Calzones and Marinara Sauce

So, my blog isn't supposed to be a full on food blog, but sometimes that is what it becomes. I've been getting a little sick of it, so hopefully that will help to motivate me to take my camera out and shoot something that ISN'T food, because it has been far too long. This might be because it is cold and dark out, and because I'm in my final quarter of school and SUPPOSED to be working on my final project at all times... :) 41 days left!!

Even though I'm sick of it, I'm sure others will still like to see some of the food that I've made. When planning our meals last Sunday, I thought about having calzones. Ben suggested spinach and chicken, so a quick google search led me to this recipe. I was VERY skeptical since it came from Mayo Clinic, and healthy recipes and I usually do not agree with one another. Then I found this blog post from We are not Martha (great blog by the way - check them out!) and decided it might be okay.

I did add mozzarella to the mix, and also put in WAY more parmesan than it called for (4 teaspoons?? who are they kidding!) so mine weren't quite as healthy, but that's just fine with me. The most frustrating part of this whole process was rolling out the stupid bread dough. We got the frozen dough on Sunday afternoon and just put it the fridge because we made these Monday night. They had risen a bit but not much - I have no idea if that would affect how easy it was to roll it out (not easy at all). Next time I'm using pizza dough.

My calzone looks a little bloated.

I thought these would be kind of bland on their own, so I made marinara sauce to dip them in. I used this basic recipe from Giada De Laurentiis. It came together very easily. Since Ben is a chunk hater in sauces, I used the immersion blender to make this nice and smooth for him. This sauce was delish, and it made way more than we needed so I froze a lot of it for a future meal. One note - it says to "simmer uncovered" but I found that if it was completely uncovered, it looked like a marinara sauce bomb went off in my kitchen, so I put the cover on but left it cracked instead.

This was a great meal! The filling in the calzones tastes great AND as a bonus is pretty good for you. The marinara sauce also is healthy (I think? I hope.). Which makes it much easier to justify the 2 cookies I had for dessert.