Sweet Potato Ravioli

I am loving all this time off of work.  I feel its been the best of all worlds – productive, lazy and family time!

My Mom loves sweet potatoes.  Pretty sure there isn’t a way she doesn’t love them – except without melted marshmallows on top!  Is anyone a fan of that dish below?

I told her I’d take the leftover yams she brought me (still don’t know the difference between a yam and a sweet potato – they are pretty much the same thing if you ask me!)

Only one tiny problem – the sweet potatoes were SO sweet – she’d sprinkled them with a little brown sugar and butter.  So I needed to find something to balance the sweet.  I ended up adding 3 giant handfuls of fresh baby spinach, some crushed red pepper and Italian seasonings to the filling – the result?  A slightly sweet, yet savory ravioli.

Sweet Potato Spinach Ravioli

• makes 20 ravioli – 5 raviolis per serving:  269 calories, 8 fat, 36 carbs, 2.6 fiber and 10 protein

Ingredients:

For the ravioli pasta:

• 1 cup flour
• 2 eggs
• pinch of salt

Put in your food processor and pulse until combined.   Put on your counter and knead for about 5 minutes.  I let my dough rest in the fridge for about 20 minutes before rolling out, because it’s a really soft dough.

For the filling:

• 8 ounces cooked sweet potato
• 3 cups fresh baby spinach
• 4 ounces vegetarian cream cheese
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper (can adjust to taste)
• 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
• cracked pepper
• pinch of salt

I have a ravioli press – they are cheap, I think I bought mine for $10 bucks on Amazon.com.

I had way more filling than I did pasta – I think I am going to mix some of the leftover spinach mixture with leftover mashed potatoes for potato pancakes for my SIL.

Since the filling was more spinachy (yep, that’s a word) vs. sweet, I made a simple tomato cream sauce.  I made these on Friday with every intention of bringing them to my Mom yesterday, but completely forgot them at home – so hopefully my SIL likes them!

We ended up having a second Thanksgiving at my Mom’s house last night.  It’s the first time my Mom has had the family over for a big meal since she bought her house over the summer.  She got an expandable kitchen table (no dining room in her new house) so it was a full house!

I, of course, being the crazy Aunt B., had to keep it weird for my niece and nephews – I have no idea what their opinion is of me, but it keeps them laughing, so that’s a good thing.  I put the picture of me singing on Facebook last night and said “It’s not a party until I start singing!”

And the food was delicious – pot roast, cooked carrots, mashed potatoes.  My niece made pecan pie all by herself, my nephew made the pumpkin pie and my sister made stuffed nutella chocolate chips cookies.  In case you are wondering, I deemed a small piece of each dessert insulin worthy!  I made the cheddar drop biscuits. 

I have a confession to make.  I didn’t run at all these last three days!  And today ends my 21 day challenge.  I did manage to complete 15 5ks in 21 days though – so that’s saying something!  My fastest time?  35:06.  I was able to shave 5 minutes and 39 seconds from my beginning time in that amount of time – winning!

I am looking forward to mixing up my exercise for this next challenge – hitting up the pool is number 1 on my list!  And I have to take advantage of group exercise classes at the gym – hoping their December schedule works with my schedule.

I am joining up with Brooke’s Skinny Snowman Challenge.  And it may just be the fact that I am a snowman whore that I made the decision to join up! 

You can get the details here – just send Brooke and email and let her know if you are interested in participating.  Prizes will be involved!

My coffee just finished brewing – nothing better than a quite Sunday morning with coffee and the Sunday paper.  And I may need to make pumpkin pancakes!

Enjoy your Sunday!