Pasta!!!

For those who know me, knows that I really love pasta! My fav is lasagna! There's not much I don't like really but pasta is my absolute fav! Last time I got together with my good friend, we made our own ravioli and it was so much fun. At Christmas my hubby got me the gadgets I need to make my own that attaches to my mixer. Having tried it at my friend's, I knew I wanted it as well. There's one that flattens the dough so I can make ravioli, one for spaghetti noodles, and the other for fettuccine. So I decided to make ravioli again and it turned out really great

So the dough recipe I went with is to make my own brown rice pasta. It was a little crumbly but not too bad, so managed to make 30 raviolis. I wanted to keep it vegetarian since I had pork chops the night before for supper. Here's what the filling looks like

So I used an entire package of spinach, and wilted it in a pan, and then I drained out as much as the water as I could and added some of that juice to my tomato sauce to keep that delicious nutrient that came out

I did get my sauce going first, I chopped up a red onion, a lot of mushrooms and 5 cloves of garlic and sauteed them a bit. Then I added a good splash of red wine, and let that reduce a bit, then added an entire jar of Passata, the juice of the spinach, some dry oregano, lots of black pepper, and let that simmer while I made the pasta.The stuffing for the ravioli was the spinach, which I chopped up a bit, then added 3 cloves of garlic, minced, some fresh basil, minced, some black pepper a little touch of salt then a block of goat cheese. My hubby did help me out, and worked out well. I boiled my ravioli first till it was floating then added it to the sauce to let them soak in the flavor of the sauce

I did add in a lot more fresh basil to the sauce, and we were finally ready to eat, which we had a slice of garlic bread with it. We both really enjoyed it! I would for sure make this again. We do have some leftovers to enjoy this week too.

On Saturday morning I did also make some blueberry muffins. I tried this recipe from Chocolate covered Katie. What I love about her recipes is she puts things like, flour of choice, sugar of choice and has comments when needed cause some things require more of something so it works. For this recipe I went with spelt flour, and used coconut sugar. Oh and instead of oil I went with the other option, mashed banana since I had a ripe banana. The spelt flour made the muffins on the dense side, but they are still good muffins. If I were to make this recipe again, I would try a different flour to see how they work out. 

My hubby and I shared one, not long after they came out of the oven, and he's not a big fan, so I may be on my own to eat these. I did enjoy one this morning with a chai tea latte, which was delicious. I know I'll have more this week for breakfast, probably with different herbal teas. I like to switch up my teas and I don't have a latte too often.

I do have a small kitchen so making the ravioli involved using my kitchen table to put my mixer on, to flatten the dough, I used my moveable island to make the dough, cause I had other things on my counter so it involved a few surfaces, but worked out well. I would like to try to make the spaghetti noodles next, but I think I'll try whole wheat flour cause not sure how well the brown rice dough would work with that, I have a feeling it wouldn't really stay well in long strands. Not sure when I will make that, we have quite a few plans coming up, so I'll see when I get the chance. The weather has been very cold this weekend so it's been nice being home and into the kitchen. Friday night I had made the pork chops using a can of mushroom soup for the flavor, I haven't made that in forever! It turned out good, we had rice and salad with that. Tonight's supper I am cooking up some chicken in this red wine type sauce, it's another new recipe I'm trying out from Clean eating magazine that I ripped out, and we will have sweet potato fries that I'll make myself, and thinking to make a coleslaw. Tomorrow I'm thinking to see if I can find a good recipe for scallops, I have some in my freezer, and we haven't had that in a while, and it's a good break for me from meat. So I think I'll look this afternoon for a recipe, if I don't have ingredients needed for it, I'll keep that recipe for next week and I'll take out some salmon instead.