Sleepless Ravioli

Sleepless Ravioli.. What does lack of sleep and ravioli have to do with each other? Well, I'll explain.. See last Thursday 4/1/2015 I took off on an adventure (with Aidan and Emma) down to Georgia for some mandatory time. Now, Georgia is not a hop, jump and skip away.. it's a couple thousand miles away! So we drive... and we drive.. 13 hours for Day one and 10 hours for day two. Last Tuesday 4/7/2015 we headed back home.. same trip.. only 10 hours day one and 13 hours day 2. We arrived home Wednesday evening. Well, thinking one nights rest would be enough to recoup and get back into the swing of things.. NOT LIKELY!! I still don't know how I cooked this supper much less managed to take half way decent pictures of the meal! Dedication that's what that is!! And where this dish has now gotten its name!

Lets start! First off, if you don't know by now from my other blog posts.. I have a LARGE family! Meaning everyday I prepare dinner for 6 kids and 2 adults... Yes, I do know how to feed an army! However, most grocery food "family" sized items will NOT feed our family! so how to stretch it... It's honestly not that hard to make a meal go further. What I choose to do (upstairs in my overly creative mind) was make meatballs (small ones) and a tomato sauce then, as if in reverse, add the ravioli like you would meatballs to spaghetti.. sparingly. Wellllllll... meat ball were a bust.. my ground meat was not as thawed as I would have liked it and well, I was tired and pushed for time... bedtime that is!

I put the 4 pounds.. YES!! 4 whole pounds of ground beef (Our ground beef is raised locally and we help with the rest of the process til I am packaging it up for the freezer. We have a close to 97/3 ratio of meat to fat). For seasoning I used about 1 tbs pepper, 1 tbs garlic salt, 1 tbs garlic, 1/2 tbs onion powder and about 2 tsp home grown dried oregano. Then started the browning process.. Meanwhile...

Put some water on the stove at high temp, and salted the water. Then DO NOT watch.. cause the water will not boil and you will only get sleepier!

To the ground beef, that is now browned and drained of what very little fat our produces, I added 1 can of diced tomatoes, drained, and 2 cans of store bought 14.5 oz (I think that was the size. hehehe) cans of spaghetti sauce. Stirred it all together and reduced the heat from Medium to Simmer.. and let it marry and bubble away, about 10 or so minutes... And the water is ready for some ravioli bathing!

Once you add in the still frozen ravioli's the water temp will drop down.. it will come back to a boil and once it does, 5 minutes.. THAT IS IT.. 5 minutes and pull your done ravioli's out. Waiting longer then 5 minutes could result in some very over done, watery noodles.. and we just don't want that! At all!

By the time you have cooked all your noodles and pulled them out of the water, it is minutes before the meat sauce is ready to be plated..

What I did to make it look like more even to my very big eaters, I spooned out some sauce and flattened it down, kind of spreading it out, then layered about 7-9 ravioli's on top of the sauce. Topping it with a smaller scoop of sauce on top..

Well there you have it.. a very quick and easy meal to make for a LARGE family, and still satisfy everyone!

Recipe time:

Sleepless Ravioli
1 family size bag of frozen cheese ravioli's
4 lbs of ground beef
1 can dice tomatoes, drained
2 cans of spaghetti sauce (about 14.5 oz)
1 TBS pepper
1 TBS garlic salt
1 TBS garlic powder
1 TBS onion powder
2 tsp Oregano

Meat Sauce:
Brown and drain the ground beef. Add to the browned beef 1 can of diced tomatoes, drained and 2 cans of spaghetti sauce. heat to low boil on medium heat the reduce to simmer for about 10 minutes.

Ravioli:
bring salted water to a boil adding in about half the family size bag of ravioli's. water will drop in temp, but will return to a boil. Once water boils only cook the ravioli's for 5 minutes. Strain.

Construction:
spoon out some meat sauce on to the plate, spreading it out slightly. Add about 7-9 ravioli's on top of the sauce. lastly topping with a small spoonful of sauce on top of the ravioli's. eat and enjoy!

Stay tuned.. as always, there is more to come!!

<3  T
Simply Always, Tina