Wednesday, January 23, 2008

New Dinner Recipe

I finally feel back to real life and completely settled in this week! I'm totally better and finally used to kent being gone all day again! I am also back to trying to find new food choices for the dinner table. I really don't like Italian food but I know Kent loves it so I thought I'd give this recipe a whirl. It's a lower (not low) fat manicotti recipe that was pleasantly quite simple and pretty tasty. It got a 7.25 on the do-over scale (for those of you unfamiliar with the scale, anything over a 5 is a do-over). I had NEVER attempted anything of the sort before this evening and I would still classify it as easy.

1 container skim ricotta cheese (it's by the cottage cheese)
1 cup part skim mozzarella
1/3 c Parmesan cheese
3 egg whites, slightly beaten
1 container frozen spinach (thawed, chopped, and well drained)
2 cloves garlic (it needs to be cooked. I just used the preminced in a jar kind so no cooking is needed)
1 *can marinara/spaghetti sauce
1 package manicotti (cooked, drained)

While boiling manicotti (11-13 minutes) mix together 1/2 of Parmesan and mozzarella cheeses and all other ingredients. Drain manicotti and run under cold water (so they can be handled). I only ended up with 10 out of the 14 shells escaping unharmed but 14 would have been too many anyway. Fill the shells with the mixture. The recipe says to spoon it in. YEAH RIGHT. I just used my hands. Place in a greased pan and cover with the can of sauce. Cook 25-35 minutes. Sprinkle with remainder of cheeses and bake five more minutes.

*This Dei Fratelli pizza sauce is possibly the most delicious marinara/pizza sauce I've ever had. I don't even like tomatoes and I could eat it by the spoonful. I have only been able to find the sauce at Meijer. Incidentally Dei Fratelli is a Toledo based family run business. I'm all about shopping local.

8 comments:

Julie Sacks said...

I should have come to your house for dinner. That looks great! I'm with Kent, I love Italian!

dockters said...

This is great!! I just bought some ricotta cheese yesterday and was wondering what to do with it!

Your recipe looks slightly more appetizing than the can of chili I opened for my family tonight!! :)

Leslie said...

That looks deeelicious. So, I know this sounds dumb, but what are the yellow things? Are they lemons? And do you guys like your veggies steamed or some other way? I need to find new ways to do veggies.

Michelle said...

YUM! Nice work.

Julie Sacks said...

Cohen had a fever for a couple of days and his cough just sounded unproductive. He was not coughing anything up, it was just all in his lungs and sounded awful. When we went in, they took ex rays of his lungs and found the pneumonia. He had to have shots and be put on meds for a week. We saw results about 3 days into the meds and that's when his coughs finally got more productive.

Anonymous said...

leslie... the yellow things are actually yellow squash. one of my favorite steamed veggies! and yes we do steam them. We have this nifty collapsible steamer thing that we got at target for three dollarsish. It looks like a spaceship that folds up. It goes in a pan on the stovetop and only takes 3-5 minutes to steam most veggies! we LOVE it. it makes it so easy to do veggies.

Amy and Craig said...

Hey if you want low fat italian, let me know. I made spaghetti with ground turkey meatballs last night over whole wheat noodles and it was scrumpcious! I can send you the recipe if you want it!

Katie and Steve said...

Is Zeb ok?