Sausage and 3-Cheese Stuffed Shells {One for Tonight and One for the Freezer}

I have 3 kiddos in my house, and they are not the most adventurous of eaters. I can however sneak just about any red sauced pasta dish onto their dinner plate and just call it "pasta" and they don't ask questions. Because of this, we have some version of "pasta' at least weekly (that and some version of "tacos"- which can be burritos, enchiladas...). Me and my husband get tired of having spaghetti all the time, so I try and change it up with a dish that I know we will both love, but that's also simple enough in flavor that the kids will also gobble up.

You can certainly use Italian sausage in this dish, but the breakfast sausage gives it a less spicy flavor for our tastes. If using Italian sausage, you can eliminate the Italian seasoning. Even though there are 5 in our family, we would never eat all this recipe makes (and it's too hard to half the sausage and beef packs) so I always make one for the freezer. This is also a great meal to take to someone who just had a baby.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup diced onion
• 1tsp. Minced garlic
• 1 lb. breakfast sausage
• 1 lb. ground beef
• 15 oz. ricotta cheese
• 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tsp. Italian seasoning
• 1/2 tsp. salt and pepper
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella, divided by 1/4 cup for the cheese mixture, and 1/4 cup for top of each dish
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 jars marinara sauce
• 1 box jumbo shells
• Fresh chopped basil (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cook onions and garlic in some butter in large skillet. Add sausage and ground beef and brown. Cook shells according to package directions. Remove from heat. In a bowl, mix the ricotta, Parmesan, mozzarella, spices and egg. Add to sausage mixture and combine.

Grease a large baking dish for tonight, and another oven proof dish that has a tight fitting lid for your freezer. Pour a thin layer of sauce on bottom of each pan. Drain shells and stuff sausage mixture inside each shell (a heavy tablespoon full). Arrange shells in single layer in both baking dishes. Cover with remaining sauce. Top with mozzarella cheese and basil. Bake the one for tonight for 40 minutes. Stick the other in the freezer. When ready to eat, bake it at 350 for 1.5 to 2 hours. You can also set this out in the fridge a few days before you plan on cooking it and you can reduce the cooking time in half.

I'd also like to note, that if you have leftover meat/cheese mixture after stuffing all of your shells, you can freeze just this mixture to use in the future. It is great to use in our Spaghetti Lasagna recipe!

Tonight I'm serving with a Simple Italian Side Salad.

This recipe was featured on our 30 Days of Dinners June Menu, Make sure to check out all of the other great recipes on that month's menu!

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Weekly Menu #1!

Some of our dedicated readers may remember us doing monthly menus about a year ago. They were a big hit and earned us lots of pins on Pinterest (thank you :), however they were a bit of work to format on our part. Especially because both of the magical moms contributed to each monthly menu, there was a lot of formatting and fonts between computers that just wasn't easy to work with. And because most moms usually go grocery shopping on a weekly basis, we thought this format would work a little better for us, and make it a little more organized for you.

We put the weekly menus together with our tried and true recipes, and you get all the adoring compliments from your family! We will suggest a starch and veggie/fruit dish for each main course (pasta meals already have the starch). And remember, all of our posts are recipes that we use, and the pictures are our actual meals (have you ever made a recipe from Facebook and they show ingredients that aren't even on the ingredient list? Well that's because a lot of websites use stock photos- paid for photos of other food!) And we always welcome comments and questions for each of our posts. We are magical, but that doesn't mean we don't make mistakes, or that someone may alter a recipe that really needs to be shared with everyone, so comment away!

Each week we'll try to have a good mix between beef, chicken, pork, pasta, seafood, etc. Our weekly menus will also be relative to the time of year... not a lot of grilling recipes during the winter months, and less crock pot in the summer. We also realize that it may not be realistic for you to cook at home all 7 nights of the week (don' think that's ever really happened at my house), so our weekly menus are just Monday-Friday for 5 dinners a week. Shift them around as needed of course, but that's just how we'll lay it out for simplicity's sake.

Monday
Herb Butter Steakhouse Steak
2-Step Potatoes with Loaded Sour Cream
Henderson House Salad

Tuesday
Coco Loco Chicken Tenders
Better Than Rice-a-Roni  Broccoli Cheddar Rice
Garlic Parmesan Green Beans

Wednesday
Spicy Bacon Carbonara
Low Carb Italian Chopped Salad

Thursday
Buffalo Thigh Surprise
Garlic Rosemary Potato Wedges
Herb Butter Corn on the Cob

Friday
Spicy Italian Shredded Beef Sandwiches
Oven Roasted Asparagus

I'm sure this will be a weekly menu your family rave about!

Follow the Magical Moms on Facebook and Pinterest for weekly menu ideas, crafts, and Disney Magic.