You need this in your life!

Oh boy! I cannot wait for you to read and try this. God Bless Pinterest!

I had a Butternut Squash that I had to do something with and pinterest was up to the job!

So here's what we're going to make (We as in you too!) You need it, no kidding!

Roasted Butternut Squash Ravioli with Sage Brown Butter Sauce!

This sounds fancy schmancy, but it is so easy! If you take this to an event you will be hailed a hero and master chef (that's what I'm going for anyway).

Here's what you need:

1 butternut squash

olive oil

1/2 cup parmesean

1/2 tsp nutmeg

pasta dough (don't freak out, it's easy and the recipe is below, seriously stick with me here)

2 tbsp ground sage (or about 12 sage leaves)

1 stick of butter (channel Paula)

OK, let's get started!
PreHeat to 425 degrees!

This is the hardest part folks. Take your peeler and peel the squash.

Cut in half and scoop out the stuffin's!

Cube the squash, try to keep with a consistant size. Drizzle with EVOO and a little S&P. Another requirement is to rock out on your pink iPhone to Pandora!

Cook for 25 minutes!

Oh, what a great color!

Add the nutmeg, parmesean and S&P. The Squash is tender enough that just stirring will make the squash the consistency of mashed potatoes.

Your filling is ready!

Now to the pasta dough, here's what you need:

2 cups flour

3 eggs

That's it, for real!

Flour

I added the eggs one at a time. You will have to mix and using a spoon push the flour into the mixture. Mix until the dough has formed a ball:

Amazingly quick and easy!

I don't have a pasta roller (yet) so I just rolled out the dough. Get it as think as you can without having holes in the dough.

With a biscuit cutter cut a cute little circle. Add a little squash and brush with a little water on the edge of the circle.

Pinch around the edge to secure. I started with these half circles but changed to having a piece of dough, squash and a piece of dough on top. I liked those better. Still the same concept.

In the mean time, in a pan add your sage and stick of butter and melt. You want the butter to turn to a beautiful shade of brown.

Now that you have your ravioli, drop into boiling water. Be sure your water is salted. It only takes between 2 and 3 minutes for the ravioli to be done. When the ravioli pops to the surface, it's done.

From the pot, but your ravioli into the pan with the brown butter sage sauce.

That's IT! It's really easier than you think! AND SOOOOO delicious!

You could easily use this as an entree and be fully satisfied. We made it a side item!

It was just as good as it looks.

I am so excited about making my own ravioli.

Here's what you do to freeze it. Make the pasta, don't cook it!

Lightly flour the biggest sized cookie sheet that will fit in your freezer and line up your ravioli on the cookie sheet. Once the pasta is frozen you can stack them in a freezer safe bowl and they won't stick together. Just take them out of the freezer, put them in boiling water for about 3 - 5 minutes. What a great, easy, quick dinner for those nights where you're in a hurry!

Try it, tell me how it was!

Thinking outside the box

I must be honest with you hear folks...I L.O.V.E. Velvetta Shells and Cheese. I cannot help myself. I just love it. I like to put a little extra salt and just go to town. That is why I rarely buy it. Because I just almost cannot sleep at night knowing that those delicious little shells are in my cabinet just waiting to be scarfed. This is the only side dish/horrible for you food that I consider to be a vegetable. (As in you MUST have one main and two veggies with dinner).
I must confess that I had never before made real live mac and cheese with real live cheese! So, thanks to some inspiration from pinterest.com I finally made the venture with these:

Cheese and Spinach Muffins!!

I modified this recipe.

Here's what you'll need:

1 box of cooked whole wheat pasta

2 cups of shredded cheese (I used a combination of sharp cheddar and colby...I'll use Gruyere next time and maybe Havarti)

1 cup of milk

2 cloves of minced garlic

1 egg white & 1 egg

1 lb bag of frozen spinach thawed and drained

1 tbsp of flour

1tbsp of butter (Apparently I forgot to include the butter and flour and the spinach in the picture)

*Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Melt your butter in a saucepan.

Add your tbsp of flour to your melted butter to make a roux:

Here we have the Roux...this is in fact my very first roux ever, it was fun...you should try it!

Next add your butter and minced garlic. Allow mixture to heat until just before the boiling point

Slowly stir in your cheese.

Your mixture will start to thicken nicely until it looks like:

At this point you will slowly whisk in your egg and egg white. SLOWLY. This did not work out very well for me as I didn't SLOWLY enough. BUT, the eggs act as a binding agent. If you aren't going to bake these in the muffin tin, I'd leave them out.

Add cheese mixture to spinach *Side note, I happen to LOVE spinach. I added a whole pound of the good leafy green stuff. If you are not a fan you might want to ease off*

Add noodles. (I didn't have any elbows so I went with the rotini's)

Isn't it beautiful. I love things that have bright colors and the cheese with that spinach is great!

If you're going to make the muffin cups then spray your pan and ice cream scoop it in.

If you are making the muffins, you will need to wait a few before digging in to let everything cool and settle. I however, did no such thing! Pairs nicely with an "everything in the fridge" quesadilla.

This mac and cheese is delicious. The spinach was so great in it. I didn't feel the need to over salt this because it had so much flavor. The cheese that I picked did just.ok. Next time I'll pick a gooier variety. I happen to like Havarti and Gruyere. I think that the pasta turned out to be a great choice (just by accident). I don't think the elbow's would have been able to withstand a whole pound of spinach. The rotini also did an excellent job of holding onto the cheese sauce.

Overall, this recipe will be going into the keeper stack! I'm pretty excited about my very first roux and home-made mac and cheese in the same recipe!