Totally unprocessed dinner: Donna Hay's cannelloni

Every Wednesday, I am struck by how delicious my friends Kayte and Margaret's Donna Hay meals look. Every Wednesday, I think, "I really need to try that." But I never have. Until two weeks ago, when they posted these cannelloni and I knew that I really had to try these.




Being in the middle of our unprocessed month, I decided to see if I could make the whole thing from scratch, using all whole and unprocessed ingredients.




I think I did pretty well. I used: whole milk, lemons, vinegar, salt, pepper, spinach, whole wheat flour, eggs, tomatoes, onion, garlic, fresh basil, parsley, oats (ground into oat flour to replace the bread crumbs), Parmesan, olive oil...oh, and I guess I did use a pinch of white sugar.




I used my new DIY cookbook from ATK to make my first ever ricotta. It was amazing. And not very hard or even very time consuming. I can see why people say they'll never go back to store-bought again.




Then I used Donna Hay's recipe for tomato sauce.




I made my usual whole wheat egg pasta, rolling it out into long sheets for my lasagna noodles.




And then I assembled and baked it. It was amazing: the ricotta was lemony and bright, the basil and spinach were so fresh, the noodles were flavorful and perfectly textured...it was one of the best meals I've ever had, and one of the first times I can remember where I could taste each individual ingredient. And, in addition to the whole family gobbling it up (once the kiddos had scraped out some of the ricotta), I was so proud of myself for the meal I created. :-)