Homemade Pasta

The ingredients for homemade past are very simple.
2 Cups flour (wheat or white)
2 Eggs
Some water

period

that is all!


Dump your flour onto the counter or whatever surface you would like to use
it is best if it is a clean surface
nothing is yuckier than grit in your pasta

Make a fun little volcano and crack your two eggs into it.

Then starting on the outside work the flour and the eggs together with your hands


I recommend taking your rings off….my wedding ring still hasn’t recovered from the eggy flour mixture.

This is what it will look like when the eggs and flour are combined, it will be a dry crumbly mess.
This is where the water comes in.

Add water about a Tablespoon at a time until you get a very dry, very stiff dough. The amount of water you use will vary each time depending on many factors.


Kneed and mix everything together really well

Once the dough looks like this let it rest on the counter top (or surface of your choice.) for 10 to 30 minutes, covering it with a damp cloth.


While the dough is “resting” (whatever that means) set up your pasta maker.

If you are simple like me it will be of the hand-crank variety

(which preforms wonderfully)
or an electric one.

and set it to the biggest setting, where the rollers are as far apart as they will go.

Once your dough has had a nice nap cut it into fourths, it it easier to work with. Cover the pieces that you aren’t working with with your damp cloth so they don’t dry out too much.

Moosh your piece out kind of flat….

and push it through the roller

After the first pass through the machine it will look like this and you will think you are a pasta-making-failure, but don’t despair, this is a normal step.


Gather it all together and fold it as best as you can and give it another pass through the machine.

When it starts sticking together well, adjust the pasta maker to a lower setting (so the rollers are closer together)

Fold the dough up and make some more passes

All you do now is fold and run through the machine….adjust down…..and fold and run.

Very Simple.

(look how bad I am, that is some uncovered dough in the back ground! tisk-tisk!)

(and if this happens during one of the passes, don’t fret, it will iron itself out)

Keep going until it is at its smallest setting, or until you are at the thickness you like.

Lay the big sheet of pasta out on the counter top…(or surface of choice) and rest (there is that word again) for about thirty minutes.


When you are ready to cut the pasta put on the attachment of your choice. (At this time I only have two, but that will be changing!) and cut the big sheets of pasta to the length desired. I was making mine for Chicken Noodle soup, so I only wanted them about three inches long. I used a pizza cutter and quickly make the cuts.


Then you just feed it through the cutter and (taadaa) pasta!

This recipe will make two pounds of pasta.

I love that big fat pile!

(I am not so much loving the small pile that made its way to the floor, not my surface of choice)

and a quick picture of the living room without laundry all over
(just give it a couple days…)

I divided the pasta into two piles, one for the soup and one for the freezer.

I haven’t learned how to dry pasta yet, but when I do I will be sure to tell y’all

(Kristi the “y’all” is for you!)

Into the soup pot it goes and since it is fresh it only takes about 5 minutes to cook, and onto the dinner table.

YUM!


No more dried, store bought pasta for this family.

The cruelty of a January Thaw

Friday and Saturday was a balmy 50 degrees, and rainy. It felt like March. I saw grass and dirt for the first time since Christmas. I live in a valley and in the winter when a high pressure system sits on top of us we get really bad air, “they” call it inversion, I call it depressing. It was so thick that I couldn’t see down to the lake shore a half a mile away for days and days, and it was COLD! Then this wonderful warm air moves in with some rain and the air cleared out and the snow started to melt, it seriously felt like spring. Even though I knew it was just the annual January thaw I can’t help but hope that this was going to be the end to the cold and snow and inversion.
Here is my poor parsley, still green, even though it was under two feet of snow. The green color was a site for snow weary eyes!

(I know blurry picture)
This is my patch of Chamomile…still green….looks like springtime….sigh….

Some more plants and dirt…HA….muddy dirt!

Then Sunday rolled around.
And the cold air rolled in again, after all it is January in Utah, and the rain turned to snow. This is what we woke up to this morning.

That is my Chamomile patch.


That is where my parsley is sleeping


Icy streets.


Welcome back winter…..

Hum Drum Days of Winter


I have felt so off for weeks now. Tired and cranky and depressed. We are totally off our schedule and haven’t read scriptures as a family since before Christmas, or prayed. I feel as if I am just barely hanging on to a shadow of order and in reality I am just flying by the seat of my pants. It is a combination of many things, I don’t think I have gotten a full night sleep since Christmas and the weather is so blah! I finally got a little glimpse of the sun this morning and then it was promptly covered up by fog.

I know I need to pull myself up and get going, get that new schedule written, get the house cleaned to sparkling and start family study/prayer time. I really just want to sleep!

Anyone else have a hard time this time of year? What do you do to boost your spirits?

P.S. Coming next week…a post on homemade pasta!

Hope for Change

A lot of people were filled with hope yesterday as the new president was sworn into office.

I too did a lot of hoping, here is what I hope for:

I hope he can really do what he says he can

I hope he can create jobs without driving us further into debt

I hope he can lower taxes while increasing services.

I hope he can create jobs out of thin air, while taxing small businesses into closing.

I hope he can pull people out of poverty, without driving the middle class into it.

I hope he can ask all his billionaire movie star friends to give up their second and third houses to help fun his programs, and not put it on the shoulders of the middle class.

I hope the United States of America is ready for socialism.
(and here)
(and here)

I hope we don’t become like Canada, Australia or Europe

I hope those bail outs work.

I hope God forgives us for electing a man who will kill a baby, (and here) because they aren’t wanted.

I hope we all still “cling to our guns and religion” and that we are allowed to do it.

I hope his presidency doesn’t become one big Human (Black) rights rally, like his inauguration was.

I hope he doesn’t make us become a society of entitlement. The Constitution only guarantees us a right to pursue happiness, not happiness and houses and cars and Wii’s.

Hope for Change…..

Housekeeping Binder

I had several comments about my housekeeping binder, mostly wanting to know what it is. I will admit this isn’t a unique idea, I have seen variations of this on a few different blogs. I have seen some that are a lot more detailed and others that are more simple. I am somewhere in the middle. It isn’t exactly how I would like it at this time, it is still a work in progress, but aren’t most thing!

My friend Patty asked “Is this housekeeping binder the reason you’re so organized?” I had to smile, I am one of the most unorganized people I know! This housekeeping binder is my attempt at some organization!

So here you go, a tour of my housekeeping binder.

My Binder consists of one three ringed binder and a couple of other folders for item that are too big and bulky for the regular binder that I need to keep on hand.

In the pockets I keep items that need immediate attentions, phone messages, notes from school, my check book and pen and other various items. On the first page is where the master schedule goes. It is blank right now, I am in the process of re-working our schedule.

The first section is for school. Each school age child had a plastic sleeve that is theirs. I put class room syllabuses and other various papers they bring home that need to be saved. If there is a report due, the instructions are slipped in there, and I don’t have to worry about them getting lost. If they do really well on an assignment, I will put it in their sleeve until I can get it put away.

There is also a plastic sleeve for MISC School, for things that have to do with school in general.

My next section is Food and Menus. Every two weeks when I do my shopping I plan a two week menu and it is put on the refrigerator door, when the two weeks is up the menu is put in a plastic sleeve. I have several months worth of menus saved. It is really nice if I am having a brain block to go back and look at what we have had in the past and it gives me ideas for when I am making out the current menu.

There is also a running grocery list at the back.

This is my gardening section. It is blank right now, but I am gearing up for the next planting season. I have grid paper in here so I can plot out my garden boxes. I want to start saving these and keeping notes from year to year.


This is food storage. I keep a running total of all that I have in storage in the basement. I work off a food storage calculation sheet I got off this web site http://www.thefoodguys.com/foodcalc.html. Every couple of month I update this.

The next section is health. I keep all the hand outs the Doctors give us. When we had to take Dadzoo to the ER I put the discharge slip and instructions in the plastic sleeve in this section. It makes it handy if I need to get to it. I know right where it is.


I also keep all information sheets we get from the pharmacy,

and our medical bills. I know right where they are for easy reference and payment.

Last but not least, I have my MISC household section. I keep all the various papers that I need to hold on to, but don’t really have a place for. I have instructions for my soap making and the recycling schedule all in this section. I also keep the statements from the utility companies so I can look and compare easily.

I do have a couple of extra folders that I keep stacked neatly under the binder. One is a writing journal for my 10 year old, that has to do with her homework and it just doesn’t fit well into the master binder. Another is a folder with blank paper that I take with me to Doctor appointments or teacher conferences, so I can take notes and such. The third big envelope is full of medical information, my oldest daughter has some issues and I accumulate a lot of paper in regards to that, and it all goes in this envelope for easy access.


It all says neatly (most of the time anyway!) stacked by the phone and calender.

There you have it, my housekeeping binder.

How do you all stay organized?