Okay, I’m back to comfort food this week with these Pesto Stuffed Shells Meal Prep. It’s a classic pasta dish that I paired with Homemade Garlic Bread. I had planned on making it an even more well rounded meal by adding a side of Vinaigrette Slaw with Feta, but discovered last minute that my cabbage was rotten on the inside. But that’s okay, there’s spinach in my Pesto Stuffed Shells, so it’s not like this meal is void of vegetables. :) I’ll just have to go extra vegetable heavy next week!
Both the Pesto Stuffed Shells recipe and the Homemade Garlic Bread make more than four servings, but the Pesto Stuffed Shells freeze beautifully and I don’t know if you’ll have any problems gobbling up the extra garlic bread (that actually freezes great too, if it makes it that far). ;)
For more information about meal prepping, how it works, and why I do it, check out Meal Prep 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Prepping and Portioning Meals, or check out my entire Budget-Friendly Meal Prep Archive.
Pesto Stuffed Shells Meal Prep
This Meal Prep Includes:
Pesto Stuffed Shells: $7.81
Homemade Garlic Bread: $2.43
Total Cost: $10.24
Cost per box: $1.97
Plus about two extra servings of Pesto Stuffed Shells and a couple extra pieces of garlic bread! (about $2.37 worth)
Notes:
- My Vinaigrette Slaw with Feta would make an excellent side salad for this meal prep because it’s made out of cabbage, which holds up well in the fridge. The original recipe includes both red and green cabbage, but it’s great with red cabbage only if you don’t want to buy both. I’d probably pack the salad in a separate side container.
- New containers! On advice of many, many readers, I invested in these Pyrex glass containers. I like that they are wide and shallow, which makes them easy to stuff with multiple items without everything being on top of one another.
- As mentioned above, the Pesto Stuffed Shells freeze really great. Try to scoop up as much of the pasta sauce from the bottom of the casserole dish to top the shells with before freezing because the sauce will help prevent them from drying out.
- Garlic Bread also freezes great. You can freeze the extras before baking, as I did in my Homemade Freezer Garlic Bread recipe, or freeze it after par-baking if you just want to reheat it briefly in the microwave.
And that’s all I’ve got for you this week, folks! :) Hope you had a great weekend!
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Tried this as a meal prep, and loved it. The only this is that my garlic bread got soggy. Any recommendations on how to prevent that?
Thanks!
I think the next best option would be to just pack it separately. At least it’s still made and ready to go! :)
I’ve done a variant of this with roasted summer squash, zucchini, and onions with oregano and garlic instead of garlic bread. I love some garlic bread, but sometimes I feel sluggish if I go super carb heavy. It also means it reheats together better.
Giant shells are non-existent in Australia. Do you think you could make these as cannelloni instead? I think it would work well.Â
Yes, absolutely. :)
Do you think there is a way to freeze these?
I mean together in the same dish.
Each item in this meal prep freezes great individually, but I think if you frozen them together in one box you’d have a little difficulty reheating them. The bread will reheat in a fraction of the time that the stuffed shells require. So I would probably pack and freeze them separately.
Are there re-heating instructions Somewhere for all these delicious looking boxes?
I just microwave until it’s hot. :) Nothing special and every microwave is different, so it’s difficult to give exact instructions.