July 22, 2011

This week was a scorcher...crazy hot! What is a mom to do with three little monkeys with cabin fever? Get out the pasta maker, of course!!!! I've had a pasta maker attachment for my mixer for a few years. It came with a few other attachments that I use more regularly, but I had never tried the pasta maker before this week. About a year or 2 ago I attended a pasta making class and loved it. With the right tools, it didn't seem that hard. That very evening after the class I bought a ravioli cutter. I now fully admit it...I've had the tools to make ravioli at my disposal, but I had never tried it.

Instead of using the recipe for pasta from my class, I used one from one of my favorite cook books, The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. It was really straightforward, egg pasta. All the ingredients were on hand, and how hard could it be? The kids helped me, and truth be told, it was pretty easy. I probably should have tried my hand at basic spaghetti noodles first, but you know me...I had to jump right into filled pasta!

I had some home made meat sauce in my freezer that I thought I would pair with the ravioli. But then a non-pine nut, non-basil pesto recipe caught my attention. From previous posts you already know that I LOVE LOVE LOVE sun dried tomatoes. It was only natural that a recipe titled "sun dried tomato pesto" called my name and asked me to make it. I obliged, and was thrilled with the results! It was offered side by side with the traditional meat sauce, and a few of us tried it. I loved it (shocking, I know), and if you are a fan of sun dried tomatoes, you probably will as well.

Later in the week I planned on making a dish called braised beef and sun dried tomatoes. Given that I had already enjoyed my beloved ingredient earlier in the same week, when the kids asked for Sloppy Joe's, how could I resist? Rather than pop open a can, I made it from scratch, and we loved the results. (We do have one person at the table who does not like Sloppy Joe's one bit, from scratch or otherwise, so he had a very small sandwich followed by a ham sandwich - I took no offense. I was just happy he even tried it!)

So this week we go from homemade pasta to homemade Sloppy Joe's. Take your pick, or try them all. Who knows what we'll do next week!

New Recipes

Homemade Ravioli
Sun Dried Tomato Pesto
Sloppy Joe's