My original plan was to make stuffed shells from a cookbook my mother had gotten for me, Women's Day Wednesday Night is Vegetarian. But, when we made our shopping trip to Whole Foods, there were no stuffed shells available, so I decided to make veggie Cannelloni instead.
Cannelloni is a tube shaped pasta that is often stuffed and then baked with a sauce. I used the Rustichella d'Abruzzo brand, which didn't need to be pre-boiled. The filling was pretty much the same as what would have been in the stuffed shells - broccoli, carrots, onion, basil, ricotta and parmesan. I made the sauce from scratch using two containers of mini red and yellow tomatoes, onions, garlic, dried oregano and thyme and fresh basil. After stuffing the cannelloni (which I had to do with my fingers due to how narrow they were), we mixed the leftover filling with the sauce to thicken it, covered the pasta with sauce, topped it with mozzarella and put it in the oven to bake.
While the pasta was baking, I made the "cleaned-up" version of spinach & artichoke dip from this month's Clean Eating magazine. This version of the dip had 84 calories per serving, compared to 350+ calories for traditional spinach & artichoke dip. The secret is using pureed cauliflower and low-fat cream cheese (I did sub neufchatel) to sub for sour cream. The resulting version was lighter and "greener." We served it with toasted whole wheat pita seasoned with olive oil, garlic powder and salt and pepper.
For a side salad, I chopped up romaine lettuce and stirred in pomegranate arils, mandarin oranges and slivered almonds. We added a great dressing, TessaMae's All Natural, which was a mix of lemon, garlic and olive oil.
We barely have any leftovers, so I am considering this one a success!
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