Smoked "Mozzarella" Manicotti with Spinach and Peas, Bell Pepper with Seitan, Corn (Gluten Free)

I recently found vegan smoked "mozzarella" from Miyoko's Creamery I had some brown rice manicotti shells and decided to make manicotti. The vegan cheese is a bit high in fat (it's an 8 ounce package and has 5g of fat per ounce), so I thought I'd make manicotti with half the cheese, but ended up needing about 3/4, so the total fat from the cheese (and nothing else contributed significantly more fat) was 30g of fat. The 9"x13" baking dish was heavy with the 16 filled shells and sauce; I anticipated that we'd each eat 3 shells, so have about 30g of fat x 3/16 = about 6g of fat. Here is what I did.


Ingredients

• 7 ounce box of manicotti shells, prepared according to directions (I used a gluten-free brown rice shell that had 16 shells that I boiled for 4 minutes)
• About 40 ounces (I used 25 ounce jars, so went through almost two) of a favorite marinara sauce
• 6 ounces of vegan smoked "mozzarella cheese" roughly cut into 1/2" or smaller pieces
• 1/3 cup onion cut into approximately 1/4" cubes
• 1/2 cup frozen (or fresh) chopped spinach
• 1/2 pound frozen (or fresh) peas
• (optional) Few T of nutritional yeast
• Ingredient 2
• 8 ounces of seitan
• Vegan bouillon cube
• 2 cups onion cut into half moon slices approx. 1/4" x 1 1/4" ( maybe 2/3 of a medium onion)
• 1 1/4 cups carrot cut into 3/8" slices (3 small-medium carrots)

Process

1. I put a thick (maybe 1/4") layer of marinara at the bottom of a 9"x13" 3-quart glass baking dish.
2. I mixed the cheese, onion, and spinach together to make the filling.
3. For each prepared shell, I stuffed (well, my daughter helped and she did the stuffing!) half way with the filling, then put enough peas in to leave only 1/3 of the shell empty; that I stuffed with the filling.
4. I placed each stuffed shell in turn onto the sauce in the baking dish.
5. Once the shells were all placed, we spread the remaining sauce on top of the shells, then my daughter generously sprinkled nutritional yeast atop.
6. I baked the (heavy!) manicotti for 40m, covered, in a preheated 375°F oven.

I also made a simple side dish of bell pepper, onion, garlic, and seitan (I used a crumbled chorizo seitan), as well as corn.

Results

Dinner came out well. My daughter especially loved the meal. I couldn't believe that she ate 5 manicotti shells and kept saying that she wished that she had room for more. I ate 2 and was quite full.

Ideas for the future

Pending