Not Spectacular, but Pretty Good. Roasted Garlic and Spinach-and Chicken-Stuffed Pasta Shells

Today I made Roasted Garlic and Stuffed Jumbo Pasta Shells. I had never heard of or seen jumbo pasta shells before. They are crazy! The stuffed pasta shells recipe was fun to make, but I wouldn't order it at a restaurant because it involves a lot of preparation steps... A lot of room for food-safety error! Anything stuffed kind of sets off my foodborne illness questionnaire alarm! These were really delicious though. I started with a Rotisserie Chicken from H-E-B (yummy all by itself!) and chopped it up, mixed it with an egg, ricotta cheese, spinach, and parmesan cheese. Then I stuffed the noodles with the mixture and layered it with H-E-B Marinara Pasta Sauce in a Pyrex dish. I baked it for 45 minutes with tin foil, then added 2 cups (an entire bag!) of italian blend cheese to the top and baked it for 10 more minutes to melt the cheese. The result was a delicious, kind of lasagna-like dish. Well, chicken lasagna. This will make good leftovers!

Okay, so I guess I went with the good news first. The roasted garlic was not good. It was pretty though! I think I may not have cooked it long enough. It was not completely tender when I poked it with a fork once I had taken it out of the oven, but I had already unwrapped it and put the other dish in the oven, so there was nothing I could do! This recipe was a whole garlic bulb, cut to expose the cloves, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper. Once it's baked for 45 minutes you're supposed to be able to squeeze the garlic cloves and spread it on baguette. The cloves didn't really develop a "spreadable" quality though. Also, they tasted like plants! I think this recipe might be good if the garlic were cooked longer and coated with butter instead of olive oil. Shane and I didn't like the garlic mashed potatoes either though, so there's also a chance that we just don't like garlic!