Manicotti

Making your own food goes a long way toward assuring you appreciate just what you're putting in your system. Today I made manicotti, and somewhere around stuffing the tenth one with a mixture of Parmesan, whole milk ricotta, mozzarella, an egg, the insides of four Italian sausages, spaghetti sauce (I thought it would be easier than whole tomatoes and sauce, and whole tomatoes tend to provoke an allergic reaction) and various other foodstuffs, I thought, "that's a lot of calories." Not Kirstie Alley six tablespoons of butter on some noodles calories, but still...significant. Fortunately, you don't have to eat ten manicotti noodles. You can just eat one or two and drink some fruit smoothie to counterbalance.

I used to make lasagna all the time. It was one of my favorite dishes, and I inflicted it upon many dates all the way back to my high school years. But I've gotten away from making it over time not because I like it any less, but because it's just too much food (even when I cut the ingredients in half) and too much of food that's not very healthy. On Friday, I went out for lunch with two members of my team and we discussed how it was a healthy lunch because we were eating a burrito at Chipotle instead of the all-you-can eat pizza buffet at Old World Pizza. Manicotti might make me feel that way about lasagna.