The Day the Mixer Died

Last night Lana and I decided to attempt making pasta from scratch again. Only this time we decided to not do ravioli. Not because ravioli isn't awesome but because we wanted to try something new. We decided to sort of follow this recipe but also sort of not since I don't like measuring and Lana doesn't like spicy things. Or actually, she likes them but can't handle them.

So anyways, we decided it might be to our benefit to follow a recipe for the pasta part of this adventure. After our not awesome ravioli attempt I purchased a pasta book which is pretty much the most amazing and informative book about pasta ever. Given it's the only one I've read. It's called The Complete Book of Pasta and Noodles by Cook's Illustrated.

I forget what the actual recipe said but we figured out it should be one egg to every 2/3cup flour. This was helpful to know because I have a mini food processor so we couldn't fit it all in at once.

The book also has lots of neat tips about how to know when the dough is the right consistency or how to fix it if it isn't.

This is also the point at which I sliced my finger on the food processor blade because apparently I cannot cook with Lana without blood loss. It hurt a ridiculous amount when I did it but now it's mostly just making it a pain to type. I typed 'amount' as 'amouint' four times before doing it correctly. You're welcome for my sacrifice.

I didn't get any blood in the dough by the way.


I have this thing that is awesome. It's called a pasta press. It's made by Kitchenaid and has these disks that attach to it for making different kinds of pasta, "including spaghetti, bucatini, fusili, rigatoni, and large or small macaroni."

Awesome right?

We decided to make bucatini which is a long noodle like spaghetti but is hollow in the center. Then we put this thing to work.



This is where you would have thought Lana and I had been raised in some third world country with no running water and were seeing, I don't know, a computer or like Times Square or something because the excitement in that kitchen was ridiculous.

Then we made a pasta tree.




When we were pretty much done my mixer shut off on it's own which it will do if the motor is being worked too hard in order to keep it from breaking. So we decided to forgot about our last little piece of dough and start cooking the pasta.

If you decide to do this at home (which you should) know that this pasta gets very...puffy. What seemed like a normal sized pot to cook pasta in became not at all sufficient and I had to dump everything into a larger pot partway through.

I didn't take photos of our sauce making because it wasn't very exciting and also I forgot but we used the recipe I showed you above except I didn't measure the grated cheese, we used more of the wet ricotta, and we used feta rather than ricotta salata. Also we used less red pepper and more actual pepper.

We decided to not use bread crumbs or oil on ours because we didn't think it really needed either. We ended up trying it and liking it a lot with the bread crumbs but still didn't put any oil on top. I'm honestly not really sure why you would.

So that should have been the end of things and we all lived happily ever after except my mixer still wouldn't turn on. So we looked online and in the manual and it said to let it sit for 30 minutes to cool. So then about 2 hours later I tried and it still wouldn't work. I tried switching outlets, putting another appliance in that same outlet, using the breaker...I was not feeling good about this. I decided to wait until morning to see if that would bring better news. But it didn't.

I called the Kitchenaid people and spoke to someone who asked me what happened and I explained and then she ended up telling me that apparently whatever powers the motor also brings in air to cool the motor. So basically, in order to power this attachment with the disk we were using we should have had it at setting 10 to bring in enough air but we were all nervous about overworking it so we used it at setting 2.

Now I fully admit that this was totally my fault. Lana asked me if I had the manual for the attachment in the beginning and I told her it should be in the drawer where I keep those. When it wasn't I remembered I had read it while laying in bed but I didn't go try to find it in my room and we just soldiered on. If I had read the manual I would have known how to not break my mixer.

But, the amazing thing is, Kitchenaid is replacing mine with a brand new mixer in my same color and paying all the shipping. No one said, "Sorry girl, you're an idiot and we print huge booklets of instructions because um, they matter." Instead they explained to me how to not break the mixer and are giving me a new one. How incredible is that? I mean, I'm sure they'll get my old one and refurbish it and sell it which will likely cost them little but they totally didn't have to do that and even though it's probably a small blip on their radar it makes my day.

I'm taking a pasta making class next week too so I'll pass on any amazing bits of knowledge I end up with.

I'm not a player, I just crush a lot.

Today Portland has decided it's Spring. Which is nice, it really is. I've spent the day driving with the sunroof open, playing the Blender top 500 songs of all time, loving the crisp air. I got to tie side knots in my maxi dress midway through the day. The sun is shining...but instead of feeling happy and optimistic about blooming flowers and the beauty of new life and bluebirds on my shoulders or whatever, well, I just feel sort of melancholy.

This happens every year so I shouldn't be surprised but when it's gorgeous out I really miss being a nanny. I miss picnics and parks, walks, buying dollar loaves of bread to feed the ducks, hopscotch, laying on the dirty driveway so the kids can trace me with chalk and getting up to find not only am I covered in dirt and pine needles but also chalk dust and an ant. I miss the freedom to just walk out the door into the sun and play. I miss the feeling of coming home after a long day in the sun to ice cold water and all of us collapsing on the couch and cuddling up even though we're all sweaty.

And I think about how now I can pay my rent and don't have to worry about money and have health insurance and a 401K and that all is really wonderful and I'm thankful for it but I still sometimes wish my days were full of play structures and ice cream.

I think I have reverse seasonal depression.

This is the Way I Live

Javi and I are laying in bed reading books about treats. I'm pretty sure I like my life. Especially when it's this cozy.

The Emerald City

Lana and I went to Seattle this past weekend. She also taught me that Seattle is called The Emerald City which I said makes no sense and asked for the reasoning behind the name and she said "I don't know, why is Portland called The City of Roses?" and I told her it was because Portland has a climate super conducive to growing roses. Which I think makes me the winner of that exchange. I did try to look up why Seattle is called The Emerald City before writing this but mostly a bunch of Wizard of Oz stuff came up and the Wikipedia article for Seattle is really long so I gave up.

We left Saturday morning and started our trip with a stop for coffee and me taking the longest route possible to a gas station. After that point Lana got to be in charge of directions for pretty much the whole rest of the weekend. When we got to Seattle she got us to our hotel very smoothly except we ended up on the wrong side of the street so I did this super badass U-turn in the middle of the very busy 1st avenue in downtown. It was pretty much action movie worthy. Also I didn't hit anyone.

This was our room. After we slept in it though. It didn't come like that.


After we checked in we left to shop. We started with a couple cute shops across the street from our hotel. One of them was actually cute but extremely over priced. Plus none of it was stuff we couldn't find elsewhere. There were a bunch of candles and soaps and stationary and some jewelry and Stonewall Kitchen things. Lana did get a metal dog tag that said "treat" on it.

The store next to that was deceiving. It looked like this cute little shop from the outside and then it was all penis shaped planters and ceramic bunnies with knives in them and a pile of packing peanuts made of plaster inside. We're not talking funny gothic naked people in a snow globe, we're talking art. Unfortunately it was also one of those places that is small and has one person working there who definitely has nothing better to do than watch you as you realize the second you walk in that this place isn't for you and then you have to do the awkward obligatory stroll through before bailing since walking in to immediately turn around seems rude.

Next we went to Free People and this other really neat shop I can't remember the name of but they had great clothes. It was also 500 degrees in there so we had to leave. We ended up going to the biggest Nordstrom ever, Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, and probably my new favorite place ever. It's called All Saints. It's sort of like someone met Lana and me and smooshed our styles together. They had loose and baggy, masculine fabrics, flowy things, beading, sequins, and 99% of it was in the most gorgeous neutrals. The brand is based out of London but has seven US stores. It's a bit pricey but everything was like 70% off so I ended up getting this gorgeous dress for a fraction of it's original price.

I'm thinking belted with a harder wide brown leather belt it will be amazing. Actually I know it will because Lana tried it on later in our hotel room and looked super adorable.

They also have this amazing children's line. I might have to get knocked up just so I can buy my child a tweed funnel neck trench. Apologies for the blurriness. I think my camera hates Seattle.


After our shopping adventure we went back to our hotel to figure out dinner and change. When we got there we realized we had about five different lights in our room but the one main one wouldn't work so I called down and asked for someone to come up and look at it. The maintenance guy came in, turned it on, and looked at us like we were the stupidest girls ever. And adding insult to injury were all the shopping bags sitting around.

We aren't actually idiots I promise.

We then decided to check out a place called Emmer and Rye that had been recommended to me. When we showed up sans reservation the wait was a bajillion hours to they recommended a place called Who Cooked The Wolf or something. I'm not going to bother looking up the real name or posting a link because the menu was lame and there was a loud child so we left and found ourselves at a lovely little place called Portage dining next to Loudon Wainwright III. I knew his voice sounded familiar and after some sneaky Googling on Lana's part we figured out he was Steven's dad on Undeclared. As well as in a bunch of other stuff. Lana also took a sneaky picture over my shoulder that I'm pretty sure we totally got away with despite all our giggling.


Next up was dessert. We headed to a place called Simply Desserts, one of those ridiculously tiny places that's always packed and doesn't take credit cards but can get away with it because the food is just that amazing. I had Mexican chocolate cake and Lana had some fudge cake thing (mine was better). As delicious as it was though, we couldn't finish.




Then we went and saw No Strings Attached at the weirdest theatre ever. Apparently it's the year 2000 because they still had a giant cardboard cutout for Big Momma's House. As well as Big Fish, which, by the way, has Loudon Wainwright in it.


Then we crashed.

Sunday morning we met a friend of mine and Lana's brother for brunch at Portage Bay Cafe. And that was pretty delicious. As well as surprising laid back for Sunday brunch when we showed up and they didn't have my reservation. They got us in within five minutes.



After that we just did more shopping (I told you that's all this trip was for) and visited Madewell, J.Crew, and H&M. By about 4:30pm we were dragging and decided we might as well start our way home on the condition we could find somewhere to eat on the way home that didn't come with a drive through. Lana got on Yelp and found this place that seemed promising so we made plans to hit it up.

Then we got gas which I've never done myself. And I guess I still haven't since Lana did most of the work. And by most I mean all.


So we drove and drove some more which wasn't super eventful. Then we exited the freeway and drove into the middle of an industrial park and then just into the middle of nowhere to go to a restaurant I was pretty sure was going to end up being a version of the ladies with the tea in Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

In actuality it was possibly my favorite part of the trip. This restaurant is called Mary McCrank's and is in an old house. Our experience here started with me pulling into the gravel parking lot and Lana telling me to not park in "the paralyzed spots" which has continued to make me laugh to myself even through today.

When we walked in the place was entirely empty. We were the only ones in this place that was pretty much the epitome of going to Grandma's house. I'm not sure words can fully explain.


See?

The waitress was this super friendly middle aged woman who kept talking to us but it wasn't even annoying because she was just so charming. We did finally have to tell her we couldn't eat anymore bread which really made it feel like being at Grandma's house. We ended up sharing salmon, salad, carrots, mashed potatoes and fried mac and cheese.

Lana went to the bathroom at one point and kept insisting I go too before we leave so after dinner we went in and as soon as I opened the door I burst out laughing. I'm not sure this room could have been more pink and old lady gaudy if someone tried. There was also a super attractive wall of mirrors.


Then we were on our way home. And there was this gross super misty rain that made driving a pain but as soon as we crossed the state line the rain became pretty rain that didn't make it hard to see and that's when it was confirmed Portland is my favorite place.

Oh, also Lana brought the Girl Talk album All Day for our drive and I'm addicted. Go listen if you haven't.

I did a bad, bad thing...

Even Javi likes them.

An Amazing Discovery

Last year I went on a hunt for an iPod adapter for the car. I'm not even sure if that's the right name for it but I'm sure you understand what I'm talking about. I was actually looking for one for my boss and after trying bunches from the Apple store, online, and Best Buy as well as pricing an in car installation I finally came to her defeated and promised to burn all her Italian lessons and any music she wanted onto discs for her CD player. Which was met with "You can do that?!"

It's nice to be an everyday hero.

With my upcoming "drive to Seattle to shop" trip just around the corner I made plans to have a CD burning party with Lana because I figured after trying all those adapters before there likely wasn't one that was going to all of a sudden work now. And even less a chance that I would be able to find it. But I decided to give it one last shot since the thought of burning a bajillion CDs and then having to figure out where to put them in my car and try to figure out what I wanted while driving seemed a little silly.

There are three ways to listen to music from an iPod through your car stereo if you don't have something installed. You can do the whole faux tape in the tape player thing, use a cord that plugs into the headphone jack and your stereo, or use an FM transmitter. I don't have a tape deck in my car and I'm actually wondering when they will stop making those cassette tape things for your car. I remember my 7th grade crush connecting his Discman to his mom's car stereo with one of those tapes. I'm fairly certain it's not long before those are a thing of the past. Anyways, I also don't have a jack for whatever that cord is called on my stereo. So that leaves me with the most sucky option which is the FM transmitter.

I have an amazing talent for losing ever single iPod I come in contact with so even though I'm pretty sure there are about seven of them hidden somewhere in my things I can't find any. Since I needed to get one anyways I figured I'd do this thing backwards and pick the radio transmitter then an iPod that would work with it. So I walked into the Apple store and a lovely girl approached me and very cheerfully asked if I needed any help. I waved my hand in the general direction of the wall of car adapters and told her I needed one of those. One that works. Then she said "An iPad?" which was nowhere near what I was pointing at but she smiled a lot so I forgave her for pushing her useless product on me. She found someone to help me and he was actually not very helpful other than taking every option off the wall and reading the packages to me. I think the people who work in Apple stores must have to deal with some ridiculously stupid people because sometimes I feel like they're talking to me the way one might a pre-schooler.

Basically I just ended up picking something out myself as well as an iPod touch...iTouch...I don't know. Whatever they're calling it now. It seemed easiest to control while driving.

I was prepared for this to not at all work and for me to just have to return it but surprise of surprises it's actually more than decent. There have been a couple static spots but nothing that doesn't clear itself up in a few seconds. I mostly noticed it while passing a radio station and in a very forest-y area.

The one I got is called the TuneBase LIVE FM by Belkin. I'm using it only with an iPod so while it looks like a couple people had problems with using it with an iPhone and switching between hands free calling and their music, that's not an issue for me. I also love that it charges your device for you since I am the worst ever at doing that. Aaaaand it has this handy dandy little dock thing on a bendy arm so you can adjust things to your liking.

I've only used mine for a couple days but so far I'm very impressed.

The Stone Soup of Blog Posts

I've been very blog neglectful this past week due to some silly life drama stuff so I'm basically going to throw all this nonsense together and hope it counts as a post.

First, I'm bored of the photo month. I thought it would be fun and it's sort of not so I think I quit that one.

Second, I'm ridiculously excited for two things. First, I'm taking a trip to Seattle with Lana for the sole purpose of shopping. It's just a weekend trip but I can't wait. It will also be the first time I take my cute car anywhere farther than the coast. Last week it was making pretty much the worst noise ever in the entire world. It was like a metallic whine when I braked in reverse. Yeah, only in reverse. I was pretty sure that I was going to need to basically buy a new car or at least replace all the brakes or something but turns out it was a rock. So that was good news. Lana and I are having a road trip music selection party on Wednesday.

We're also staying at a super adorable hotel.


The second part of point number two, the other thing I'm so super excited about is that the internet has brought me together with a real live Portland chef who I've been emailing with and who has offered to cook with me. This is where I just smile like an idiot because I am that ecstatic. She even said I have "skill" so I've been bragging about that one to a few people. I'm also in love with the fact that I can ramble like a crazy person to her about food and restaurants and cooking and cookbooks and she hasn't once rescinded her cooking offer in fear that I am possibly ADD and on speed given I never shut up. So that's nice as well.

The Free People January catalog is out and gorgeous as always. There are a few things I like a lot. Two of which I stopped into the store and bought yesterday.


Sunburst Maxi Dress By Free People in Washed Black (which means navy in real people words)

Convertible Crochet Halter by Free People in Ivory

I also made a fairly amazing shoe purchase but it deserves it's very own post.

Oh, I'm pretty sure that I am going to make my hair a lot more blonde this week. Which I sort of swore off a few years ago but hey, if it's bad I can always go back. I would like this hair color exactly please.


Craig and I are having dinner tonight and I am so looking forward to it. I haven't seen him in probably a whole week. We're going to eat cajun tater tots and burgers (mine will be veggie) and I'm going to tease him at every opportunity.

I leave you with this. Which is what I wake up to.

A Month of Photos: Days 9 & 10

Yesterday I was dying of a headache disease, otherwise known as a migraine, so I had to (again) put off photos.

Day nine is supposed to be a photo of someone who has gotten you through the most and I hate to sound...however I'm sure this makes me sound, but I think the person who has gotten me through the most is myself. Since I was 18 I've entirely supported myself. I've had friends and others who helped me during hard times but I haven't had anyone else to pay my bills or buy me a car or let me come home when I couldn't afford rent or who paid off my credit card. And I know that finances aren't probably what this was supposed to address but I feel that when you're able to provide for yourself financially you've achieved much more than that. I've never had someone that explained paperwork for me or helped me with my taxes or made big purchases with me. And yeah, I've paid too much for a car repair, I've not been able to go do things with friends because I couldn't afford it, and I've been nauseatingly nervous before signing paperwork with wonder over whether I was doing this correctly but I'm also thankful for all those lessons and that I feel confident and capable without relying on others. It makes me feel good to know I can take care of myself. Of course there have been times I've thought it would be nice to be able to be a bit more carefree and make some bigger mistakes knowing there's someone to bail me out if needed but also, as I leave my early twenties and enter my mid-late twenties and I see people around me with their parents still paying their bills or getting them out of tough positions they've gotten themselves into, and it makes me really happy to be doing well on my own and to not have to worry about transitioning into truly standing on my own two feet at 26, or worse, later. I feel good to be through that phase.

Day ten is supposed to be a photo of someone you see yourself marrying in the future. Which is pretty stupid so I'm not doing that. I will say that I see myself marrying someone who doesn't believe in traditional gender roles, someone who at least feigns interest in the things I'm passionate about, someone with different interests than my own, someone who will allow me to cook every night and knows the value in waiting until 10pm if needed to eat the most amazing food, someone who's willing to try new things, and someone who is okay with me having my own private place away from the one we share. Also someone who doesn't comment on what's going on in my closet because I seriously don't need someone asking why I have eight pairs of black heels.

I made some more art. Sort of.

I bought these really fantastic frames at Z Gallerie a few weeks ago. I wasn't really sure what to do with them or where to put them but I fell in love and they were 25% off so I pretty much had to buy them.



See?

So now I needed to decide what to put in them. I have a whole wall of photos in my living room so I wanted to do something different. I decided these were going to go in my hall and I wanted to put wallpaper in them. Except I didn't really want to buy rolls of wallpaper and I also didn't really feel like finding a wallpaper store and flipping through books and pretending I was going to buy something so they would give me samples and then get the wrong sizes and...the whole thing seemed like too much work. Know who has beautiful wallpaper though? Anthropologie. And their samples come in exactly the size I needed, 4"x6".

On their site you can request up to 13 samples of wallpapers so I decided to go big or go home and request the maximum 13. When I got them I was quite impressed.




The samples came in this really adorable envelope that someone had written on in very loopy letters with hearts and it was really just too cute. I wanted to photograph it but I also don't want to post my address and have all of you coming over for snacks and to look at my walls and all the things I super glue together.

Anyways, the samples came with this very handy and informative little card full of info. If I actually intended to buy wallpaper this may have sealed the deal. Also each sample had all this important stuff that I'm sure would be very helpful if you knew about wallpaper and were trying to map out how to hang it.

These are the samples I got.



I only had eight frames so I knew I needed to cut out five of the options. I decided I would use these ones somewhere else.



Then I mixed and matched to my heart's content.



And then two weeks later I got around to hanging them.

A Month of Photos: Days 7 & 8

Yesterday I spent the whole day being supremely unproductive and it was wonderful so I didn't end up posting my photo for the day. Which means you get two (and really it's three) today!

Day seven was supposed to be a photo that shows the real you. I guess to me that means something vulnerable. I have four tattoos but the ones that have the most significance to me are the ones on my wrists. One says 'live' and the other says 'heal.' I got the one that says live during a time in my life where I felt really stagnant. I think to some tattooing the word live on your wrist would be a reminder to do big things and take risks but for me it's more about doing things that challenge me but also being sure to work towards bettering my life and creating the way I want to live. It's a reminder to not be reckless.

When I got the word heal tattooed on me I was feeling a lot of hurt from a few things going on in my life and I needed a reminder to move on and get better and to grow from those things rather than dwell in them. I wanted to remember to learn from life rather than be brought down by it.

Both are in white ink so while they're out there for everyone to see few people actually notice them and it makes me feel as if I'm carrying around a secret. In a good way.




Day eight is "a picture that makes you laugh." So here it is.



UPDATE: These are what the tattoos look like today. Literally.

Portlandia

Someone just sent me a link to this. I'm pretty sure it's going to inspire a weekly viewing party. I already have the DVR set.

A Month of Photos: Day 6, somewhere I've been

I have this habit of never taking pictures when I travel. I get so wrapped up in experiencing what I'm doing and where I am that I end up with a few last minute photos when I remembered to take some. Also I don't like to put pictures of people on my blog without making sure it's okay with them. So for that reason you get a very loose interpretation of a travel photo.



For awhile I was visiting Boston pretty regularly to see a friend. There was one trip where we met in Chicago then flew back to Boston together. In Chicago we wanted to find a toy store for something...a back of the door basketball hoop I'm pretty sure. At one place we found these amazing scooters that we really wanted but they were like $200 and also we had to go to Boston on a plane and scooters probably would have been an oversized or not allowed item.

When we got back to Boston we went to Providence, RI to see a concert and on our way saw a Toys 'R' Us so we decided to stop and see if we could make a last effort to find a basketball hoop since apparently Chicago doesn't carry them. Somehow we decided to also buy a bunch of musical instruments including a keyboard and that we would use these to busk except we don't really like that word so we just called it pan-handling. When we got back to Boston (again) and bought bongos and decided to do this thing.

There was a lot of thought that went into this. We decided typing a sign, using a guitar case but no guitar, and wearing designer jeans would be the ultimate in pan handling irony. We went to Newbury street, a high end shopping area in Boston, and camped out in front of Ralph Lauren. We stayed about two hours before being interrupted by a thunder storm and having to pack up and run.

It was by far one of the most fun things I've done while traveling or ever.

Pasta Pockets

I have wanted to make homemade ravioli for a ridiculously long time. I'm almost embarassed to confess I've been thinking about it for about two years and have never made it happen. I guess I just had in my mind it was the sort of project that would take the entire day and even though I love cooking, the thought of spending the entirety of one of my few days all to myself in the kitchen wasn't super appealing. I mentioned to Lana though that I wanted to tackle this challenge in the "someday we should do this" kind of way people do and within three days she had us making ravioli. That girl gets things done.

We went into this with the mindset that it was a learning experience. Neither of us had done this before, neither of us had even made homemade pasta before. I'd seen it done before on The Food Network and once in this really terrible movie, but that was pretty much where all my pasta making knowledge was gleaned from. I knew it was just mixing eggs and flour though so it didn't seem that difficult. Plus I know someone who is really terrible at cooking and she can make homemade pasta so I figured we could do this.

We (Lana) made our dough. We decided to add rosemary to it because we love rosemary and that seemed really delicious.


I started our sauce. I've only made from scratch tomato sauce once in a cooking class and it was amazing but cooking classes take hours and I sort of end up having no concept of time when I'm in one so I had in my mind that making a from scratch tomato sauce was going to take like three hours but then Lana and the internet told me I was very wrong and that this was actually a super simple undertaking. And they were very right.

Our sauce began with diced onion and pressed garlic in some basil olive oil.


I'm in love with this stuff and sniffing it is heaven.


I thought I'd also just share that if you hate peeling garlic as much as I do you can buy it already peeled for you which is awesome. Or you can purchase a garlic peeler which is like magic and totally simple to use and actually works.


Next we added a couple cans of whole tomatoes, some tomato paste, pepper, and fresh oregano.


Lana poked and squished all the tomatoes and we let it cook for awhile.


Luckily I was cooking with someone who I have a pretty similar palette to because we like our sauce the same way, not chunky and not thin. After maybe an hour of cooking our sauce was still a little too full of tomato pieces for us so we let it cool a bit (so we didn't shatter my blender) then pulsed it a bit. We put it back into the pot to heat back up and at this point we added some salt. With liquids and sauces especially it's wise to wait until towards the end of the cooking process to add salt. If you add it at the beginning and things reduce and become more concentrated it's a lot harder to try to make something less salty than it is to just add your salt at the end. We still felt it was missing something though so I added a bunch of garlic salt and at that point we had achieved making the most amazing sauce ever. Lana told me "It tastes like it came out of an Italian jar." Which I honestly was a little offended by and told her so. Because I thought the whole point of this was for it to not taste like it came out of a jar. But then she clarified she meant it tasted like someone in Italy made it then put it in a jar. So that's how good it was.


Next we made our filling which we decided would consist of ricotta, parmesan, a touch of mozzarella, spinach, asparagus, salt, pepper, and an egg. The asparagus ended up not adding a lot of asparagus flavor but because we roasted it it ended up imparting a really good kind of smoky flavor.




Then came the part where we old school rolled out our pasta dough by hand. It was also at this point that I stepped on a piece of glass from a glass I broke three days prior and apparently didn't clean up well enough. There was a lot of blood but I'll spare you any photos since I've already shown you my blisters once. I also dripped blood all over the floor while walking to the bathroom and Lana offered to clean it up which I declined since cleaning up other people's blood isn't very fun but it was very sweet of her.


Once we got our pieces rolled out we tag teamed this ravioli project and put little piles of filling on one of our pieces of dough and then covered it with the other person's. Then we used these ravioli stamps I'd bought forever ago. There are a lot of tools for making ravioli and many different ways to do it but these stamps were really inexpensive and worked well in my opinion.




Once we had our raviolis made we cooked them which was fairly simple. Sort of like how you've cooked pasta a jillion other times.


In the end our sauce and filling were amazing. And the rosemary in the pasta was an excellent idea. Our pasta just turned out a little tough. As I mentioned before this was meant to be a learning experience so something turning out not perfect wasn't really terrible. We just need to figure out a way to make it better. Lana read that you are supposed to let your dough sit for ten minutes before working with it so something happens with gluten. We left our dough for longer than that so I'm not sure if that process continues or tapers off after ten minutes or if that had anything to do with it being tough anyways. We're going to work on it though. Also there is a significant possibility our not following a recipe had something to do with things. Dinner was still delicious though. And I can't wait to try this again.