1,617 Ravioli

I’m exhausted. Today I made 1,617 ravioli. By hand. From scratch.

Every year for as long as I can remember and for many years before I was even born my great-grandmother has made ravioli for the family Christmas meal. Over the years the tradition has changed – as they do – and when we eat the ravioli has shifted. We no longer eat them with my mom’s cousins but we split them up between my grandfather’s family and his brother’s family…. And recently we’ve gone down to the next generation and split them once again. But the ravioli have always been there. For me they are as much a part of Christmas as cookies.

The past few years my mom and her cousins, Anita and Joan, have been helping my great-grandmother with the ravioli (under her extremely close supervision). But this year my great-grandmother is no longer with us... unwilling to let the tradition go with her they decided to make the ravioli again this year with the addition of the next generation - which means that I got to be there.

I think we did a pretty good job. I’m not sure if they are exactly the way that nonni made them – noone has ever written down the recipe and there was great debate about when to add the parsley and how much to add…. But my god that filling tastes amazing. I got mocked because my ravioli were so straight and uniform – well there is nothing wrong with making things look good! That and after 6 years of architecture school I’m completely incapable of not making things straight and square.

And I had no idea that handmade pasta was so easy to do. Flour and eggs? I can handle that! And rolling it out in the pasta machine was actually really fun. Filling the ravioli took forever but just to make pasta isn’t as big of a deal. I think I need to add a pasta machine to my Christmas list. Especially since it freezes so well – how great would it be to come home on any random work night and pull hand made pasta out of the freezer for dinner? I know that would make Matt very happy since that’s his favorite food ever - although he would never admit to having a favorite anything.

In knitting news I got very little done on anything this weekend since both Friday and Saturday were spent at office Christmas parties, Sat. afternoon we got our Christmas tree, and Sunday was ravioli day. I hope to get a lot accomplished this week though. I can’t wait for January when I can post everything that I’ve been working on!!!

Oh and by the way – I now completely understand why Ohio City Pasta sells their ravioli for $1 each!