Instagram vs. Reality

Hi, Y'all!

Looking out of my window, it's grey, wet and uncosy - baby, it's cold outside! Well, it's November, and therefore suitable, I guess. But I'm constantly wondering where these instagrammer, youtuber and influencer live who always make these pretty projects from fall leaves. Any time I think, a pretty foliage wreath might be nice, it's dark outside, it's drizzling or the leaves are still wet by a previous rain shower. On the rare occasion it's actually nice weather, the leaves I find are way too small, broken or my dogs don't understand at all, why I have to stop all the time and collect funny things that don't belong in small black bags.

And that's another thing: dogs in social media are always clean and cute. Mine bathe in puddles of mud, magically make the air smell funny, produce litres of drool, eat grass like sheep and throw up afterwards. Well, life's not always a bed of roses...

So, no foliage decoration for me, only a few concrete pumpkins and chestnuts. And I suppose, the Christmas decoration won't get much attention either and will stay in its boxes instead. Moving re-entered our agenda, and I don't want to drag stuff out of cartons which is perfectly boxed for moving.

Besides this, my foodblog is far from instagram worthy - my pictures are semi good, and regarding the looks of the food there is always room for improvement. Nevertheless, I'll show you what I did last weekend: pumpkin-filled ravioli!

Before our move to the west of Germany, we lived in an area specially known for its soft pretzels served with butter and for the special hand-made pasta topped with cheese (swabian mac'n'cheese so to say). There you could buy a special flour which was perfect for pasta-making, but here you can't find it in the shops. But I found a recipe where you mix the all-purpose wheat flour with semolina, and moreover it doesn't need any eggs. And as Barilla and co. can do pretty well without them, I thought, I'd give it a go. 

Dough making was easy as well as rolling it out - thanks to my fancy kitchen aide, and the filling was not that complicated:

The thing I assumed to work more elegantly was that fold-over forming thingy by the famous American plastic manufacturer. Around each mold there were little teeth which would enclose the filling safely in the pasta and should cut off the excess dough at the same time. It worked more or less: the ravioli were sealed, but the cutting and separating I had to do with a knife. Well, maybe I should have placed one layer of dough on my counter, scoop some filling on and place another layer of dough on top, then cut it into squares with a pizza roller. But I have that device, thus it will be used! 

The result: 

As you can see, a genuine foodblogger would have done that far more picturesque, but (my friends all drive porsches and) I must make amends :-) Originally the recipe calls for sage butter, but thanks to my brown thumb I have no sage in my garden and my food dealers of choice didn't have either. Therefore, I prepared a good old tomato sauce. 

Fresh out of the boiling water, my ravioli looked like this: 

Please pay attention to the serving dish - a nice souvenir from our Tunisia vacation before times began...

Looking back, I must say a bit butter and parmesan cheese would have fit better to the pumpkin filling than the tomato sauce, but it was delicious nevertheless, and if you ask me, that picture below is almost foodblog-worthy: 

Have a very nice weekend and

enjoy your time!