Butternut Squash Ravioli and Sage Cream Sauce

Back story: One of my favorite restaurant dishes is the Butternut Squash Ravioli at Cactus Club. That is saying something for this meat-loving girl! I remember I selected it from the menu because it looked like something I wouldn't typically make at home. From the butternut squash-stuffed ravioli to the truffle sauce to the pine nuts and sage leaf, it looked like a dish with which to be reckoned.

Present day: During our trip to Costco yesterday we noticed some tortellini was on sale. Sweet! While I compared some prices and tossed it in our cart, our son noticed some red-striped pasta. I noticed it was a butternut squash ravioli and after little deliberation decided to add it to the cart too. THAT is saying something for this don't-veer-from-the-shopping-list-unless-it-is-on-sale girl! Tonight I decided to tackle it.

I didn't necessarily want to copy my beloved meal, but I wanted to capture it's essence. Dramatic, eh? After a quick Google search, I was able to find a knock-off recipe of the sauce with at least a list of ingredients (for some reason many of the measurements weren't showing up on the site). The sauce at the Cactus Club is oil-based, and from the ingredient list it looked like truffle oil is a main ingredient. Well, I don't have that in my pantry. Someday I would like to cook with it, but today I stuck with what I had on hand. Here is what I did:

Sage Cream Sauce:

*the measurements are approximations since I did a lot of dumping and taste-testing

Melt:

1/4 cup butter 

Whisk in:

1 heaping Tbsp flour

Add:

1 1/2 to 2 cups cream

a splash of rice wine vinegar

a glug of white wine (I actually used red wine because it was on hand, but white wine is preferable.)

Stir until thickened.

Add:

1 tsp. ground sage, or to taste

Salt and pepper, to taste

I have to say, this sauce really added to the ravioli. The kids also loved the sauce and doused their chicken in it too :).

Welcome Julienne and the New Year!

After a few whirlwind months, I am getting back into some routine. I am also finally ready to blog about our latest little blessing: Julienne! She arrived just a few days after her due date. After a somewhat eventful labor, our beautiful girl entered the world. We are absolutely in love with her - especially her big brother. William loves to hold her and is the first to run to her if she starts to fuss. The love is mutual. No one can get the smiles out of her like he can. It is so fun to watch!

When Julienne was 18 days old I took her to have newborn photos taken by Angela at Angela Joy Photography. I love how they turned out! Here are a few of my faves:

Our family enjoyed a relaxing Christmas holiday and now I am energized and ready to tackle a long list of projects. The theme is purging. Purging clothes, unneeded decor, stuff that has been hanging around in the crawl space untouched and even food. Am I the only one who buys cereal expecting to never come close to the expiration date only to forget about it and realize that it is months past expiration?? It is sad, I know. My goal is to use up a significant chunk of our food stores, organize things more consistently, and do a better job of meal planning. I also would like to start keeping a list on the freezer of what is inside. I hope that way I'll have less freezer burn as well as avoid the panic of planning to make chicken and only having one piece left.

I love to organize, but I'm not always great about keeping things that way. I am the queen of taking on too much and then getting frustrated and letting it go down hill. A classic example: Last year when we started homeschooling, I spent several days in the summer planning out a schedule. I had schedules for each day of the week and included lessons, chores, outings, etc. I had lists for toy rotation and monthly projects. I even included a garden calendar I found online that had a schedule of outdoor chores. The whole nine yards. Well when you go from no schedule at all to having every hour of the day regulated, you're asking for failure.  Kudos to people out there who can, but it's not for me. It lasted about a week. I've learned to take baby steps and make my goals easy enough to accomplish. It if is too much work, I just don't keep up with it. Plus having little ones makes scheduling anything rather tricky. Julienne is a little miss bossy pants and tends to plan our days for us. It's a good thing she's cute :).

Leavenworth 2013

Every year my hubby's side of the family goes to Leavenworth for a mini family vacation where we go cross country skiing, downhill skiing and exchange gifts. This year was super fun because we had not only one but two babies there! Last year when we went I was only a couple months pregnant with Kaylyn and we had just celebrated Georgene and Jasons wedding a week earlier. Little did we know that we would be celebrating Christmas with their baby as well!

Kaylyn was passed out for a good chunk of the trip :)

Jeremy and Kaylyn cross country skiing. Kaylyn loved being to see everything. She kept on making her happy sounds and kicking her legs and flapping her arms. It was pretty cute!

Family pic!

All the Bouwman kids and grandkids. Morgan is somewhere under all the blankets in the sled lol 

Nate & Clarissa

Jeremy just taking a break

Getting ready to open gifts

We always play a game of some sort to make gift opening even more fun. This year we played Apples to Apples which was pretty entertaining :)

Our cross country skiing family pic

Georgene and her little man Morgan

Grams and Morgan

Jeremy modeling his new hat!

Kaylyn's favorite part of everyone opening gifts is that she gets to play with the paper! 

Kaylynn & Morgan sporting their new festive jammies from Gramps & Grams! 

Kaylyn's first Christmas ornament that we got in Leavenworth along with the ornament that Kaylyn helped make of her hand :)

Our family ornament/souvenir that we also got in Leavenworth. Growing up my family got a new ornament like this every time there was a new baby. I love things like that! I was also super stoked that when we bought this one from Kris Kringle they did the personalization for free!