Good food and good friends!

Unfortunately, my husband and I do not have internet access (yet) in our new apartment that we moved into last week. That means I won't be able to post as much as I would like here in the beginning. I do have access down by the pool, so I am sitting here on this beautiful Saturday morning with my coffee in hand ready to write! Although, I just got interrupted by the groundskeeper who just decided to run the leaf blower around the pool area...Oh well.

I've been meaning to make a list of all of the "lovely" things I encountered during the week, but because of the busyness of my week I just didn't think about it! One thing that did stick out to me was this delicious recipe I made for some friends we had over on Wednesday, and I wanted to share it.

We hadn't seen our friends Jared and Danielle in such a long time, so it was really nice to have them over now that our apartment is pretty much put together! We had a great time laughing, sharing stories about life, playing Scrabble, and of course, eating! We had a delicious meal of Vegetable Stuffed Shells, Tomato and Onion Shicaccia (from the Publix bakery - yum!), and Caesar Salad. I wish I had taken some pictures...oh well, next time!

The recipe is adapted from Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook 15th Edition. It was given to me as a Christmas present last year from my Mother-in-law and I spent the whole week cooking from it! One thing that I was quickly reminded of when preparing this is: make sure you read the entire recipe before you begin! I'm usually pretty good about that, but this time I was running super late and was assuming I knew how to make it when I was actually doing it all wrong! I was able to fix my mistakes and I did tweak the recipe a bit, but it ended up coming out great! Here it is (with my modifications):


You will need:
12 packaged dried jumbo shell pasta (I recommend making more as half of mine fell apart!)
1 1/2 cups coarsely shredded carrots
1 1/3 cups shredded zucchini (1 medium)
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 10-ounce package of frozen chopped spinach, thawed and well-drained
1/2 of a 15-ounce container of ricotta cheese
2 cups Italian-blend cheese
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 14 to 16-ounce jar of pasta sauce (or homemade - recipe to come!)

Directions:
1. Cook pasta according to package directions; drain. (I like mine to be a tad bit undercooked, since I decided to bake mine at the end. The original recipe is a stove-top version.)
2. Meanwhile, in a large skillet, cook carrots, zucchini, onion, and garlic in hot oil over medium-high heat for 3-5 minutes or until tender. Stir in spinach; cook and stir for 1 minute. Transfer to a bowl.
3. Stir ricotta cheese, 1 1/2 cups Italian-blend cheese, salt, and cayenne pepper into vegetable mixture. Spoon a rounded 2 tablespoons of cheese mixture into each pasta shell.
4. Cover the bottom of a baking dish with some of the sauce. Place shells on top of the sauce, then pour the remaining jar of sauce over the shells.
5. Sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup of cheese, cover with foil, and bake in a 350 degree oven for about 25-30 minutes.

This is one of the best vegetable-based dishes I have made in a long time, and my meat-loving husband honestly did not even know it was vegetarian until I told him! Doesn't get any better than that!

**Since half of my shells had fallen apart, I took the rest of the cheese mixture and made a small lasagna - it is equally delicious!

I will hopefully be spending the rest of the weekend relaxing as well as planning our menu and grocery list for next week...I'll try to post that later. Have a blessed Saturday!