Friday, February 4, 2011

Stop What You're Doing and Make the Hell Out of This

I'm serious.  Do you like pasta? and cheese?  and sauce?  of course you do.  You're alive, right?  That's just the basic rules of life.  If A then B, etc, right? So make this.  It will make you happy.

First off, it's vegetarian.  I've been trying to cook more veg meals lately, but it's hard!  A dinner without meat just seems to be lacking a lot of times.  I had actually planned on throwing some crumbled chicken italian sausage in here, but for some reason (laziness) I decided not to.  All in all I'm glad I didn't use the sausage though, because this is just perfect.  Maybe I'm hyping this up a little bit, but I'm pretty sure upon further review at lunch, I will be sure that I'm not.

Spinach Cannelloni
A Weight Watchers adapted recipe

10 oz fresh spinach (like 3-4 large handfuls)
1 C part-skim ricotta cheese
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
8 dry lasagna noodles
2 C spaghetti sauce (I prefer Cleveland's Own Little Italy Spicy Pasta Sauce)
2 slices Mozzarella cheese
Sprinkle of Parmesan cheese

Cook the noodles according to package directions.  Drain and lay flat.

Wash spinach- don't drain, just throw into the noodle pot and wilt, about 3-4 min on med heat.  Stir continuously.  Drain well, squeezing out all liquid.  Chop finely.

In a separate bowl, combine chopped spinach, ricotta cheese, salt and pepper.

Preheat the oven to 350º.  Spray a 9 inch square baking dish with nonstick cooking spray.  I prefer using a Misto with Olive Oil.  When the lasagna is cooled slightly, place the spinach and ricotta mixture on one end of the noodles; roll up, then place, seam-side down, in the baking dish.  You could probably half the noodles and only use 4 if you wanted, its a lot of extra noodle in there.  But they're NOODLES! who doesn't love them?

Pour pasta sauce over cannelloni.  Place a 1/2 slice of cheese over every 2 cannelloni; sprinkle with a bit of Parmesan.


Bake until browned and bubbling, about 20 minutes.

Makes 4 heaping servings- (2 cannelloni's each).  Approx. 8-9 Points Plus points, depending on what type of cheese and sauce you're using.

Look... just look how beautiful.  Sure, mine could have been more browned and bubbling... but I was hungry!  Also- I used Swiss cheese, because I didn't have any mozzarella.  It was still amazing, but I'll go with mozzarella next time I make this.  Which will be soon, I can assure you.

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