Vegetarians and Mountain Dew

I was given a recipe from a friend weeks ago and every time I vowed I was going to do it, something happened that prevented me from doing so. Some friends from home have been getting together to cook/learn to cook and the vegetarian of the group brought this nice entree. Not only is it vegetarian, it's pretty healthy, too. It contains a lot of cottage cheese, which I am not a fan of, but you whip it around in a food processor for a while making the texture more like ricotta cheese, which I do like. I did not capture any pictures of the making process, but I did get the end result.

Now, I know it's not that pretty, but I promise you it's really good. Not to mention, they're stuffed shells and are prone to run all over the place in the casserole dish.

The recipe is displayed below and is dictated by my friend Undy since she was at the cooking lesson.

Amy3's Stuffed Shells

Ingredients:

Box of Jumbo Pasta Shells
Large container of Fat-free Cottage Cheese
Jar of Spaghetti Sauce
Can of Diced tomatoes with garlic and basil (or some kinds of italian flavorings)
Assortment of vegetables. We used carrots and yellow squash, but you could also use zucchini or some other kind of veggie like that
Italian seasoning
Garlic powder
Spinach, optional


Preheat the oven to 375.

Put pasta on to boil. You'll want it not completely done because it will still bake in the oven.

I would see if you could drain some of the liquid off of the cottage cheese then put it in a food processor or blender until smooth. It will look kind of like sour cream. Grate vegetables and add italian spices and garlic powder. You'll pretty much just have to keep tasting it until it tastes good.

Put spaghetti sauce and diced tomatoes in a pan and let warm on low. The diced tomatoes are just to give the sauce a chunky consitency and to make the sauce stretch farther, so you don't have to use them, you just may need more than one jar of sauce. If you want the spinach, wait until the sauce is warm and then put the spinach in to let it wilt.

When the shells are done, drain them and let them cool until you can easily handle them. Spoon in the cheese mixture and try to close the shells and place in a casserole dish. Spoon in some sauce to cover the casserole dish and place shells in dish. Cover with rest of sauce. Cover the dish with a lid or tin foil and put in the oven for 45 to an hour. 45 minutes worked just fine for us.

I had plenty of cheese mixture and a few shells leftover and still made about 5 servings.

For dessert, I had seen a recipe for Apple Dumplings on the Pioneer Woman's cooking site. The ingredients grabbed my attention and the picture definitely held it.

Mmm. It's like mini apple pies sitting in a sea of butter and Mountain Dew. I know, crazy, right? I don't like Mountain Dew at all, but you don't taste it. It just adds a hint of bubbly citrus. One of those ingredients that when you're eating the finished product make you go, "Oooh...what is that bit of oomph?"

Also perfect with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Dumplings a la mode. Yum.