Manga!

I had a bunch of spinach from our CSA last week that was about to take a turn for the worse.  We'd kind of forgotten it was in the fridge.  I had made spinach pasta before from the frozen block of spinach, but figured using fresh wouldn't be too hard.  So, I gave my dad a call last night to see if he'd be up for teaching me how to make raviolis and spinach raviolis.  Sure enough, Dad was excited to do so!  I cooked down and dried out the spinach last night.  It takes a good half hour or more, plus almost a half a roll of paper towels.  It's rather laborious.

This morning I was packing up for my parents' house...and um...my spinach is no where to be found.  Eric had accidentally thrown it away (and took the trash to the dumpster!).  Sad.

I had to start over. Oh well.

My dad and I had a blast making the pasta.  It's really a hit or miss venture.  Some days you just make a bad batch of dough.  My spinach batch came out terrible, so we could only use some of it for noodles and none of it for raviolis.  My dad's first batch of plain came out terrible too.  We worked and worked until we used 2 dozen eggs.  Fortunately we were able to make 6 dozen raviolis and about 6 servings of pasta.  We talked about the way Papa would have done things - like hang the pasta to dry on a broom hung between to chairs, or to use an egg to "punch" the holes in the ravioli tray.  It was fun to remember him, but also to spend time passing down Italian recipes the way they were intended to be passed down: from family member to family member.

I'd love to share the recipes with you...but if you know any Italian well there are a few things you never share - and recipes to pasta and meatballs are just some of those things!  Instead I'll let you feast your eyes on our afternoon!