Thanks to Alida's inspiration...

So a few weeks back, friends joined us for an overnight visit and we lumped together food contributions from both households for our Monday evening meal.  C had brought some fancy little raviolis that made quite the impression on our littlest (even today Alida mused, "I wonder how she made them."  She hasn't quite gotten the concept that you can buy pre-prepared meals).  The next day, if not within hours of eating them, she was wondering when we could have them again.  I try to live by the premise that if you can buy it in the store, you can surely make it, and hopefully an even tastier version!  I also like to follow up on menu requests made by our girls because they tend to eat really well when they have been part of deciding what to eat, and better yet if they help in the creation of the food itself.

I hadn't even tasted the treasured morsels, so was going only on the fact that they were spinach and cheese ravioli with a red sauce over top.  We make pasta often and have a ravioli attachment (used only once with moderate success) for our pasta maker.  So that hurdle was supposedly non-existent.  The greater hurdle, or so it seemed, was that I had completely run out of flour (wheat) a few days back and Jason and I had decided for a number of reasons (financial, practical, nutritional) that we were going to not replenish our supply but instead discipline ourselves to stay out of grocery stores and use the food we worked hard storing up from April through October (it is after all almost officially winter and this is the time to eat it)!

So as I often do, I used a few google searches to land a pasta recipe that was deemed a success with 100% buckwheat flour.  The recipe called for the soaking method, which neutralizes anti-nutrients in grain, so I mixed up the dough (2 c buckwheat flour, 1/2 c water and 1/2 T raw apple cider vinegar) last evening and let it set until Alida arose today from her afternoon nap.

It was nice to have a pasta maker to assure me we know how to make pasta, but there was no getting the buckwheat dough through it without turning it into little shards of pasta.  So on to the trusty rolling pins and wax paper method - decidedly harder on the wrists but with my little helpers we got the job done!  And the dough was very nice to work with and soon we were making our very own spinach and cheese raviolis!  I knew the buckwheat would have a stronger flavor than wheat so was uncertain what kind of reception they would have.  There are no leftovers!