broth over the two pans. It also deglazed the pans, getting all the yummy browned bits, and that's another bonus of doing it that way.

The light baked rigatoni was even easier--a pound of pasta, a pound of fat-free cottage cheese, a pound of defrosted frozen spinach, a big can of tomato sauce, and enough grated mozzarella and parmesan to top. Bake it up until it's hot and bubbly.

Would I make these again? Oh, definitely. Both of these recipes are sort of standards for me when I'm feeling uncreative, but they're both very delicious, very easy to make healthy (yeah, you could take out the spinach and triple the cheese for the rigatoni, but then you only get to eat half as much!), and dead easy to toss together when you're tired. Especially if your darling husband will do all the chopping for you!