Stuffing

On sunday I made a batch of my standard stuffing


large onions small dice
4-5 garlic cloves, run through a press

saute, then add

500 g(1 lb) hamburger
300 g ground pork
large splash lee & perrins
balsamic vinegar
sriracha hot chili sauce ( you ought to know by now how much you will tolerate) don't overdue it
1 tsp celery salt
1 tbsp+ club house roasted garlic & peppers

brown, and i mean brown until no liquid is left in pan and then brown the meat after the liquid is gone. DO NOT drain any liquid, cook it off. You can add some wine that is leftover on the counter, then cook it off again

add whatever veg you have
I usually add 1 cup of shredded zucchini or mixture of zuc and grated carrots, then brown mixture until veg is limp.

add 1 container 500 g cottage cheese, ricotta or combination off.
1 cup panko bread crumbs
1-2 eggs
1 can heinz tomato soup, or 1 cup tomato sauce you have hanging around or whatever liquidy tomato-y thing you have
if you have some leftover hard cheese, grate it and throw it in, not necessary but if there are bits and pieces, why not....

mix the whole mess up

On sunday i stuffed rigatonni noodles

I used a roasting pan. First I sprayed cooking spray, then upended can of heinz soup spread it around then layed stuffed noodles on tomato mix, but any tomato-y mixture will do, whatever preference is, but if using tomato soup, nothing else will do except heinz believe me everything else SUCKS. I have used spaghetti sauces, and tomato sauces, its usually whatever I have on hand that will cover the pan about 1/4 inch.

and do not put noodles into tomato mixture, but just lay lightly on top so that the mixture will cradle the noodles while cooking. otherwise they will not cook nice on the bottom.

after stuffed noodles are finished then spread the same tomato mixture on top of the noodles, being generous but not soupy (if you know what i mean, don't drown them) cover will foil in the preheated oven at 350 for about an hour, take the foil off after about 50 min and test noodles for done ness, but be carefull you will get blast of steam and it burns owwww

The recipe will give you lots of leftover stuffing mixture, for me it's usually about 2 sandwich bags that I toss into the freezer for those lazy days. You can defrost and add a carton of cottage cheese or ricotta and then lasagna noodles make a nice lasagna, add mushroom stems and lots more garlic and you have a nice stuffed mushroom,

But on wednesday (actually sooner than expected) I opened the pantry and a box of "oven ready" canallonni noodles literally fell down on me, so I unthawed a bag, added a sandwich bag of spinach that I steamed then chopped up, I also had a dish of edemane beans left over from the night before, so I shelled them and threw them into processor with a handful of leftover corn niblets, and threw the hole mess into the stuffing mixture that was unthawing and viola.....dinner.

Just stuffed the larger noodles by plunging them into stuffing, and laying them the same way as with smaller noodles on sunday. This time I found a sandwich bag of frozen canned tomatoes ( that heaven only knows were leftover from something else) and added 2 cans heinz soup mixed it up with a splash of lee and perrins and balsamic and italian seasonings then half went on the bottom half on the top and in the oven at 350 for about 40 min, cause cannelonni (bad spelling I know) cooks faster than rigatonni noodles.

This is the best stuffing mixture to have on hand in freezer for any sort of combo for dinner and whatever noodles, shells, are handy.