I think it was around the time this afternoon that I told Lucas how I was getting comfortable in the kitchen, and my confidence was skyrocketing, that the earth and planets aligned to conspire against anything I tried to cook today.
We had a really lovely afternoon - we spent the day at my friends son's birthday party (he's only a week or so younger than Paige), and had a wonderful time. The kids did well, we all were fed lots of yummy food and good cake and ice cream. We took the long way home so that the kids could nap, and Lucas and I had a chance to catch up and visit. That's when I told him. Dummy me... I had to go and say I was getting confident in the kitchen.
We got home, and I dove into my afternoon project. Homemade pasta! Not just any homemade pasta, but beet & sweet potato stuffed ravioli. We had beets to use from our weekly box of veggies from the farm, and the recipe sounded easy enough.
Sounded was the key word.
I chopped up the veggies, put them in the pot to steam, and started on the pasta. Then it all went wrong.
The pasta wouldn't stay together. I tried and tried, looked up online for things I could be doing wrong, and then tried some more. It was finally coming together when I smelled an awful, terrible smell. I looked to the steaming veggies to make sure they were done, and they were.
The bottom of the pan also looked like this
I should have just thrown in the towel then. But I didn't.
I finally got the dough to what I thought the consistency should be. I then thought the steamed veggies would totally be fine, even if the pan had gotten fried, so I moved on and mixed them with ricotta. I rolled out the pasta, filled it up, and put it all together.
My friends, the ravioli (or whatever you would call them) were not pretty.
But I pressed on.
They took forever to cook. I'm not going to lie, I don't think that I rolled out the dough thin enough. But after they cooked they were plated and doused with olive oil and Parmesan.
Lucas and I dived in at the same time (the children were spared thanks to how long this ridiculous process took, and they had leftovers from the night before... also pasta... ). We looked at each other, and Lucas shook his head. He tried another bite, and literally spit it out on his plate.
I cannot blame him.
It might have been the chewiness that no decent pasta should ever have, or the metallic taste that I'm guessing came from the singed pot (because who knows how long it was really on the hot stove looking like the above picture before this cook noticed something didn't smell right, and it wasn't just the foreign scent of beets... ). But whatever the reason was, the pasta ended up in the sink and we had Chinese for dinner.
Never, ever boast about your cooking, the universe does not like overconfident cooks.