Here's my "little hamburger helper"  ...Yes I did eventually go to the damn market.  And Stew meat was half the price of extra lean ground. (not that I ever buy extra lean....just usually lean does fine).  So the plan was to grind up half of it for dinner.
It was soooo lean that I had to add olive oil just to brown it right.  I should have weighed it before it was browned because there was no difference in volume after it was all browned...or so it seemed.
In order to clean the grinder thing I decided to grind up the garlic and onion at the end as well.

I added a good shot of balsamic and lea & perrins.  I should have added more garlic and maybe two onions through the grinder instead of just the one would have added more flavour....next time for sure

I added two different bottles of remainders of red wine probably about 1  1/2 cups to deglaze the pot.

I added these....didn't have any diced tomatoes.  All of them are in storage for some reason.  But this worked just fine.  Next time i would add more spices.

I shredded up a zucchini and added a large handful of cheddar cheese as well.  Next time I will use a more flavourful cheese maybe, or else use less ground beef and add cottage cheese that's been drained.  Then I added all the pasta.  The directions on the back of the pkg cooking time was 18 min.  Wow 18 min for pasta......and the recipe said to precook half of the time.  So I did.  But next time.....I will only precook pasta for about 7 min. It wasn't overcooked at 9, but will prob hold up a little better after the oven.

I also didn't have a 9 1/2 inch springform pan, only an 8 1/2 was available...the rest in storage.  So I lined a lasagna pan with parchment (for quicker clean-up, as for any other reason).  By the time I transfered everything over.  It was brimming full....to the top.  I was going to take some out into a smalled container but I just threw in sheet underneath in case of dripping.  But I didn't really have to cause it never boiled over.  maybe the bread crumbs on top prevented that...I don't know.  But it would have been a clean oven without the sheet.  I put it into a 350 oven and hit the speed bake button, (convection)  and just let it cook for about 3/4 of an hour or so.  I really can't remember.  I just let it brown nice.

My phone wasn't handy for a pic ...I suspect one of the g'kids was playing games on it.  So this rather ugly pic is all I have of the finished product.  This was what was left after the brown baggers left the house.  I tasted it for seasoning purposes.....It was lacking.  

Maybe if I had reduced the ground beef and added a crt of cottage cheese or used a sharper cheese, or added more garlic onions and spices definitly some hot sauce or chili paste.  I don't know why I didn't concider that pasta sucks up all the flavour....next time I will add more flavour. When I have my lunch i will prob add some HP sauce to my plate.
I could have added some chopped up spinach....I had a fresh container.  I could have added some butter nut squash puree, I had a handful of chopped squash in the fridge.  But I didn't.  Preferring to mayyyyybe do a recipe originally for a change.  But next time...

But all...in...all ...it was a new discovery and I will be replacing the pasta next time I venture into an italian market.

The reason I put the pasta into my basket in the first place ....I though I would try to make spaghetti O's from scratch ...still going to try that.