Butternut Squash Ravioli

Wednesday we were stuck indoors due to the rain, so I decided to be brave and tackle one of my Family Fun magazine recipes to make homemade Butternut Squash Ravioli with herbed sage butter sauce. For any of you who have never read Family Fun magazine, it is for any parent, well let's be real, Mom, who wants to be made to feel inadequate about her lack of creativity, lack of spontaneity, and general lack of Martha Stewart-ness, this magazine if for you! It is a direct result of reading this magazine that I now have a large storage box full of empty oatmeal canisters, paper towel tubes, and shoe boxes in the hopes that one of these days I will build my son the coolest homemade castle, complete with working draw bridge and all! But until the day that I feel like erecting such a masterpiece, on this day I settled for making homemade ravioli dough! Here is the flour well - apparently it is meant to keep the egg contained while you gently mixed it all together. So what do you think happened? The second we began to mix in the flour, the egg quicky spilled over the sides all over the cutting board!

Cutting the ravioli...

This was T's favorite job, lining the edges with water so the two discs stuck together...

One completed butternut squash ravioli...

Ready to be filled...

He liked sealing the sides with the fork but sometimes pushed too close to the center, causing the filling to spill out the other side, then he would get frustrated...he delegated the fork job to me afterwards.

He dubbed us "Big chef and lil chef"

Enjoying the fruits of our labor! T didn't quite like the squash filling but ate the entire outer dough edge of each ravioli! The dough was a little too "doughy" but I didn't have high expectations for a recipe that called for flour, eggs and salt and was mixed by a 4 year old! I am now in search of the best ravioli dough recipe, something thin and light and with a bit of flavor.

The completed meal, with herbed sage butter sauce and fresh grated Parmiaggano Reggiano! Rachael Ray would have been proud! I was proud of the two of us at least!

It took a total of about 3 hours from start to finish. I had to run to the grocery store halfway through the process because I didn't have fresh sage and knew that dried wouldn't provide the right flavor. The dough also had to rest for 30min. Add to that frequent potty breaks, a few spills and clean-ups, 3 hours was about enough time! We had so much fun together which was the most important thing regardless of how the end product turned out. To see how proud T was to eat something he made from scratch was incredibly satisfying for the both of us.