at long last: stuffed shells

This one is for my dad, who’s been waiting patiently for a new post. In fact, we made some awesome muffins together in May that have yet to grace these pages. Sorry, Daddy! Enjoy this one.

Every now and then a gal has to revert to her teenage years to maintain a little sanity, whether that’s laughing until you cry at a fart joke, spending an afternoon trying out different shades of eyeshadow in the mirror, or spreading a blanket on the floor to have a sleepover with some friends. (I routinely do the first two, just in case anyone was laboring under the misconception that, at thisclose to thirty, I am an actual adult.) Life has been a little stressful for some of my closest roller derby gals, so we decided to have a slumber party last night and attempt what I’ve been trying to do for several months now: make stuffed shells. In a rare flash of foresight, I bought more ricotta and mozzarella than I needed last week while making lasagna for a dear friend’s going-away party so that I could finally make the stuffed shells and quit thinking about them, so we were all set.

With my ladies keeping me company in the kitchen, I executed the dish (in Top Chef language) in a stunning display of non-dumbassery, resulting in this:

Whoo-hoo!

The only issue I had was with the tomato sauce, which I blame on Kroger. I usually buy tomato puree so I can flavor it the way I want to, but all they had last week was tomato sauce, which kind-of tastes like Spaghetti-O’s. Since my parents never let us eat Spaghetti-O’s when we were kids (and since my mother made her own tomato sauce from the garden), I’m a bit of a tomato sauce snob. With a little Spatini and some sugar, though, it was pretty good. We would also like to register our displeasure with Kroger garlic bread, since the eight slices promised on the box turned out to be seven once we got it all laid out on the baking tray:

Scandal! I’m proposing a Law and Order episode entitled, “The Missing Piece.”

But we soon forgot our pain at losing a delicious slice of garlic cheese bread when we remembered that my dear “derby wife,” Full Metal Smack-It, brought chocolate and strawberries for dessert. Turns out, she picked up unsweetened chocolate, but we all figured it would be OK if we added some sugar to it to sweeten it up. Wrong!

Rejected.

Luckily, wifey brought some white chocolate too, so we had these for dessert:

Absolutely perfect!

In case this wasn’t enough to make up for several months of absence, I’ll let you know there is currently an eggplant sliced up and covered with salt in my kitchen. I couldn’t help it — I went to the farmer’s market yesterday and stopped by a stand to buy some tomatoes for The Husband, and there it was, all perfect and purple. I remembered my bitter failure with eggplant before, but I am determined to make this thing work. I read up on preparing eggplant, and  apparently you’re supposed to sprinkle salt all over it to draw out excess moisture and then rinse it off right before cooking. After it’s finished drying out a bit, I plan to bread it and broil it this time instead of baking, so we’ll see what happens. (And yes, Daddy, I will finally get around to posting pics of the muffins, as well as my failed attempt at making asparagus roll-ups.)