Sausage Stuffed Pasta Shells

Over the years, I have found that I really enjoy cooking. Most of all I like to create recipes, or adjust recipes I've heard of, or tasted. Most of the time I'm pretty successful. I think I'll try and post a few on here to share with anyone who wants to try them out...I apologize in advance. I will probably never have exact measurements for my recipes, because I do not typically measure anything out, unless I'm following a recipe. And for most of my creations, I never look at any recipe.

Today I decided to experiment in the kitchen, I saw a box of jumbo pasta shells in Safeway and decided to try making stuffed shells. But I wanted to add some sausage to make it interesting. And so we have: Sausage Stuffed Pasta Shells.

Ingredients:
-1 box jumbo pasta shells
-About 13 oz. of pasta sauce
-15 oz tub of ricotta cheese
-About 1/2 c. mozzarella cheese, shredded
-About 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, grated
-1 tablespoon oregano
-About 1/2 teaspoon salt (to taste)
-About 1 teaspoon pepper
-Italian sausage
-About 1/4 c. mozzarella cheese, shredded for topping

1. Boil the pasta, and cook the Italian sausage in a frying pan. The sausage is best in small bits. But you can cook it how you like. Cook enough for the mixture and for the sauce if desired. Drain the sausage of fat, and allow to cool. When pasta is done boiling, drain and rinse with cool water.
2. To make the stuffing mixture, combine the Ricotta, mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese, oregano, salt, pepper, and sausage once it is cooled.
3. Fill the pasta shells with the mixture, and place in a pan that is prepared by spraying with a non-stick cooking spray. I also placed a small amount of sauce in the bottom to prevent the shells from burning, and sticking to the pan.
4. Top the filled shells with the remaining sauce, and sausage. And sprinkle with mozzarella cheese.
5. Bake in oven at 350 for about 25 minutes.

Here are some pictures to show you what the process looked like.

Here is the pasta shells I used. The first step of course is to boil these. I only boiled 11 shells for two of us. (I wanted leftovers.) The key is to think about how many people you will be serving. 2 shells was plenty for each of us, with some bread and salad.

Here the sausage is cooking and the water is boiling. The sausage is best if it is ground and in small bits. I cooked some for in the stuffing mixture and also some for the sauce.
The stuffing mixture. Looks kind of gross here, but in the finished product, was very good. I used low-fat ricotta, but feel free and use whatever kind of ricotta you want.

The shells.

A small amount of sauce on the bottom of the pan.

One shell with filling.

Ready for the oven.

Ready to eat!