Making homemade ravioli, and a mess

 This weekend I was feeling adventurous in the kitchen. I wanted to make homemade ravioli, but didn’t want to take the time to make the pasta dough from scratch. Instead, I grabbed a box of pie crust mix that had been in our pantry for longer than I would like to admit, and mixed it up. I rolled it out super thin, cut circles, and filled them with a homemade pumpkin and ricotta filling. All was going well until I tried to cook them.

This was when I discovered that, if you put pie dough in boiling water, it will not cook – It will completely disintegrate. When I realized that the mushy, foamy blobs would not be edible, I thought maybe baking them would be the answer. This created something closer to an empanada than ravioli. I probably should have stopped while I was ahead and announced we were having these “appetizers” as dinner, but I was determined to have made ravioli, so I smothered them in marinara sauce.

It was not pretty, and it certainly didn’t tasted good, but it did help me learn a couple lessons. First, it’s important to know your dough. Second, it’s ok to improvise and even better to quit while you are ahead if your plans take a nasty turn. Finally, I have the best husband ever because (bless his heart), he ate an entire plateful, and with a pained look on his face, even told me they “weren’t that bad.”