What to do with extra spaghetti sauce and celery?

I'm half-Italian.  My father is full-blooded.  This makes me a rather emotional person sometimes, it also makes for great cooking.  Growing up, we had a dish called spedinis for special occasions.  They were delicious.  Several times I have tried to order spedinis in restaurants and they're never made like my grandma's or as delicious.  Either the restaurants are getting it wrong or my family is mistaken of what a spedini is.  The restaurants always serve marinated meat, that might be breaded, on a skewer.  My family took a cut of meat (chicken or flank steak) and pounded it.  We then created a stuffing out of tomatoes and breadcrumbs and stuffed the meat.  We rolled the spedinis up, coated them with breadcrumbs and baked them- yum!  Our spedini recipe was the inspiration for this casserole.  I had some extra spaghetti sauce and celery I needed to use up, so presto, Italian Chicken Spedini Casserole.  This would be great with a side of pasta, salad and garlic bread.  Mangiar Bene!


Italian Chicken Spedini Casserole


Ingredients:
6 Small Stalks of Celery
1/2 Green Pepper
1/2 Medium Yellow Onion
1 TBSP of Minced Garlic (mine was not dried)
4 Boneless Chicken Breasts
Olive Oil


1 1/3 Cup of Spaghetti Sauce
1/2 Cup Italian Style Breadcrumbs
1/2 Cup Cottage Cheese
3/4 Cup Mozzarella Cheese
1 tsp Italian Seasoning
1 tsp basil
1 Egg


Cut up chicken into to chunks.  Dice celery, green pepper, and onion.  Pour 1/8 cup of olive oil into frying pan and heat.  As soon as it gets warm, add celery, green pepper, onions and chicken.  Saute until chicken is no longer pink and veggies are completely cooked.  Mix in garlic towards the end of cooking.  Let mixture cool.


After cooled, pour mixture into a large mixing bowl.  Add spaghetti sauce and bread crumbs.  Mix thoroughly.  Add cheeses, egg, Italian seasoning, and basil and mix.


Spray your pan.  I used a round, 10 inch, deep dish Pamper Chef baking pan.  Pour chicken spedini mixture into pan.  Sprinkle 1/4 Cup parmesean cheese on top.  Sprinkle 3 Tbsp of breadcrumbs on top of the parmesean cheese.  Bake at at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.  Broil for 3 minutes until toasty on top.