Handmade Gifts Part II 2.10.12

I can't believe I haven't posted about this yet!!! Okay, so I said I was going to try making a lot of my Christmas presents this year. And I did--in the form of jewelry! :)

I feel that giving Christmas gifts--and any gifts, really--can be an awesome opportunity to give handmade things to people, whether you make them yourself or support a local artisan. So here's what I made!

Earrings
I'm pretty proud of the earrings. I'm just an amateur as far as jewelry making goes, but I have tons of beads that are great colors and shapes and I have a good time mixing them up to get a fun vibe.

These were for my mom. She loves purple. And hearts. The rest went to friends.

Keychains
These are my keychains! they were really fun to make too, and hopefully they were a step up as gifts from the macrame and boondagle we all used to make each other at camp. :)

I would have loved to do more, but unfortunately I got an awful cold the week before Christmas. Boo. But I love making things, and I will definitely be posting about my next craft project!

Birthday Pasta-Making 2.7.12

Pasta is my favorite food. Plus I like cooking things from scratch, listening to playlists of my favorite music, and generally being awesome with my awesome friends. So... this is what I did for my birthday dinner this year:

We (my boyfriend Mike, my friend Loryn, and I) made pasta dough from scratch. I know I've already showed pictures of the other ravioli I did from scratch, but this dough came out way better. And we also turned it into a couple different thicknesses of pasta, including fettucine, linguine, and pastina, shown below. The recipe can be found here.

 For the ravioli filling, we eyeballed/tasted a mixture of ricotta, mozzarella, basil and garlic. Then we did a batch with all that plus parm, then we did another batch with all that plus feta. It all came out deliciously.

 This was the thickest setting the pasta maker had... by the way, if you ever make your own pasta, even if it's just ravioli and you have a mold, definitely use one of these. It's so much easier than using a rolling pin to roll it out by hand. And they seem to be the kind of obscure appliance that people buy and then never use...thus, they are often found at garage sales for dirt cheap. :)

 In order, fettucine, pastina, and linguine. Or something close to linguine. There's a great guide to Italian pasta I found on google at this web address. It has the shapes and descriptions of what I have to believe is every single kind of pasta ever made in Italy.

Here's a random list of just a few of the dozens of types I've never even heard of:

Perciatelli

Bavettine

Mafalde

Calamarata

Tagliatelle

Cavatappi

 I tied a pastina bow around one of my ravioli. :)

Everything came out great... I guess I forgot to get any pictures of the pastas with sauce on our plates. Possibly because I was too busy eating them. Oh well. ;)

Homemade Ravioli 12.22.11

A few of weeks ago, I had some homemade ravioli. My aunt and cousin bought it from some place in the Bronx for my grandma, and one of the above relatives offered it to my family, and it had been sitting in our freezer ever since, so I finally ate some.

It was fantastic. 

In case I haven't mentioned this already, I love pasta. I love it more than I love almost any food. Pasta and chocolate are probably on an equal level for me in the category of favorite foods, shortly followed by french toast, crepes, and my family's homemade bread. Anyway, after I tasted this ravioli, I was addicted. I actually made more of the same the next day, before I realized that I was either going to have to:

a) get off my ravioli kick
b) go back to BJ's ravioli
or
c) learn to make my own


Clearly, the first two would have been reasonable choices. And if I had a job, I probably would have picked "b" or been stuck with "a" due to a lack of time.


So I guess one of the benefits of being unemployed and out of school is that you do some really random things about which you would normally say, "Oh yeah, that might be cool to try someday."

Like making homemade ravioli.


Conveniently, my mom bought an old-fashioned ravioli-making kit at some garage sale or another, so I fished that out, enlisted my dad for helping and bantering purposes (who cooks without good banter?) and began.

The dough recipe that came with the box was so bad, I'm not even going to put it in here. Instead, I found another recipe that I will use next time. This time, I got stuck with a really hard dough, which I tried to soften by adding an extra egg, and then which my mom had to save by adding more flour.

 
The thickness of the dough is really important. We made the first batch a little too thick. It was still good, just not ideal.

Sorry I can't figure out how to rotate this one.

 I didn't feel like going to buy ricotta cheese and leaving my nice, happy, warm kitchen. So I used mozzarella and cream cheese along with fresh parsley and garlic powder. It was yummy, although next time I would pack it tighter and maybe experiment with some more cheeses.

Exhibit A

 I know I'm the one in the pictures, but I have to give my dad most of the dough-rolling credit. I clearly have amazing muscle definition (See exhibit A above) but three batches of ravioli involves some heavy duty rolling.

"Yay it looks like real ravioli!!!" -- me

Ta-da!