Baked Ziti

Thanks goes to Katie again over at Runs for Cookies, I begged her a while back to post her recipe for baked ziti because it's a food I used to love when I went out to eat but never actually had it homemade before or even knew where to begin. Now that I know it's so simple! This is the recipe she posted on her recipe blog and I tweaked mine a little to my liking.

Preheat your oven to 400.
Bring about 4 quarts of water to a boil and then add 10 oz of penne pasta.
Let it boil around 10-11 minutes.
Mix 1/2 cup parmesan cheese, 1 cup of low fat ricotta cheese, and 1 - 1/2 cups of tomato or pasta sauce(I used Light Ragu No Sugar Added Tomato & Basil) in to an 8x8 glass baking dish. Add cooked pasta and mix together really well then top with 1/2 cup more sauce. (So that's 2 cups total you need) Put it in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes. Just before removing it from the oven sprinkle on 1/3 cup of mozzarella. Tadah!

With the brands and things I used, I calculated the whole dish to be 1800 calories and so if it serves four then that's 450 calories per serving.

I had 1 serving of it for dinner last night and now I'm eating another serving for breakfast this morning! Mmmmm!


In more exciting news, yesterday's ass kicking paid off! The scale yesterday morning said 189.8 and today it said 187.6!! Woo dropped 2.2 lbs in just a day. I know I can really do this and get back on track to the way things should be if I just push hard enough and quit getting distracted!! Being so close to 'the end' is what's throwing me off I think. Because I feel like oh well its just 1 lb up here and then 1 lb up there and i can just go melt that off in a day or two if i work hard enough. Which is true, but add all those up together and I'll be going up and down for eternity if I don't nip it in the butt right now and say hey enough is enough, get your shit together Jen and fly straight!

Today there is a 3 year old little girl's birthday party I have to take Jett to. I'm doing my best to control my eating here at the house until we show up there at 4pm... there is most definitely going to be cake and bbq and hot dogs and the like I'm told. So I'm going to have to test my self control tonight for sure. I think depending on how many calories I have left by the time I get there will dictate how much of what things I eat. Though I do not plan to have more than one small bite of cake from whatever Jett is given. I'm refusing to get my own plate of food and will just pick things off of his. lol. If the party wasn't going to be so late in the day then I would just not eat there and wait to eat until I got home, but after I'm done there we are going to meet up with another friend who only lives about 15 minutes from there and no telling how late I will be out tonight so I better eat at least something at the party to keep me from starving late at night and binging when i get home. I'll be sure to have lots of water with me today!!!