In search of the perfect macaroni and cheese: Holiday cooking

     Who would have guessed that your intrepid chef would have found a time or place to cook in her busy holiday plans? Well, you would, of course! So, I bring you onto what I hope to be many (well, at least two!) blogs about my cooking over the holiday season.
     I should first mention that these next few blogs will not take place in my own lovely kitchen. Instead, I will brave the elements (literally!) to cook in a variety of places on the east coast. My first stop? Gloucester, MA and the kitchen of my fiance's mother, Dot.
     I am very fortunately in that I can say I have a wonderfully lovely mother-in-law. Soon to be mother-in-law, I suppose. With the typical stigma that mother-in-laws get, I was rather nervous about meeting Scott's mother for the first time four years ago. Fortunately, Dot is a very down to earth genuinely nice person! After eating her wonderful cooking, I wanted to give back a little by cooking for her. Dot doesn't thrive on the spicy stuff (especially green chilies) like Scott and I do, so I decided to do the simple (but delicious) stuffed shells. It was the first time I had made stuffed shells but knew they had to be very similar to stuffed manicotti which I had made before. Fortunately for me, they were! I modified the recipe a little bit (dropped the mushrooms that an online recipe had called for and added ground beef instead). My recipe is as follows:
STUFFED SHELLS

1 (12 oz) package pasta shells
2 eggs, beaten
1 (32 oz) container ricotta
3 cups shredded mozzarella
6 oz shredded parmesan
1 tbsp parsley flakes
2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground pepper
1 jar of tomato sauce
1 lb ground beef

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cook pasta in boiling water for 8-10 minutes. Drain and rinse off with cold water.
3. Cook ground beef and drain off fat.
4. In one bowl, mix the beaten eggs, ricotta, 1/2 the mozzarella, 1/2 the parmesan, parsley, salt and pepper.
5. In another bowl, mix the ground beef, tomato sauce and the rest of the cheese.
6. Stuff the shells with the ricotta/eggs/cheese mixture and place in a buttered 9 x 13 baking dish.
7. Top with the meat/cheese/tomato sauce.
8. Bake in the oven for 45-60 minutes until the edges are bubbly.

     That's it! It's a pretty easy dish to make. I have become really good at multi-tasking in the kitchen, so I preheated the oven, boiled the water and ground the beef all at the same time. While those were all cooking, I mixed the cheese (it was so cold!!) and then the tomato sauce. Stuffing the shells was a bit laborious, but not too bad at all (especially since I rinsed them with cold water so I wouldn't burn myself!). The baking dish was definitely stuffed (get it, stuffed? haha!) to capacity and I was a bit nervous putting it in the tiny oven. I started smelling a burning smell about 40 minutes in, which I theorized was caused by a little bit of sauce boiling over and hitting the bottom of the oven. Certainly none of the food burned! And the final verdict? Delicious, of course! Best of all, Dot enjoyed it!