Say Cheese

I made manicotti for supper tonight. I didn't have all the ingredients to make any one recipe so I combined two or three to incorporate what I had on hand. I learned some important things about preparing manicotti. You don't really have to use two eggs if you only have one, only the recipe from a maker of pasta sauces uses two jars of sauce, and those fat little tubes are hard to stuff.

I allowed 15 minutes to prepare the recipe before it went into the oven. All the recipes claimed to be easy as well as delicious. They lied. At least about the first part. It took me 30 minutes just to fill the shells.

I tried the handy tip from one cookbook - just put the filling in a plastic bag, snip off the end, and fill up the shell. This works well if you were born with three or four hands, which I wasn't. I abandoned that technique after one shell, but after a couple more shells and cuss words I learned the easiest method is to cheat.

I split the pasta open lengthwise, laid a few spoonfuls of the cheese and spinach mixture down the middle, rolled it up so it looked like a tube again, and placed it seam side down in the dish. Once I put sauce and cheese on it, nobody could tell the difference. It certainly didn't affect the taste any.

The moral of this story is: If you can't follow the directions, make up your own.