The Napping House by Audrey Wood

Cooking Skill Level: Intermediate (or you could make it an EASY)

 

This book is all about repetition and building on a base story.  Long ago, when I was a kid, my brother and I would compete to see who could sing “There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea” the fastest.  If you’re not familiar with this song, it starts with the hole, then there’s a log in the hole, a knot on the log in the hole, a frog on the knot on the log in the hole, etc. Imagine a three and four year old having the ability to remember and accurately repeat this long string of circumstances.  The repetition and building make a great learning combination.  This is exactly what the Napping House does.  It takes a visually detailed “stack” and gives the steps needed to build that stack.    If you smiled at the mental image of a 3 and 4 year old with the Hole in the Bottom of the Sea, stretch your mental image and your smile to include a 2, 3 and 5 year old stacking bodies on a bed.  Okay, that didn’t quite come out like I wanted it to, but you get the picture.

 

I love it when a book has a built in giggle response.  The boys couldn’t stop laughing at the absurd pictures the words painted for them.  Be Warned: the kids WILL try this at home.

 

So the story is all about napping.  What food could possibly recreate the napping experience (and no, we’re not talking tryptophan)?.  PILLOWS.  Of course, pillows.  Ravioli makes a great pillow.  And here’s where you have the opportunity to change the cooking skill level.  You can make your own ravioli (intermediate) or you can buy any of the great ready-made ravioli that’s in the dairy case (EASY).  So pillows, yes, we can do that, but what else?  Blankets.  We’ll do a blanket salad.

 

For the blanket salad, I used romaine lettuce, provolone cheese, and cucumbers.  I cut them to look like blankets … rectangles.  The cheese and the cucumber cooperated a bit better than the lettuce, but that’s ok, I told the boys it looked like a chenille bedspread.  They believed me.  So I cut a 2 ½” chunk of the cucumber.  I then sliced it lengthwise into thin blankets.  I cut the provolone into similar sized rectangles.  I layered the lettuce, cheese and cucumbers and dressed it with salt, pepper, and dill. 

 

I made my own ravioli because that’s how I roll.  The pasta dough.  How I roll the pasta dough.  Okay, cheesy joke.  Man, am I on a roll.  (Circular logic warning).  Anyway, I used my handy ravioli form and my ravioli punch to create two different raviolis.  I made a plain cheese and a spinach and cheese.  I used my own ricotta (EASY, can’t even pretend it’s difficult to make) and combined it with shredded cheeses (which I bought) and frozen, thawed and drained spinach. 

 

The ricotta is super easy.  Take 2 cups of heavy cream, 4 cups of whole milk, and a teaspoon of salt.  Bring to a rolling boil.  Remove from heat, add 3 tablespoons of a good white wine vinegar (or champagne vinegar) and stir.  Let sit for a couple of minutes then strain by pouring through cheesecloth which is placed in a colander.  I highly recommend putting the strainer/colander over a bowl to catch the liquid which you can then strain again (pour it back over the cheesecloth) or save and use in baking breads.  Let the curds strain for at least 30 minutes.  The longer you let it sit, the thicker your ricotta will be.  I’m thinking of trying different vinegars, maybe a white balsamic, to see what happens to the ricotta.  I’ll let you know if it makes a big difference.

 
Once you have your ricotta, bought or home made with love (no pressure), just take about a half a cup, and add another half a cup of shredded cheeses.  You can add herbs and vegetables - just make sure that you don’t let the mix get too wet.  This means that if you’re using spinach, use frozen or cooked spinach and let it drain and dry a bit.  Roll out your pasta dough (see previous posts for recipe).  To use the ravioli form place ½ of the dough on the form.  Gently press your fingers into the depressions and fill with your cheese or cheese and spinach mixture.  Because I’m lazy, I paint the layer of dough with egg wash (egg and water) before I add the filling rather than just outlining each filled ravioli with the wash. Place the second half of the dough on top, and using the tiny rolling pin that came with the form, roll across the form and seal the ravioli “pillows”.  I find that it’s actually easier once I’ve rolled a bit to use my fingers to press down on the upraised outline, cutting the dough. 

If you’re using a spring-load ravioli press or cookie/biscuit cutters, it’s pretty much the same process, only remember that it’s easier to mistakenly overfill the ravioli when using this method.  Roll out the dough, on  one half, paint with egg wash and place spoonfuls of filling, place the second half of the dough over the first and use the cutter/press to cut your ravioli.  If using a cutter, you’ll need to make sure the edges are sealed.

 
Cook your ravioli by placing in boiling water, and once the ravioli float to the top, they’re cooked.
 

I topped ours with my fauxfredo sauce: 1 cup milk, ½ cup grated parmesan, 1 clove garlic mashed, salt, pepper, and parsley.

 

So the next issue is, of course, dessert.  Well, pillows worked well for the entrée, so why not for dessert.  Using my ravioli press and some pie crust, I created apple pie pillows.  When I made my pie crust, I added cinnamon and a wee bit of sugar.  I filled the pillows with some apples I’d diced (you could use applesauce, or any filling you wanted).  Once the pies were cut, I baked them for about 20 minutes.  They were a huge hit.

 

Now, let’s review … we made ravioli with our own ricotta.  That’s the Intermediate cooking skill.  You can simplify by using store bought ravioli or making your own ravioli with store bought ricotta.   We made a blanket salad.  You could substitute any lettuce or vegetables for this.  It’s more important to have a vocabulary word on hand to explain why it doesn’t quite look like expected.  I once convinced my daughter that she had Corduroy, a contagious disease caught from napping on “those” pillows.  Hey, she got to play Quarantine in her room and I got to finish my chores.  Win Win.  Don’t forget the dessert.  A really simple dessert, and if you don’t have a ravioli form, you can just make your own pillows using pie crust and cutting it in rectangles.

 

The boys loved both the book and the meal.  Once served, the boys built the story with their blankets and pillows. 

 

Title	The Napping House
Author	Audrey Wood
Illustrator	Don Wood
Publisher	Harcourt, Inc
Highlights /Tie in	Pillows, Blankets, Stacking
Reactions to the Book	·         That’s YOU Grummy, you’re on the bottom, you broke the bed ·         That boy is baby S, no it’s not, he’s too little. ·         They repeated the sequence of “stacking” people/pets. ·         Grummy Note: this is a great hole in the bottom of the sea type story, there’s a grandma, there’s a boy on the grandma, there’s a dog on the boy on the grandma, etc.
Meal	·         Pillows: Mini Spinach and Cheese ravioli ·         Blanket Salad: like a chopped salad, but with lettuce, cheese, and cucumbers all sliced/cut to look like little blankets ·         Dessert: Apple Pie Pillows (pie filling chopped small, could use applesauce though)
Reactions to the Meal	·         Boys liked stacking the pillows and “blankets” to see who could make the highest stack, or who could put the biggest stack in their mouths ·         S kept using the fauxfredo as “glue” to stack everything higher ·         The ravioli made Q laugh himself silly … oh Grummy, PILLOWS ·         The apple pie was a huge hit … they were just over an inch square, so they could eat a lot of them

 

Just a couple more in reserve so I’m really looking forward to the new book for next week.  I just haven’t found it yet!