From Scratch

I love cooking, and luckily so do my sisters! My sister who lives 30 minutes away, especially, because sometimes we can cook together! Like on our day off. Like yesterday!

She has one of those mixer pasta-maker attachments, and she's never used it. We were going to use it to make our hubbies fresh ravioli for respective romantic Valentine's Day dinners, but the night before Valentine's Day, our uncle was rushed to the ER and eventually needed brain surgery, so her and I had to go sit with his kiddos so his wife could be at his side. (By the grace of God, he is totally healed today!!)

ANYWAY. We decided that since it was a cold rainy day, what better activity to do but be cozied up in the kitchen in our warm sweaters with steaming hot chocolate while making ravioli pasta from scratch! It was so fun!!

We had never made pasta dough before, and so we were a little alarmed at the dough consistency once it was mixed. It was VERY dry. Not exactly crumbly-dry, but definitely not pie-crust damp. But, we went by what the instruction book said and, what do you know, it worked PERFECTLY!! (We made our separate fillings prior to making the dough- ground turkey, ground beef, and pumpkin!) We had to let the dough sit for 20 minutes, during which we stared out the window at the constant gentle rain and remarked that we couldn't believe it had been raining for 14 hours straight (it is still raining today!)!! Once it was time to actually put the dough through the maker, we again followed the directions, against all previous dough-preparation-knowledge, but the maker worked exactly right! Soon we had neat little sheets of pasta dough!! We then went to work making our own little ravioli's, using a ravioli cutter that my mom gave me for Christmas last year. I made 29 ground beef's, and 6 pumpkin's!! (Mr. A will not eat the pumpkin's- I'll get to eat those when he is out hunting or something!) I think she got about the same total amount of ravioli's, but she made more pumpkin's.

She took hers home on cookie sheets (you have to transport them in a single layer so they don't stick together), and I froze half of the meat and all of the pumpkin, saving 14 for dinner for us last night. They were SO YUMMY.

AND! Mr. A and I used the pasta sauce we made from our tomatoes this summer! And we ate bread I made yesterday! I was so proud of our home-grown dinner :)

I wish I took better pictures...I didn't even take any of the finished ravioli's- oops! And when it was time for dinner last night, you can bet they weren't on the plate for very much time!

This morning I sent Mr. A off to work with his thermos of coffee and two pumpkin muffins, made on Monday night, totally 100% homemade, even using fresh eggs from a friend who has chickens, and beginning with fresh pumpkin puree I made a few weeks ago and froze!

I think it is so fun to make things from scratch. It might take alot more time, but I think overall, it's healthier for everyone and usually tastes better, too. Not to mention there is some sense of pride knowing that all of the ingredients are actual foods and not perservativ-ed to death. Also not to mention that Mr. A is now spoiled and does not think those super-easy skillet meals are any kind of contender for dinner. Ha! (I have to admit, sometimes I wish he liked those, but I have a bunch of quick dinner recipes that are my go-to if I don't feel like cooking something more complicated.)

I sure hope our baby will like home-made baby food ;-)