Pasta

When I made up my meal menu for the week and my grocery list on Friday, I decided to try something new. I recently learned that my brother's girlfriend, Chelsea, makes her own pasta, and I was incredibly impressed. My Better Home & Gardens monster-of-a-cookbook had a recipe for Homemade Pasta, so I thought I'd try it. I knew it would take me a few hours because the estimated time on the recipe said "1 hour" and everything always takes me longer. I would have made it Monday night but I forgot until late afternoon. The same thing happened yesterday. I finally remembered early enough today to get started on it. While the recipe instructions are quite straightforward and seemingly easy, I had a few snafus. (By the way, it turns out that "snafu" is a real word! I thought it was just one of those things people say.) First of all, the amount of kneading required is well, let's just say that my hands are going to be super buff if I keep this up. It seemed terribly difficult to roll out the dough and why in the world did I have to separate it into 4 equal pieces? Why couldn't I just roll it all out together? My cutting of the dough into noodle-like strips went quite about as well as the rolling out. My noodles lay drying on my wire rack, and it is such a pitiful pile. All that work for perhaps 2 servings of noodles?! Needless to say, I've learned a few things:

1. I am incredible impressed with anyone who makes their own pasta.
2. Next time I do this (if ever) I will make a bigger batch.
3. If I ever do this again, I would like a noodle cutter machine to be in my possession.
4. Buying a 16 oz box of noodles for $1.25 never sounded so great!

Lest you think that I am completely discouraged from trying new things, think again. Despite the work and little frustrations, this was a delightful experience. Besides, now I can say that I've made my own pasta!