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Welcome to day 4. My morning routine now consists of me squeezing my friendship starter bag and its doing nicely. The starter is all foamy and smells yeasty. Is that a good thing? Perhaps.

Last night I made baked manicotti for dinner. It’s not what you think. I didn’t make it from scratch. I got home late so I stopped at Pats market in East Islip on the way home. They have lots of good premade stuff. I grabbed a thing of her marinara sauce for $6.00. pfft. When you have a case of lazy ass, you might not care about the price of stuff. I knew I was making the manicotti as it was in my freezer at home already but then I saw Pat’s meatballs and thought that would be a nice addition.  I looked at the price and choked. It was $9.00 for six meatballs. SIX! That is $1.50 a ball! F@$k that I thought! But, if I ever need money I know I could sell bigger and better meatballs for $1.50 off a food truck somewhere! That’s right, she has some ball I thought, but mine are bigger!

Anyway, needless to say, I didn’t get them. I picked up some mozzarella cheese as I was currently out. After what I said in a previous post about only getting the Polly-O brand I didn’t follow my own advice. I was probably still dazed by the price of a cold meatball for a buck and a half. Holy shit the American dollar isn’t worth much in terms of meatballs people! Make your own and become rich!

The mozzarella I got was from the brand, Kraft. It is not terrible but I like what I like and what I like is Polly-O.

I also made garlic bread because I had half a loaf of Italian bread frozen from last time. Lastly, I made fresh spinach to go with it. I think spinach goes well with the ricotta cheese in the manicotti. After all, I do use chopped spinach in my vegetable lasagna.

Long story short, there is nothing to making frozen anything. Just heat it up either in the microwave or oven. So of course, I used both. I began by placing the manicotti in a Pyrex baking dish and adding the $6.00 dollar sauce on top. ($6 + $9 = $15) $15 for sauce and six meatballs, without pasta! I might have to start charging more at work for lunch when I make it…LOL. Back to dinner. I covered the manicotti with the sauce and heated it up in the microwave for ten minutes. Then I covered it with the mozzarella cheese and baked it for another 20 minutes.  I like my food HOT.

While the Manicotti was cooking, I made Sautéed Spinach. Click here for the recipe for: the Fresh Sautéed Spinach recipe.

So much to cook, so little time.

The Drunken Chef (Russ)

If you knew to this whole Friendship bread thing. You can follow me and this whole process on INSTAGRAM here: