Even though it is a gray morning, spring has returned at
last. Temps in the 60s, a bit of rain…
after the weeks of plunging into hard freeze zones, we’ll take it. Seems
strange to me how sunlight and warmth inspires activity, but there is no use in
denying it. Perhaps it goes back to the
days of hibernation. We want to burrow
in when it is cold, but hunt and gather when it warms up.
I’ve set some goals, soft goals, in my mind this week as it
relates to writing. The first one is to
get over myself. I’ve started several
pieces that have no endings and rather than doing the hard work to actually
finish and submit, I move on to the next thing.
The next thing last week was cooking, culminating in a small
dinner party last night. The main course
was ravioli, and since I have all the cool toys, we decided to make it from
scratch. Seems like homemade pasta and
the stuff we all boil in water from the grocery store are two completely
different dishes.
Making ravioli required a trip to the big box housewares store. We didn’t have a former/shaper/cutter for it,
and just wanted the results to be nice.
I’d seen lots of ravioli makers online that were decidedly low tech:
some looked like cookie sheets with holes in them, others finished edges with a
pretty crimp. But, true to ourselves, we
went for the high tech attachment to the fancy mixer.
And if we weren’t our first time, virgin ravioli
makers, it would have gone very well. The mistakes weren’t fatal,
but if you decide to try it, don’t stack your noodles on top of each other
waiting for their turn in the cutter, unless you have put wax paper or
something between them. And be careful not to overfill… if you use the
Kitchenaid attachment, it is pretty scary to clean.
Next time the process
will take less time, have less mess and result in fewer leftovers. I forgot to take pictures so will instead
post the sites where I got my base recipes.
As I believe one should always do with recipes, and formulas for most anything, I changed things to make
them more palatable for my family. Here
is the ravioli base I used: (I like giving credit where it is due.) http://www.sunnysideuprecipes.com/2010/07/ravioli-filling-3-recipes.html
(What did I change? Mostly just left out the pine nuts.) and here is the wonderful marinara sauce.:
http://www.nytimes.com/recipes/1015987/marinara-sauce.html (halved the garlic on this one, and used lots of oregano. I like oregano)
Cooking is a creative adventure, with immediate gratification. Writing is also creative, and can have
immediate gratification, if I can be satisfied with my work product as it is. The big difference for me is the finishing. There is an end to the cooking adventure, but knowing when, and how to end a story is a little harder. I'm working on a story set in the Dust Bowl right now. Maybe a little more spice will get it to stop tasting like... well...dust.
The ravioli got rave reviews. Time to give the fiction a turn.
