A Batch of Recipes

5-Cheese Stuffed Shells with Homemade Tomato Sauce

• Here is the recipe for the stuffed shells.
• The tomato sauce was a little more complicated. I found this "how to" and decided to use the tomatoes from my MOH and the "baby" tomatoes from the plant that my mom gave us. I sort of followed the eHow instructions, but I added an onion (also from my MOH), and 1/2 cup of red cooking wine. I also used fresh oregano (leftover from another recipe), fresh basil and flat-leaf parsley (from our deck garden). It was super yummy, even though it took a while. I also recommend taking the seeds out of the tomatoes first (the eHow recipe doesn't say that you need to do that, but when I googled it, most websites said to remove the seeds before making tomato sauce).
• All in all, this recipe was good. Trying to stuff the shells wasn't that fun, though. Also, the recipe made a LOT of stuffed shells - enough that we froze a couple of servings for later.

Falafel with Tzatziki Sauce

• Even though the recipe doesn't clearly specify it in the ingredients list, you will want to have pitas and tomatoes to serve with this. Also, I didn't know how to make bread crumbs since I didn't have any dried bread sitting around our house. Lucky for me, the internet came to my rescue.
• We used this recipe for the falafel, but we didn't make the cucumber sauce from that recipe. Instead we used this recipe for Tzatziki.
• E made the Tzatziki the night before, and we only made 1/2 of the Tzatziki recipe. If you only plan on using the Tzatziki for the falafel, 1/2 of the recipe is the right amount. We used FAGE Greek yogurt for the Tzatziki, a cucumber (from our MOH), and we had to substitute mint leaves for fresh dill because we couldn't find fresh dill at the grocery store.
• This was a great recipe; I give it a double or even a triple recommend :)

Shredded, Saucy BBQ Chicken Sammies

• This is a good recipe for when you are craving something that is like a Sloppy Joe, but you don't want a Sloppy Joe.
• We usually end up freezing some of this to use later, because the recipe makes a lot.