I was going to blog about Manicotti

So, I made manicotti the other day, which as it turns out takes about an hour and a half to make and stuff 14 noodles. I may possibly just be incompetent though, perhaps it really only should take an hour. Anywho, I was trying to photograph the manicotti. I even went all out and set the table up all cute-like. If it weren’t for the Princess place setting, this could almost be romantic-looking. Enter Chris, who has suddenly decided he needs to be featured in the blog more, I guess. Dive-bombing the manicotti. This was apparently helpful, to demonstrate how tasty this looked.  Given my aggravation, of course, he had to try and lunge into every single frame. In some form or another, he was there. This was him telling me I needed to get a shot of him eating. He is pretty certain he was hilarious. I was pretty certain he needed to shave. Thankfully, after seeing these pictures, he finally decided I was right, he did need to shave. Phew. MMMM, caaaaalories. nomnomnom. I only had two. These were stuffed with a mix I threw together:
-my DIY meatball mix that I had browned instead of meatballing. (ground beef + StoveTop stuffing + egg + a few extra seasonings.) 
-some caramelized onions (half a gigantic onion)
-a can of parmesan-somethingsomething pasta sauce
-a cup or so of grated cheese
-a cup or so of grated and cooked cabbage! A little extra healthy, unfindable under all the pasta sauce and cheese. That mix was stuffed into the cooked noodles, which I then laid out and covered in pasta sauce and mozza-mix cheese. The evening of the day I had labored over these forever, Chris wasn’t feeling well, so I wound up freezing not just the ‘second serving’ for later, but this one as well. I should have taken it out of the freezer much earlier in the day, the middles were finally warmish when the stuff on the edge of the pan was starting to burn! Live and learn… Here’s Chris finally biting into the manicotti… he approved! He does not normally like tomato-based pasta dishes. Also, he did not know about the cabbage I hid in there. (insert cackles here) And I’ll send you off with a gross picture of Chris being a dork. ewwwwwwww. He said I absolutely had to post these, though. He’s a pretty big fan of himself. Nicole, by the way, enjoyed the manicotti as well. She ate every bite!