Spinach Cheese Manicotti

Yesterday, I was starting to feel better after the weekend's adventure, so I made dinner. I first tried this recipe last year, but apparently forgot how good it was!

Spinach Cheese Manicotti

INGREDIENTS:

1 (15 ounce) container ricotta cheese 1 (10 ounce) package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry 1/2 cup minced onion 1 egg 2 teaspoons minced fresh parsley 1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, divided 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided 2 (26 ounce) jars spaghetti sauce 1 1/2 cups water 1 (8 ounce) package manicotti shells

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2.	In a large bowl, combine ricotta, spinach, onion and egg. Season with parsley, pepper and garlic powder. Mix in 1 cup mozzarella and 1/4 cup Parmesan. In a separate bowl, stir together spaghetti sauce and water. Chopped spinach in one of my new mixing bowls from IKEA. LOVE it! Ricotta cheese, egg, and minced onion in my other new bowl. All mixed together, with the parsley, pepper and garlic salt. (We didn't have garlic powder). Tomato sauce and water.
3.	Spread 1 cup sauce in the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking dish. Stuff uncooked manicotti shells with ricotta mixture, and arrange in a single layer in the dish. Cover with remaining sauce. Sprinkle with remaining mozzarella and Parmesan. I've read about using a pastry bag to stuff these, and a ziploc bag as a substitute. Actually, I found that using my freshly washed fingers was the easiest and fastest way! Ready for the oven!
4.	Bake in preheated oven for 45 to 55 minutes, or until noodles are soft. It looks a little crispy, but it was really good! I've had a harder than usual time with multi-tasking and planning my time this week. Niels was home later than usual and we had to run an errand, so we turned the oven off a little before it was done so we could get back from the store before Daniel's bedtime. So, it might have been slightly overbaked, but at least it wasn't burnt!

Nutrition Information Servings Per Recipe: 6 Calories: 547

Amount Per Serving Total Fat: 18.6g Cholesterol: 80mg Sodium: 1310mg

Amount Per Serving Total Carbs: 68.7g Dietary Fiber: 9.2g Protein: 27.2g

The calories are a bit high on this, but the portion sizes are pretty big. We used 8 serving portions so it was a little more respectable! We have plenty leftover. (Mom, there may be some left over by the time you get here!)

This recipe is very generous, so I had quite a bit of extra sauce and spinach mixture after filling the 14 manicotti shells that came in the box. So I looked to see what kind of other pasta I had on hand. I found some pasta wheels from when Daniel was on a pasta kick. I decided to use those for a pasta wheel experiment.

We'll see what Daniel thinks of his new wheels in a few hours!