Four Cheese Stuffed Shells

I had a request for the recipe from earlier this week so here it is.

1 lb. Jumbo Shell Pasta
1 12 oz carton Cottage Cheese
1 15 oz carton Ricotta Cheese
1 cup Asiago Cheese, shredded
3/4 cup Parmesan Cheese, grated
2 Tbls chives, chopped
2 Tbls parsley, chopped
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1 10 oz pkg Frozen Chopped Spinach (thaw and drain)
6 cups favorite marinara sauce
1 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cook pasta according to package directions, drain and set aside. Place cottage cheese and ricotta cheese in food processor; process until smooth. Combine cheese mixture with Asiago, Parmesan, chives, parsley, pepper, salt, and spinach. Spoon filling into plastic bag and snip a 1" hole in corner; pipe filling into shells. Coat two 9x13 pans with cooking spray. Place half of stuffed shells, seam side up, into each pan. In both pans, top pasta with 3 cups marinara sauce and 1/2 cup mozzarella. Cover 1 pan with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Cover other pan with plastic wrap, pressing wrap to remove air, then with heavy-duty foil. Store in freezer for up to 2 months. To cook frozen cheese shells, preheat oven to 375. Remove plastic wrap and replace foil. Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes.

NOTE: I didn't use the asiago cheese or the herbs because I was trying to cut down on buying extra things at the grocery store. Instead, I put some extra mozzarella in with the cheese mixture and used some dried Italian spices I had in the cupboard. Every time I use those spices, I'm not sure I like them so maybe next time I'll fork out for the real thing. I didn't spray my cooking dish (a glass pyrex one) and nothing stuck. Also, I didn't split my shells in half, I just filled my dish. If you use this method, you will NOT get two pans out of this recipe. I  had enough leftover for maybe a fourth? I have been cutting up the extra shells for Madi and saved the extra cheese mixture and sauce in the freezer for something down the road.
Enjoy!

A Surprise in the Garden

I confess, I am not a gardener. I wouldn't say my thumb is black, but rather a dull brown instead of the desired green. I like the IDEA of gardening. I like planting the flowers and looking at how beautiful they are in front of my house. I DON'T like bugs. I am not good at the maintenance parts, like remembering to water my flowers (or knowing how much water they need). And I'm really not good at weeding. I don't enjoy it (does anyone?) and don't do it nearly often enough so when I do bite the bullet, all the weeds are completely overgrown and it 1) takes forever and 2) causes me to kill all my flowers in my attempts to extract the weeds. Our flower beds are particularly challenging for me because they are riddled with grass. We bought our house from flippers 2 1/2 years ago and unfortunately the flower beds had been completely neglected and allowed to run wild. I have attempted several times over the last couple of summers to rid the flower beds of that vile weed but alas, it always returns. Maybe everyone's flower beds have problems with grass? I don't know, you tell me.
Anywho. I'd already been a bit snarky with my husband this morning (it was 8:30) so I decided I needed a little dose of Vitamin D and thought I'd do some weeding while my husband mowed the lawn. We have this one particularly large weed that has been spilling over to the front walk that I've been meaning to get to forever.

You can see how it has melded with my petunias. So with my trowel in hand, I went to attack my foe only to notice something peculiar.

Are those teeny tomatoes? Correct me if I'm wrong or smoking crack, but I think I smell that singular smell of a tomato plant! We had a tomato plant in a pot last year but never got around to buying one this year. Perhaps a seed from last years fruits blew over to the little corner of the flower bed and hid away, dormant until now? I called my husband over to confirm my suspicions. He thought it was a little weird but had to agree, yes, it looked like a tomato plant. Now my quandary: do I leave the little plant amid my petunias to see if those are, in fact, tomatoes? Do I just rip the thing out and say "good riddance?" Or, do I attempt to transplant the veggies? I wasn't sure I could succeed at a transplant without hurting either the petunias or the tomatoes but I decided to give it a go.

They look a little sad at the moment. We'll watch them over the next week or so and see if we get any tomatoes or if Allen and I were both a little high off of lawn mower fumes this morning!

New Craftiness

I've seen lots of cute tutorials for making fun home-made flowers/headbands, like this one from Make It and Love It. This is my spur of the moment attempt. My flowers are pretty small because I was just using ribbon I already had but I think I don't mind. I'm not sure I'm a huge flower kind of girl.

Maybe I'll post a picture of me wearing it on a day I've washed my hair...

Another New Recipe

Four Cheese Stuffed Shells

I know, the picture actually looks a little gross. But this recipe went a lot better than the last one. It was yummy and my husband (who is NOT a pasta fan) even enjoyed it. Of course, he said it would be better with sausage in it, but for my husband to happily eat pasta, and be willing to take it for lunch the next day is a big deal.
This one was a little more difficult. And messy! I think it will be an every-once-in-a-while dish. But totally delish.

Bear Lake Bash- Edgar Junk Reunion 2010

The last weekend of July we had our big family reunion at my parents place at Bear Lake. The pictures speak for themselves.

Austin

 Adam

 Me

 Vaughn

 Uncle Roger

 

A New Recipe

I've been trying to be better about planning out my meals. My reasons for this are three-fold:
1. Actually cook dinner most nights, rather than resorting to ramen noodles or frozen chicken strips.
2. Cut back on unnecessary spending.
Reason the 3rd: Try some new recipes!
This was my first newbie. Potluck Pasta!

To be honest, it looks better than it tastes. There are definitely some things I'll do differently next time. I liked the recipe because it had lots of veggies in it. I'm not a fan of veggies but I'm trying to learn to like them. My secret is to mix them in with something I like and I like pasta!

Friday Afternoon Visits

This past Friday Jessica and I ventured down to Salt Lake to have lunch with our dear friend and former RA, Stacy Madden. I hadn't seen Stacy for 5 years since she and Jess came to visit me in NJ before we moved out west. It was a wild trip, full of trips to NYC, the beach (or the shore, as it's called back east), and a spur of the moment jaunt over to Pennsylvania, just to say Stacy had been there. It was so good to see Stacy again and reminisce about the good ol' days in the college dorms at the U.

Thanks to her nephew, Tyler, our photographer. He's seven.

After lunch Jessica came back to mi casa for some light crafting (to be shared later... not quite finished) and so the babes could play.

At one point, Kit was getting upset about being ignored on the floor so Madi tried to cheer her up.

She's giving her kisses!!! How sweet is that?! Madi was getting really upset about Kit crying and kept kissing her over and over. When she realized it wasn't working she started crying too. Oh, what friends these two little cousins will be!
It's been really nice to be able to spend so much time with Jessica and Kit this summer. I go back to work tomorrow (WAAAAAA!!!!) and I'll miss seeing them so much. Thanks Jess! You're the best!

8 Months Old!

My darling little girl is 8 months old! Ok, she's almost 8 1/2 months old but who's really counting (me, obviously). She has learned to do so much over the last couple of weeks.

Allen went to Alaska the 22 of July thru the 1 of August. (You can see his suitcase to his left. This was right before he left, hanging out with his kids.) When he left, Madi was just starting to convert the scoot/ army crawl to a real crawl. She could just move a couple of inches off her belly and then would revert to the scoot. Merely days after he left, she mastered the crawl, learned to sit up with out any assistance, and to pull herself up on furniture ALL IN ONE DAY. It was like some one flipped a switch and all of a sudden, she could do all of those things.

She still loves to watch TV, and now she can do it up close.
We've been on a couple of trips lately, mostly bear lake, and Madi likes to help me pack.

She also likes to brush her TOOTH! That's right, we have a tooth. She won't let me take a picture of it yet but when she does, I'll post it.
Madi tends to crawl around in her crib a lot, especially if she doesn't want to be in there, so most of the time she ends up sleeping on her stomach, like this.

She has found a new toy that she likes a lot.

It's her own personal jungle gym!

She looks stoned!

And she still loves to be outside.

Happy 8 months my beautiful baby!