An Instant Classic

Oh, what a day! I slept in, worked out, and spent some quality time at the pool. But when I got back from the pool, I needed to make some lunch. My options were: 1) make a PB&J, eat quickly, not so filling, etc. or option #2:  cook up something. Think you can guess which one I chose?

If you guessed right, you're still reading this post - because yes, I did decide to whip something up. And once I decided that I wanted to make something, my mind took off trying to figure out what I could make. Here's how my thought process working:
"Hmmmm, what sounds good?" (as I open the fridge and pantry). I spot an already opened box of jumbo shells that I had used earlier in the week (which reminds me, I will be posting that meal shortly - I just got excited about this meal so I'm posting it first). "Alright, this is good, but what do I pair it with?" I don't want to open an entire jar of marinara sauce, so I look through my fridge and found pesto! But I only have so much left and don't want to use it all on this meal...hmm "how do I make a creamy pesto?". Looked that up and realized I had most of the necessary ingredients so that will work.

So after doing this type of thinking for 7 minutes, I had an idea of what I was going to do: Egg and cheese stuffed shells covered in pesto! Let's do this!

Sneak peak of the end results

1. Boil water in a saucepa, big enough to fit all of your jumbo shells, and once it boils, add in your shells
2. Time to make the pesto sauce
• Oh yeah, I totally decided to ab-lib this. I used pesto, butter, cream cheese, parmesan cheese, and minced garlic - basically everything I had in my fridge.
• I realized early on that I didn't want to make a ton of sauce, so I added two spoonfuls of pesto, a bit of butter, cut off some cream cheese and dumped that it, shook out some parmesan cheese, and knocked in some minced garlic.
• Yeah, that's how I did it - sorry if you're trying to follow this post and make it exactly like I did. If you want to make it how I did, don't bother taking out a measure cup - just bring along your tastebuds and go for it!
3. Scrambled three eggs with a little salt and pepper
4. Cut up some small cubes of cheese (I used havarti with dill, a personal favorite)
5. When the pasta is fully cooked, (typically 10-12 minutes because the shells are bigger, some would even call them "jumbo"...yes, it's ok to laugh at my bad jokes), drain the water out.
6. Stuff your shells
• Grab a shell, add a small spoonful of eggs, a cube or two of cheese and put on your plate
• Repeat until your plate is sufficiently filled to your liking
• Take a small spoonful of pesto and lay out on top of each shells, not completely covering the shell but proportionally just enough (that's how I thought when I put spread on top, I don't know).
• To add a little garnish and color on top, sprinkle red pepper flakes on top of the pesto.
• I thought of red pepper because it's something I would add to pasta and also to eggs, so of course it would work for this dish
7. Take a picture and dig in! (This is funny, because this is what I do every time before I eat now, so that I have photo evidence for my posts)

Wow that looks good! Oh wait, I got to eat that.

Here's too a little Saturday afternoon creativity!