Finding The Time

The question I hear a lot is, "How do you find the time?".

I get a little giggle every time I hear that, because really, how do we NOT find the time?

Here's how to squeeze out a few minutes.

After dinner, during clean up is the time to grab a kid and mix up tomorrows dough. This does mean you need to have an idea about what you'll be making. Pasta? Pizza dough? Biscuits? Bread?

It takes about 5 minutes in the evening to mix up the dough, then I simply let it rest at room temperature overnight. With minimal directions, my 9 yo's or 17 yo can mix the dough up.

In the late afternoon, we roll the dough out. I ask one of the kids to play with the little ones (remember, I do daycare and have a house full of under 5 yo's). Then either myself and a child, or the 17yo get to rolling and cutting the dough. Then we let it sit until time to cook/bake.

We don't do a lot of crock pot cooking because Hubs isn't a fan... so, most of my meals are put together in the hour before dinner. On days like today, I have had a chicken working on stock most of the day... other days, I forget to pull anything out of the freezer until its time to start cooking.

On bread baking days (usually 2x a week), I spend about 20 minutes mixing the dough and setting it to rise... then I pop it in the oven after a couple hours of rising and bake for an hour. Not a huge active time investment.

Making goodies can take longer, mostly because I'm always on the search for new recipes or I'm modifying a recipe to make it a bit healthier.

We will be starting kefir soda by end of the month... I'm not anticipating this to be a time consuming process either. We are trying to wean off the soda addiction around here... it's my one remaining naughty naughty. I don't know that I'll ever get Hubs to give up his Mt. Dew and Rockstar obsession (although I will be trying!). I do want my kids to feel like they are getting a treat and not feel deprived by lack of soda (they don't get soda because I don't want to help them form bad habits!). I'm really excited to try sugar water kefir with pomegranate blueberry juice... yum!

Handmade Ravioli

Delicious!

I decided to try my hand at ravioli making last night. First I dug out the hand crank pasta maker. Then I opted to not use it... there appeared to be too much work involved. Plus, I can't use the same machine for gluten free and regular pasta.

So, the pasta press went back into its box and I opted to hand roll the pasta... that may have been a mistake, but two hours later I had a plate full of delicious ravioli waiting to boil.

I will post my first go at the gluten free ravioli over at Looks Good In Polka Dots later... it was far from a perfect attempt, and will need several revisions, but was quite tasty if not beautiful.


Ravioli filling:

I combined 1 cup sour cream (homemade cream cheese would work great as well) with about 4 ounces grated cheese. I then sprinkled in garlic, kosher salt and pepper.

Other options include: squash or pine nut puree, pesto, goat cheese crumbles and herbs, diced tomatoes, or meat.

Toppings:

I made a tomato pasta sauce with ground turkey... depending on your filling you could use a cheese sauce, a wine sauce, grated asiago or Parmesan cheese, etc...

Ravioli shells:

3 extra large free range chicken eggs
2 Tbs olive oil (or palm or coconut oil)
1/4-1/2 cup water
1 tsp kosher salt
3 cups whole wheat flour

Whisk together the eggs, 1/4 cup water and oil. Place flour and salt in a large mixing bowl, make a well in the center. Pour the egg/water/oil mixture in the well. Combine with a wooden spoon (or just use your hands). Once well incorporated, turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until you have a smooth ball of dough (add more water or flour as needed to reach a dough consistency). Divide into 8 parts. Then roll each part out one at a time to desired thickness (I opted for about 1/8 inch thick). Then use a round cookie cutter or a glass dusted with flour to cut circles. Stretch each circle out so that it's thin and large enough to fill and fold. Then drop a small glob of the filling into the center and fold in half, press the edges together. Set aside to dry until time to boil. Repeat until all dough is used.

Place a few ravioli at a time into boiling water, cook until pasta rises to the top, remove with a slotted spoon. Serve with choice of sauce/toppings.