Stuffed Shells

Anyone know where I can get a contraption that will stop time so I can actually get things done? I'd be willing to pay top dollar for it if such a thing existed. Then my blog could get updated every day, my house would always be clean, and I'd have enough time to do fun stuff (okay...my blog is fun, but cleaning house is not) each day AND play with my kids. Sigh. We had a great message at church today on time management, so I think I just need to take that to heart and hope everything works out how it needs to. Or start praying for a cleaning fairy to dance her way through my house!

I'm actually at my mom's house right now where we'll be having a birthday dinner tonight for my uncle. I figured it was a great time to update the ol' blog since it's just me and the baby here right now. And, I'll be honest, I'm putting off writing some very overdue thank you notes. However I could also be reading Breaking Dawn so maybe I should get my butt in gear so I can get some reading done before the husband gets over here. He has this silly notion I should be reading a parenting book we read when the boy was a baby. Obviously he hasn't read any of the Twilight books and isn't DYING to know how it all turns out...Edward or Jacob, who's it going to be?!?!? What's going to happen to Bella? The thank you notes may once again get put on the back burner now that I've started thinking about the book.

I digress (as usual). When my in-laws were in town, I checked the pantry to see if I had lasagna noodles for my MIL to use. I didn't, but I saw an opened box of large shells, so I thought, "Hey, I wanted to put stuffed shells into rotation more often...we'll have that for dinner one night." So, lo and behold, we did. Plus there was ricotta left in my fridge from the lasagna, so I really didn't need to buy much at all for this.

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.

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Mmmmm...it was yummy. I love tomato-y, cheesy pasta dishes. I ended up making my own spaghetti sauce. It's cheaper than buying the stuff in the jar, and I can control the ingredients since the only thing packaged in it is the canned tomatoes which are just tomatoes. I used my Basic Tomato Sauce recipe. Alright, it's not really my recipe, but it's the one I use whenever I need tomato sauce. Plus it makes quite a bit, so then I can freeze what's left and have sauce in my freezer.

I worked out my menu for the coming week, and there are some yummy things on it. I'm following Jen B.'s lead and trying to work in three vegetarian dinners a week. Can you tell we're entirely too co-dependent on each other? Anyway, I had a vegetarian cookbook in my pantry I've thought about getting rid of for years because I never use it, so I busted it out yesterday to have a look-see and see what was in it. There were some YUMMY recipes! So I'm making two dinners from that this week. I need to have the husband and boy try polenta to see if they like it because there were some great polenta main dish recipes in there too.

On the way into my mom's house I spotted a 1970s looking casserole cookbook in the garage. I'm dying to have a look at that and see what's in it!!! Shoot...that's one more thing to keep me from reading Breaking Dawn. Maybe I'll look at the cookbook after the husband gets here. ;)