I was walking through the grocery store today, and while looking for my favorite mini rigatoni, I saw a box of shells. Large shells. The kind of shells you stuff with cheese. Never one to fight an impulse-buy, I grabbed one and started planning a meal…

Stuffed Shells isn’t my normal August-Go-To-Meal, but it wasn’t sweltering, today, and Nonna does like her pasta. And even though Victor and I both like our pasta, too, it’s much easier to blame things on the little old lady living in the house, ya know?!?

So through the store I went, finishing my shopping. The only thing I needed was the cheese for the filling – I had everything else at home. I grabbed ricotta, farmers cheese, and fresh mozzarella.

This was definitely a wing-it recipe. I took pieces-parts of things already in the house for the sauce, blended a couple of cheeses for the filling, and popped it in the oven.

First was cooking the shells…

I cooked the whole pound not really knowing how many I was going to need. I ended up with about 8 extra.

And then I started the sauce.

I pureed about 5 tomatoes from the garden and added about a cup of oven-roasted plum tomatoes in olive oil.

In a skillet, I browned off 6 spicy Italian sausages, added a container of sauce from the freezer, and the fresh and oven-roasted tomatoes, above.

I also had about a quarter-head of cauliflower that had seen better days, so it got chopped up and added to the pot. Waste not, want not.

Next came the filling.

The filling was simplicity, itself. A container of ricotta, 8 ounces of farmers cheese, 8 ounces of fresh mozzarella, and about 2 ounces of granna padano. I put it all into the food processor with a handful of parsley, a pinch of garlic powder, salt, and pepper. I didn’t add any binder – no eggs or any of that stuff. I figured the cheeses would stand up on their own. And they did.

I filled the shells using a pastry bag because it’s a lot easier than trying to do it with a spoon. Go out and buy a couple of pastry bags. They’re cheap. And they come in handy.

I added some sausage to the pans, added more sauce, covered one and baked it at 350° for about an hour. The other was frozen and then vacuum-packed for later.

We had lots of thick-sliced Italian bread and butter to sop up the sauce.

Nonna cleaned her plate. So did we.