I'm back!

I can't believe that I have neglected this blog for so long. Things have been a little busy here, traveling every which way... but I am back, with photos of our pasta adventure! (I accidentally threw away the recipe ... oops...)

We started with the mushroom filling. Isn't that just gorgeous?

Maybe not the most flattering picture of me ever...

After the mushrooms were cooked, we blended them with a ricotta cheese mixture in the blender, and I mutilated a plastic spoon. (We later picked bits of the spoon out of our ravioli. Thank heavens we didn't have dinner guests!)

After that mixture was done, it was set aside, and we started the pasta process. And oh my, what a process it was.

First you make this little mountain of flour, and make a valley and put some eggs in it.

Then you knead it for a while. Kelly had this job. She wasn't too sure about it, I don't think...

Eventually after enough kneading, it'll turn into a ball.

Then you split the ball in two, and roll them out into sheets. You try to make the sheets as even as possible, but that's easier said than done.

Then after those sheets are rolled, you spoon the mushroom/ricotta mixture onto the pasta. (Side note: every single time I try to spell "mushroom," I try to spell it like this: muschroom. I don't know why, and it's annoying!!)

After your mushroom mixture is on the pasta, you cover it with the other sheet and squish them together. Then you cut them into (sort-of) squares, and let them dry for like an hour.

After they'd dried for like half the time, we made a tomato cream sauce for the ravioli. That was some good stuff, although it needed some more salt. It was better the second day, when the flavors had blended a little bit better.

And after the pasta was all nice and dry-ish, into a big pot it went, and voila!

Mushroom ravioli on my patio outside. It was a lovely way to end an evening.

But to be perfectly honest, while it was quite a fun adventure, and very delish ... I'm not sure that I'll do homemade pasta again anytime soon. The whole thing took 3 hours to make, and lots of elbow grease between the rolling and the kneading. It was extremely work-intensive, and I DEFINITELY wouldn't want to do it all by my lonesome.

Coming up next (hopefully soon) ... lemon dill fish, summer squash croquettes, and quiche!

Ice cream and pasta...

Oh man, I can't wait until I get these next pictures developed (or at least a CD made...)

Because today, Kelly and I made homemade chocolate-almond-strawberry ice cream, and it is AMAZING. Like, tastes like Hagen-Daz. Yummy.

And right now, we're in the throes of pasta-making. It's messy business. We're taking a break and letting the pasta dough rest before we try to roll it out flat and even. Har har. We'll see. When we're done, it will hopefully be transformed into a delish dish of homemade mushroom ravioli with tomato cream sauce. But we'll see.

My timer just went off. Wish us luck!!

I'm Still Here!!

I promise I'm not neglecting this blog on purpose.

But Mark took our digital camera to Belize.

And all I have is film.

So you're going to have to be patient.

It will be worth waiting for, because my lovely sister and I are going to make some freaking fantastic food this week. (Read: homemade ravioli. Like, the pasta. Will be homemade. Man oh man, what a great photo-op that will be...)

I know you're all on the edge of your seats, waiting with bated breath.

The food will return very soon, I promise.

Cheesy Zucchini Frittata

Yesterday, in my Strawberry Cake post, I mentioned the frittata I made while I was waiting for the cake to bake. I decided to do a separate post about it, because it's delicious and tastes basically like a garden :) I like it when my food tastes like what it's made out of.

It's a pretty basic recipe. 

You'll need:

4 eggs

4 c. shredded zucchini

2 c. peeled shredded carrots

1/2 c. flour

3/4 c. mayo

1 c. shredded Monterey Jack cheese

1/2 c. grated Parmesan

1/4 c. chopped onion

1 tsp. basil (I highly recommend using fresh leaves)

pepper to taste

First, you've got to shred all those veggies. It takes an awful lot more arm power than I was expecting to shred 6 cups of squash and carrots...

Here's the site of the veggie massacre.

Started with zucchini:

Moved on to carrots:

Isn't that pretty? I'm such a nerd, but I just think vegetables are beautiful.

Okay, so now that your arms are about to fall off...

You're gonna beat your four eggs in a mixing bowl.

And then you're gonna fold in all the other ingredients.

Now, this is where it got tricky for me. My recipe says "Pour into buttered quiche pan." I don't technically have a quiche pan. So I'm thinking, okay, well I'll just do a pie plate. 

And then I was thinking "...Will it fit? I don't know .. Maybe I should do TWO pie plates."

And then I thought .... "Nah. My recipe says one. It'll be fine."

Should've gone with the first instinct. Or planned to bake it a lot longer than the directions call for.

Yum, yum. So, the recipe says to bake it at 375 for 30 minutes. I do so, and get it out, and the middle is definitely still RUNNY. I did put the pie plate on top of a cookie sheet just in case it ran over the edge, so that may have been the problem. I don't know. I just know that I ended up cooking it for another 15-20 minutes, and it was still not quite completely set in the very middle.

Obviously, we ate it anyway. I let it sit for a while after we cut the first pieces, and it was much better today. Also, the flavors had a night to combine, and it was just delish. The only thing I might change in the future is to decrease the amount of mayo, because you can sort of taste it, and I'm not the biggest fan of mayonnaise in general. Maybe I could do like half mayo and half sour cream or something, to keep the consistency right.

But anyway, it seriously tastes like a garden. It's mostly zucchini, with some eggy stuff holding it all together, and you can taste the squash and carrots and onions and basil, and it's just wonderful.

Yummy lunch for three days? Check!

Happy eating!