We had a great day yesterday. It seems that on the days when I'm just trying to "get things done" Maia and I just butt heads all day long. She wants attention and does crazy things in order to receive it. I just want to finish the laundry or dishes or vacuum the floor or (horror of horrors) sit down at the computer for a little while and then I end up being short with Maia and feeling like a bad mother. But on days when I plan at least one activity that will include Maia and be fun for her, everything goes so much more smoothly. You're saying "of course!" and I am, too, but I just don't always remember or take the time to plan. So here's my goal: plan a month's worth of fun project to do with Maia and write them on the calendar. We can still switch things around or go with the flow of the day, but at least I'll have a reminder and something of a plan.
Anyhoo... Yesterday Maia and I made a new batch of playdough, which is always a fun project. Maia loves the measuring, pouring, and stirring that goes along with any cooking. As always, we used MaryAnn's recipe for play clay from First Art. I know there are a lot of playdough recipes out there, but I love this one so much I just make it again and again.
Maia chose blue and red to make purple playdough, although as you can see below it turned out more pink than purple.
That's a slice of lemon ginger cake on the plate. I was feted with playdough cakes, candy, and marshmellows for the rest of the morning (you can see who has a sweet tooth).
After nap, we started the ravioli, something I've wanted to try for a long time. It always sounded so complicated that I kept putting it off, but it was actually surprisingly easy. I followed a simple cheese ravioli recipe with a filling of ricotta, parmesan, egg yolks, and thyme.
The dough was just flour and egg. It was a bit tough to roll out and I can see the appeal of having a pasta machine. Maia gave up shortly after the above photo was taken and moved back to her playdough.
I spooned the filling onto the dough, brushed on egg white, placed a second sheet of rolled out dough on top, and pressed around the filling with my fingers to seal it.
Then I just sliced between each ravioli with a knife to separate them. Apparently you can buy a crimper/cutter to make this part a little easier, although these worked okay as it was. I used my last jar of canned tomatoes to make a simple tomato sauce to serve over them but by this time I was so hungry that I completely forgot to take any pictures of the finished ravioli.
They were yummy! The dough was a little on the chewy side and I don't know if that's because of the recipe or because I didn't roll it out thin enough. I definitely want to try this again and experiment with different doughs and fillings. Anyone have a good ravioli recipe to share?
