Italian I am not!

Yesterday I spent several hours over at my mom's house having a "ravioli" adventure. (Or fiasco, which ever you'd prefer to call it.) My mom's co-worker had brought some homemade ravioli to work one day and let my mom try one. Mom commented that they were delicious. The next day they worked together, the co-worker had brought in her Ravioli maker and recipe. She told my mom, "they're so easy to make."

Problem #1 - we didn't have a pasta maker, so we were attempting to make pasta completely by hand, and the bloomin' dough kept shrinking. We'd roll it out, it would shrink back, we'd roll it out, it would shrink back. My arm muscles are still sore...

Problem #2 - we had taken the "it's easy" to heart, and planned on making a years supply of Ravioli. Okay, not really, but we did double the filling recipe so that there would be plenty for each of us. After attempting the first batch and realizing that ravioli making was not our forte, we mixed up a second batch of dough and when that wasn't going any better we decided that we were done pretending to be domestic Italians. We used up the dough we had, then just divided up the filling to use in giant pasta shells or Manicotti. (I'm going to try it in Won ton wraps. I think it will be good)

Result - After over 2 hours of labor (interspersed with taking care of children of course), we decided that we were done, and we had about 40 completed Ravioli. We cooked up a couple of the ravioli for lunch. (They LOOKED really cute and yummy) Can you say TOUGH??? Apparently we over worked the dough AND didn't roll it out thin enough. Mom and I have both declared that we will never spend (waste) our time making homemade ravioli again.

I finally got home just in time to pick up Aaron from school, and by that time I was DONE for the day. So... I did nothing productive in my house yesterday. I got up determined to have a good productive day today, and for the most part I've done alright. Certainly could have done more, but at least I've gotten the kitchen done and a couple loads of laundry washed and out on the line. These days I kinda just have to take what I can get.