Jolene Homecoming: Californio-Italiano Stuffed Shells

6 September 2025

It’s been a long, but fast, couple of years since Jolene du Pré came home to Larkhaven.  She’s fully at home now, which means that, somewhere along the way, the humans lost control of the Way Things Were . . .

And we’ve progressed to the Way Things Are:  the art of living, in the moment, for the moment — without putting plans-on-hold whilst we wait for updates, fake-news alerts, Tinpot Dizzy-Diktator Diktates.

A person can learn a lot from a dog, any dog, any time of the day, any day of the year.  Letting go of those miserable memories takes some effort, but, after a while, it comes reflexively, almost naturally!

This morning, I set out to make lasagna, the Californio-Italiano version, for dinner.  That variety involves using whatever you can grab, in the local market, for sale, that week, or day, cause it ain’t gonna be there next week!

Dear Husband made a special trip early this a.m., when I was actually up, with the sun, at 6:45, to greet him and, then, Jolene.

The Homecoming Queen had awakened at her usual time of sun-up:  the precise crack of dawn that changes, ever so minutely, every day!

There are times, moments before le lever de jour, when I think of the title of my Master Book, THE DAWN, as a joke I, or my Muse, played on myself, Debra, the Non-Morning Person.  The sight of many a dawn has escaped my eyes, though not my creative field of vision!

At dawn, today, however, I was all set to get going on laundry, and even more organization of my sewing room:  brand-new, non-CA-banned, PLASTIC storage boxes, for my spools of thread, arrived yesterday!

Jolene was so excited to see me walking around the house at the crack of dawn that she raced toward me, tried to jump onto me, and, failing that manoeuvre (cause I jumped out of her way), she ran and grabbed a chew-toy to share with me — an orange fox made of firehose material.  She grabbed the precious, headless varmint in her mouth, and zoomed toward me, shoving it against my knee.

I, of course, shared my enthusiasm over the pathetic fabric mammal!

It’s hard for me to belly up to any sympathy for foxes, and I used to really like the cunning little creatures.  But, having found out how long the D.C. Foxes were guarding the Taxpayer Henhouse, I’m working slowly, but steadily, my way toward serenity on that one.  I guess one of the worst-kept secrets in the Tidal Basin of the past 40 years was how many of the nest-eggs got gobbled up by the Federal Foxes!

Here, way across the country, 3000 miles away, in California, the State Vultures have comically tried to approximate the Foxes-Guarding-the-Henhouse model.  A Vulture, however, just doesn’t have the same adorability factor as a Fox.  A Vampire’s even worse, no matter how much hair-gel it slathers on its freaky filaments.  The dawn always seems to arrive — and too soon — for the tax-blood-suckers.  The greedy guvmint buzzards got found out by the citizenry; now all Commie-fornia can count on for voting blocs are dogs, cats, and rats.  But no foxes.

Even the Heirs to Versailles, the California State Employees, understand their gooses got cooked with their own overpriced salaries, pensions, benefits, and promises no Democrat ever intended to keep.

I keep my promises.  And I promised Jolene and Dear Hubby that I’d make lasagna today.  It’s not my fault that the only boxed lasagna for sale in my region is made by a corporation I dumped decades ago, in favor of a less pasty-white version, made by Barilla.  My local market, however, does not offer, boxed lasagna that’s cooked by The Cook.  There’s only that half-baked preposterosity that I will not allow into my kitchen, or house.  I’ve really had enough of half-baked everythings.

I thought that maybe the pasta form of Lasagna was an American invention, as in Americano-Italiano cuisine, which is a far cry from the dishes made in Napoli, Emilia-Romagna, or even Sicily.  I researched the subject this morning, and discovered that the lasagna noodle dates back to the Middle Ages in Italy, circa 1282. (I shall forego citing the poem in which the lasagna is mentioned.)

Lacking a decent lasagna form of pasta, I went with an old favorite, one that I used to make very often, but haven’t in a few years:

Stuffed Shells.

I don’t stuff the shells, though.  The par-boiled shape of the pasta is a pain in the neck to stuff.  The thing falls apart, or cracks, in your hand, while you try to achieve the impossible with the carefully prepared filling.

Cooking, at its finest, is oftentimes a matter of going with whatever ingredients are there, at the moment, available, in season, at the peak of flavor, capable of creating taste sensations that even the Italians might envy!

The ingredients for this dinner are as follows:

1 entire box Barilla Jumbo Shells

1 lb. lean ground beef

1 jar spaghetti sauce (I prefer Classico)

1 cup onion, chopped

1/4 cup chopped chives

3 cloves minced garlic

2 mozzarella balls, or 16 oz. grated

16 oz. ricotta cheese

2 eggs, at room temperature

1/4 tsp. white pepper

1/4 rounded tsp. nutmeg

Juice of one half lemon

Par-boil (by half) the shells.  Drain and cool.  Set aside.

Prepare the ricotta cheese by adding the eggs, white pepper, nutmeg and lemon juice.  Stir to incorporate.  Put in frig. until the other components are prepared.

Sauté the ground beef in extra virgin olive oil in a large frying pan. Add the onion at the beginning; when the onion is almost translucent, add the garlic.  Gently stir in the chives last, cause they’re delicate.  Add the jar of sauce, and stir gently.

Cook this mixture until the ground beef is about 3/4 done.  Stir well; then take the pan off the heat and set aside on a potholder.

I don’t add any salt to these ingredients because the cheeses contain enough for my taste, but, as with any recipe, season to your taste.

Line up the components in assembly-line fashion:

— Ground-beef mixture, or meat-sauce

— Ricotta cheese mixture, gently combined with the shells

— Mozzarella cheese

Layer as follows in a 9x11-inch baking dish:

Cover bottom of dish with some meat sauce.  Sprinkle on the mozzarella, then place the ricotta-shells on top.  Add another layer of the meat-sauce, followed by the remaining mozzarella.

There should be 5 layers total.  Put in the oven at 350 degrees F. for at least an hour, or till bubbly.  I then add the top and let the casserole cook for another 10-15 minutes at 250 F.

This meal is my version of a New Jersey recipe that I learned during childhood.  I refer to this particular rendition, the Homecoming Celebration Meal, as Californio-Italiano because it is, at present, so severely limited in size and scope, in reality.  In my imagination, the feast is abundant!

Ideally, the dinner would include a luscious tossed salad for the starter course, accompanied by some crunchy bread.  That daily sustenance would be French, not Italian, since, for reasons perhaps known only to this gal from New Jersey, the Manufacture of Italian Bread never made it West of the Continental Divide, or anywhere near the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley.

The dessert would, of course, be tiramisu, with some strong black coffee.

The California version of Eating-In is not quite as taxing, restrictive and punitive as that of Eating-Out.  CAL-EPA, OSHA, and Governor-Gobble are not breathing down my neck this year.  At Larkhaven, there’s no Mandated Minimum Wage that’s intentionally so confiscatory that it drives out of the Golden State whatever is left of the Hospitality Business, a productive economic sector formerly known as Restaurants, Diners, Cafes and non-Starbucks Coffee Shops.

I don’t get a minimum, or maximum wage.  I work for free, or, as Dear Hubby knows, I take it out in trade.