One Minute You’re Watching Martha Stewart, the Next You’re Importing Flour

I bought flour from Italy.

Not Italian-style flour. Not flour in a bag with a charming picture of Tuscany on the front.

Actual flour. From Italy.

Clearly, I've been watching way too much Martha Stewart.

I don't actually think watching Martha Stewart and importing flour from Italy are directly related, but I did buy Italian flour, so you decide.

And you know what? I think it's a good thing.

An ode to Martha!

It’s a pasta blend made with Italian wheat flour and semolina, and when it arrived, I did what any reasonable person who has gone to the trouble of importing flour across an ocean would do.

I stared at it for a while.

Because buying pasta flour and making pasta are apparently two entirely different levels of commitment.

This is similar to how buying fabric for quilting and actually quilting are two entirely different hobbies.

Both of which I embrace with zeal.

But eventually I decided there was really no point in owning fancy Italian flour if I was going to be afraid of it.

So onto the counter it went.

I piled up the flour, made the little well in the middle like I had seen actual pasta-making people do, cracked in the eggs, and stood back to admire my work.

For approximately twelve seconds, I felt very Italian.

Then I realized I actually had to do something with it.

So I grabbed a fork and started whisking.

And this was the moment I fully expected things to go sideways.

Surely there was some mysterious pasta-making knowledge I didn't possess. Some ancient secret passed down through generations that would prevent my eggs from escaping the flour dam and running across the counter.

But no.

The flour slowly worked its way into the eggs. The eggs became dough. I kneaded it.

And...

That was pretty much it.

I had made pasta dough.

A little anticlimactic, I know.

Well, alright then.

Next came the pasta machine.

This was ridiculously fun.

Play-Doh for adults. That's what this is, and I am here for it.

A little lump of dough went in one side and came out the other looking increasingly like something that belonged in a tiny Italian kitchen with laundry hanging from the windows and somebody's Nonna yelling from the next room.

I kept rolling.

And rolling.

And rolling.

Until I had these beautiful, silky sheets of pasta draped across my kitchen.

At this point, my confidence had become dangerous.

Regular pasta was no longer enough.

Oh no.

I knew what I had to do.

Make ravioli!

Crazy? I know.

But by this point, I was unstoppable.

Had I lost my mind?

Possibly.

Was that going to stop me?

Absolutely not.

I was making ravioli.

Or, at the very least, I was going to attempt to make ravioli.

I mixed ricotta and spinach, dotted little spoonfuls across my freshly rolled pasta...

(Of course I forgot to take a picture of that part.) ...tucked another sheet over the top, pressed everything together, and started cutting.

And somehow...

They looked like ravioli.

Actual ravioli.

Not sad little dough pockets that needed an explanation.

Granted, this was my first time, so they were rough-cut squares that I crimped shut with a fork.

But they were ravioli!

I cooked them, added sauce, put them on a plate, and took my first bite.

Y'all.

They were delicious.

And not delicious in the way we sometimes describe our first attempt at something because we've invested three hours, made a terrible mess of the kitchen, and emotionally need it to be delicious.

They were genuinely, completely, why-have-I-not-been-doing-this-for-years delicious.

And somewhere along the way, I realized I had spent far more time being intimidated by homemade pasta than I had spent actually learning to make it.

Isn't that funny?

We do that with so many things.

Or rather, we don't do so many things.

We decide something is difficult before we've ever touched it. Before we've tried it. Sometimes before we've even bothered to find out if it's actually difficult at all.

We watch someone bake bread or plant a garden or sew a quilt or can tomatoes or make ravioli and think, Oh, I couldn't do that.

And sometimes I wonder how many things we miss out on simply because we're afraid we won't be good at them.

Maybe you won't be.

Maybe the bread won't rise. Maybe the garden will be overtaken by squash bugs. Maybe the quilt won't have a single square corner. Maybe your first ravioli will be rough-cut little squares crimped together with a fork.

So what?

You tried!

And maybe you'll make a mess. Maybe your first attempt will be a little wonky. Maybe you'll discover halfway through that you have absolutely no idea what you're doing.

That's half the fun.

Because every once in a while, you try the thing you've been afraid to try...

and discover it wasn't nearly as scary as you made it out to be.

And every once in a while, you discover you're actually pretty good at it.

Either way, fear didn't get to make the decision for you.

Sometimes you just have to be brave enough to crack a few eggs into a pile of flour and see what happens.

And who knows?

By dinner, you might be making ravioli.