Suzy Homemaker, The Baking Edition

My mother's birthday was yesterday, and as tradition I made her dinner (well, her, me, and my dad).  I decided to try something I had never done before:  I attempted to make ravioli from scratch.  Pumpkin ravioli to be more specific.  My mother also requested a Pear Gruyere Pie (recipe here), which I had made last on Mother's Day.  I have never made pasta from scratch before, so I ordered a pasta roller just for this occasion, though I know it will be getting much more uses than just today.  When I was searching for a recipe for the pumpkin ravioli and sauce, I found about 11 very different recipes.  So, I picked and chose what sounded good from each and made my own recipe.  It turned out pretty good, though the pasta recipe needed some tweaking.    Here we go:

I would make the pasta up first because it needs to sit for about 30 minutes

2 1/2 Cups Flour

(The recipe I was using called for semolina, but that must be too fancy for my Kroger's to carry)

3 eggs

1 TBSP Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Salt

Sift the flour and salt in a bowl.  Make a well in the middle.  In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs and olive oil together.  Pour the eggs into the well and slowly incorporate the flour. 

Flour your working surface and knead the dough for about 4 minutes.  Put mixture back in bowl and let sit for 30 minutes. 

After the 30 minutes, flour the dough lightly, knead a few times and then split in half.  Pass the dough through the largest setting of the pasta roller (though you could easily use a rolling pin too).  Continue to pass dough through roller, on successively smaller settings until it is 1/8inch thick.  Make sure to keep your surface floured.  Your two pasta strips should be relatively even in length and width. (I was sort of rubbish with taking pictures of the rest of assembling the ravioli from here on.)

Pumpkin Mixture:

2 carrots, thinly sliced

1/4 C butter

Sage

2 TBSP real maple syrup

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 C shredded parmesan

13 oz 100% pumpkin Puree (my pumpkin can was 15 oz, and I added the remaining pumpkin to the sauce)

1 egg yolk

Ricotta Cheese

Melt the butter in a pan and saute the carrots until soft.  Cut the sage into small pieces and add to the carrots.  Also add the maple syrup, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg.  In a separate bowl, mix the pumpkin, ricotta cheese, Parmesan cheese, and egg yolk.  Add the carrot and spice mixture to the pumpkin mixture and run through the food processor. 

Assembling:

On one strip of pasta, scoop a small amount of pumpkin mixture in two rows.  I made sure my pumpkin mixture scoops were about an inch apart from each other, and at least 5/8 inch away from the edge.  Whisk one egg together and use a baster to spread it on the pasta dough in between each pumpkin scoop as the "glue".  Place the other pasta strip on top and press down slight on the edges and in between each ravioli.  I used a crimper roller to make the final seal and separation of the ravioli, though any cutting tool I think would work.  I had enough to make 21 raviolis, and much more pumpkin mixture to make even more.  Bring a large pot of water to a boil.  Add the ravioli.  It is done cooking when the ravioli float to the top.

While the water is boiling/cooking the ravioli, make the sauce.

Sauce Recipe:

1 C Heavy Whipping Cream

1/2 C Butter

1/2 C Parmesan cheese

1/2 C Sweet Wine

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp fresh ginger

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 TBSP flour

Salt

Remaining pumpkin

Melt the butter in a sauce pan.  Add the flour and whisk quickly.  Add the cream, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and remaining pumpkin.  Bring to a boil.  Add  the wine and cheese.  Allow to simmer until ready to serve. 

I forgot to take a proper picture of the ravioli and sauce until I was half way through eating, but here is a very messy picture of what it sort of looked like.

Also during this time, I was making a Pear Gruyere Pie.  Oh Pushing Daisies, how I miss thee so much.  I still mourn your adorableness that we lost.  I believe, super duper delectable(I wish you were real) Piemaker Ned and lovely charming (you make me have wardrobe jealousy) Chuck, this is the very best pie you created.  The only thing I adjusted from the recipe I linked in the beginning was that I used about 5 or 6 oz of Gruyere cheese instead of 3 and I used red pears instead of Bartlett Pears.  I really like the nuttiness of the flavor with the pears.  I kind of went mad during this process of trying to make two separate things during the same time.  I spent 6 hours baking today and was super duper tired at the end, but here is a picture tour of said pie making:

(I sliced my lovely finger while cutting the pears.  Lovely)

(The only love of my life)

I really must try to convince sweet baby Dexter that he is not really helpful to me sleeping under foot while I'm baking.  It truly is not convenient and I continually accidentally step on him and then feel horrid for the rest of the day.  But it is lovely to know he will always be my little faithful companion, even when I'm baking human food. 

 

Pendleton 60's Men Shirt: Estate Sale

Hair Tutorial

Well this is my first attempt at a hair tutorial, and I am mostly doing it for myself so I remember what I did.  I'm sure most of you already know how to do this style of hair, but for those that don't, here we go.  And I'm sure I'm going to get yelled at for doing something wrong or improper, but I don't really care.  This is how I did it and it worked.
So, first, I set my hair in pincurls with pretty wet hair.  Now, I normally do not set my hair with it being wet.  I usually blow dry it first and then use a spray bottle with setting lotion in it to wet the ends and mist the middle.  I find that when I set my hair wet it never dries.  Well, last night I set it at 8pm and took it out at 7:45 am, so that gave it almost a full 12 hours to dry, and guess what, it was dry!  And I was very happy with the results.  My curls were very well formed and springy, and very mold-able.  The setting pattern I used wasn't anything fancy either.  When I first started doing pincurls for the first time, I sat in front of my vanity and tried to get my sections very even and it would take me almost 1 1/2 hours to do.  Way too long, and I hated it.  But after I got used to doing them, I started just doing at night in bed without a mirror or anything and doing it by feel rather than by sight, and so far I have been very happy with how it turns out.

So, for the setting pattern (forgive the lack of makeup), I rolled the hair up like I drew on the picture.  I also lined my part on both sides with standing pin curls.  I also rolled these up (diagram with X), however, if I were to do this again, I would roll them under (diagram with happy circle). 

Back View

Side view
I try to do 3 rows all the way around, though, as you can see, it kind of ends of up in a more random order than I would like. 

In the morning, I first took out the clips for the bottom row only and used my curling brush to brush out the sections individually and then in larger sections to get a good base form.  I used a bit of pomade on the ends to keep the ends curled up (I always have problems with that)

Then I unclipped the middle sections and brushed them separately from the bottom row to form the curl under and then I lightly brushed the two layers together, and again used a bit of pomade on the ends.

Finally, I let out the top row of curls and did the same as I did with the middle section. 

I know most tutorials tell you to brush the back out more than the front, but I didn't really brush out the front any more or less than the back sections.  However, after I got everything curling under, I took a wide toothed comb and put it into my hair starting at the part and pulling the top layers down with the comb to about the end of my ear and then I took it out to create the dent in the style.  That's all I did, and then I finished it off with hairspray. Tada.