Stuffed Shells

I need to go back and edit last night's post about the Shepherd's Pie so you can all stop waiting in suspense as to how it worked out and all that. I even took pictures!! I'm going to start being like Jen B. and combining the review post with the recipe post so it's all in one place. Then you don't have to scour everywhere to find out whether or not something was good. And when I remember (or more likely, when my camera is downstairs) I'll take a pic of the finished product. Don't worry, I already cleared it with her that I can copy her new format.

So tonight we're having Stuffed Shells. I heart them. Who doesn't heart a cheesy, saucy, pasta dish? According to the ol' blog here, the last time I made this was last October. Yikes. We used to have this pretty often, I'm surprised it had been that long. I got a hankering for it a few days ago and threw it on the menu plan for the week because when a pregnant lady gets a hankering, she goes with it. I was too lazy to find the actual recipe, so I looked it up on here and remembered I did some serious tweaking with it last time due to lack of an ingredient. My review said that I liked it better, so as to not be made a liar on my own blog, I went with the changes I made last time. If you want to see the original recipe, follow this link to see what it was.

Stuffed Shells
20 jumbo pasta shells, cooked and cooled
1 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
2/3 cup reduced fat sour cream
4-5 ounces reduced fat cream cheese
1 tsp salt
2 tsp garlic powder
1 Tbsp Italian seasoning
1 jar spaghetti sauce
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 375. Mix together ricotta, sour cream, cream cheese, salt, garlic powder, and Italian seasoning. Spread a few spoonfuls of tomato sauce on bottom of a 8x8 pan. Fill each shell with cheese mixture and place in baking dish. When all shells are in dish, pour remaining tomato sauce over shells. Top with mozzarella. Bake for approximately 20 minutes.

*****

Now, on both the original recipe and my last post about it, I noted that the cooking time wasn't long enough. It calls for the pan to be covered, but I left it uncovered this time to see if that helped. It's coming up on 20 minutes, so we'll see how it's doing. Oh, and the original recipe didn't call for mozzarella, but I just think a pasta dish like this NEEDS cheese on top!!

Oh, and stuffing shells is a messy business (or at least it is for me), so I keep a paper towel nearby to wipe off my hands as I'm going. Otherwise cheese mixture gets everywhere.

*****

Mmmm...stuffed shells. I honestly have no idea why we haven't had this in so long because we all love it. I think there were only three or four shells left when all was said and done. This is definitely something I'm going to bring back into rotation more often. It's fairly easy (although a bit messy) to put together, but it's so easy. Leaving the pan uncovered totally worked. I don't think I had to add on any extra time.

I forgot to take a picture before we dished up, but this just goes to show how much we liked it.