Chicken Manicotti

I have had manicotti shells in my pantry for some time and decided several weeks ago to use them.  I had a whole chicken in the freezer and I thawed it and decided to make up my own recipe for chicken manicotti.  Gary loved it.  He wanted red sauce instead of white but you could make up an Alfredo sauce and put over this and it would be great.

This is how I made the manicotti.  I boiled the chicken till tender, let it cool and the took the meat off the bone and diced the chicken.  I had one bunch of green onion and chopped them up and put into the meat.  Then added the following:
1 small container of cottage cheese
1 cup sour cream
1 1/2 cups of grated Mozzarella
1 cup Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon of basil
1 teaspoon of oregano
salt and pepper to taste
Mix all of this together well. 
Then cook the manicotti noodles according to directions.  Do not over cook them.  In fact, I don't cook them the full amount of time because the manicotti will cook when you bake the completed dish in the oven.  Run cold water over the noodles and let them cool a little before you try to handle them.  I then take the filling (chicken with cheeses) and use my hands and push (gently) the filling into each noodle until it is filled.  Lay each noodle sided by side in a greased casserole dish.  When you have filled all of the noodles and cover them with a marinara sauce.  You can make your own but I used bottled. Then put one cup of grated mozzarella cheese over that and lightly drizzle olive oil over the top of the cheese. Cover the dish with foil.
Bake at 350 for one hour and remove the foil the last 30 minutes.

I used green onions because I had them and wanted to use them up but you could sauté one medium onion and add it to the chicken mixture. I think fresh spinach would also be good in this.  You could put about 2 cups of chopped fresh spinach in your cheese mixture and use an Alfredo sauce and I think this would be wonderful.  I'll have to try that myself.