Pasta perfect!

I can't believe my sister who has not one, but two...count 'em: two...pasta makers, and has never told me how absolutely amazing - understatement of the year - homemade pasta is!  And, it was so easy to make too, much less fussy than cheese.  It took a long time the first time, but I was able to whip through it my second time, even listening to a fascinating audiobook while making it. 

As promised, here's a pictorial tutorial on how to make pasta using a pasta machine.  You could always just use a roller and a knife, but I like that the thickness is predictable with a machine.  We bought an Atlas from Lehman's (where I also got a couple of case of those fabulous Weck jars).

Shiny, Captain!

Attached to the island, with the room temperature eggs:

A close-up of the teeth end of the machine - to make fettuccine and a smaller something-lini size.  ;)

Ok, enough drooling over the sleek metallic lines of the pasta maker, let's get on with the recipe.

You start out with one pound of flour...the recipe that came with the pasta machine said "soft flour"...if you can find that, great. If not, use AP (all-purpose); that's what I did and it comes out just hunky-dory, thankyouverymuch.

Ta-da...1 pound by my very cute little Escali scale.

You crack 5 room-temperature eggs into the flour...

and work them in with a fork until fairly well incorporated:

Knead the flour with your hands until it all comes together.  The first time I made this, it came together pretty nicely.  The second time, not so much...it was a bit scaly looking on the outside, but don't worry!  (Or in the words of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Don't Panic!)  By the time you cut them into little chunks and run it through the rollers, everything will look great.

If, while you're kneading, the dough looks too wet, add a bit more flour.  If it looks too dry, add a touch of water (but don't over-do it).

After it's all kneaded, roll it into a small log and place on a lightly-floured surface.  Cut a chunk off the log...not too big, as you can see:

Cover the rest of the log with a towel.  If you're using a rolling pin, you can just roll it out like pie dough at this point, as thin as you want.  If you're using a pasta maker, follow its directions.  Mine says to set the setting at 1, and run your dough through it about 5 times.  After each time you run it through, flour the dough in the middle, and fold it over before running it through the machine again.

After you've run it through setting 1 about 5 times, increase the roller to the next setting, and run the dough through once on that setting.  You can do this all the way up to 9 (or whatever it is on your machine).  And dust with flour as needed.

When you've got the dough to the desired thickness, put that long stab on your floured surface and cut into 10" long segments.  Put each segment into one of the cutting rollers, depending on how wide you want your noodles.  I did fettuccine:

Here's another pic to show you just how long a slab of dough can get:

Anyway, if you're lucky enough to have a pasta rack, you can hang your noodles on that to dry. I don't have one, so I had to lay them out on a towel, and toss them every so often with some flour so they wouldn't stick to each other.

Continue the above steps with each subsequent chunks cut from the dough log until all gone.

Hubby cooked them up that evening with a simple garlic-butter sauce.  We had it with fresh cherry and grape tomatoes from garden.   

I don't think I need to tell you that it was incredible!  The texture and flavor of handmade noodles are so much more interesting than the dry stuff you buy at the store (which has its merits; I'm not knocking it).

It is so truly simple, I urge you to give it a try!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Announcements

Announcement #1

My sister did it! She has started her own biz making super adorable soaps! Check out her creations at Soap Sudsations. Here are a couple of her soaps that I'm in love with:

(Just in time for Halloween too!)

Announcement #2

At another blog that I frequent, the author said that she was turning off comment capability due to too much spam. I've actually been pretty lucky and have not had spam (though occasionally I'll crave Spam), but her decision got me to thinking that I should turn off my comments too.  One, I'm a compulsive answerer and turning off comments will save me from having to answer every comment; and, two, people are busy enough and can barely find time to read this blog, let alone comment, so I'll save them from feeling guilty for not commenting because I am that kind of a generous, thoughtful person...heh.

Of course, you can still contact me via Facebook or Twitter (if you know me at those places) or at birders4-blogger (at) yahoo (dot) com - taking out spaces and putting in the appropriate at and dot symbols. Or not. Totally understand if you don't wanna talk to me!

On to other topics...I realized that I hadn't written an update on my progress for my New Year's resolutions. Honestly, it's not that I've been slacking off. In the past couple of months, I've knitted a face cloth (easy, I know, but it still took time), and a pair of socks with the beautiful yarn that dear Tanya O. bought for me (little Sage chose the color):



Currently, I'm starting to work on knitting a rug with the wool that Robin gave away at Rurification.  I'm sort of winging it, but hope that it'll mostly turn out all right.  :}  As well, I'm taking some online classes from Craftsy - sock knitting (to learn a different technique), jewelry making (to hone my skills), and basic crochet (to have a refresher course that's available 24/7...I'm hoping to take another class with Robin, but I can't have her 24/7.  ;>  )

I have fallen behind on my sewing projects, I'll admit. But my plan is to sew some bags for my sister's soaps. I love easy projects with satisfying results.

Also pretty easy, but takes forever, is canning tomatoes. We did our first batch of 13.5 quarts:

Then, too, I've starting making fresh pasta! Next up, I'll post a little tutorial on how I did it.

How about you? Have you kept up with your New Year's resolutions?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Pep talk and pickles

Pep talk
I was going to post this to a friend on Facebook, but thought that it's good advice for anyone else who may be going through rough times:

Be good to yourself: there are lots of external forces (people, institutions, etc) that are always trying put you down and pull you down. You need to be your own best advocate, and fight your self-destructive tendencies, so you can fight their destructive tendencies.

Pickles

I don't recall if I've ever posted the recipe for tsukemono, a Japanese pickle, before, but since I've had a lot of requests for it, I'm going to post it.  Many thanks to my dear friend, Grace, who gave me her mom's recipe.  I've modified it for sodium content, and added notes on how else we've changed it, but it's pretty much the same recipe otherwise.

Tsukemono

1.5 C water
1.5 T salt

Bring water and salt to a boil (we actually just heat up the water slightly in the microwave so that the salt dissolves easier, but we don't boil the water so we don't have to wait as long for it to cool back down again).

Slice cucumbers to 1/4 inch thickness. (Hubby then puts the slices into a big container of ice water; this helps to keep the pickles crisp.  Let the slices sit in the ice water until the salt water has cooled down.)

Drain the slices, and cover them with the salt-water brine.  Leave for 1.5 hours.  Drain and rinse.

1.5 C water
1/4 C rice vinegar (use regular if you can't find or don't have rice vinegar)

2 t sugar
1 t MSG (we don't use that at all)
ginger, grated - use as much as you like to taste - Grace uses 1 t ginger paste
garlic, sliced - use as much as you like to taste
red pepper, crushed - use as much as you like to taste

Bring water, vinegar, sugar, and msg to boil and then let cool (again, I'd microwave it just enough to easily dissolve the sugar).  Put the sliced cukes into a jar* (or jars).  Add a few slices of garlic, grated ginger, and crushed red peppers in each jar.  Pour the vinegar brine over the cukes to cover.  Refrigerate.  May be eaten the same night.

Here it is, in the fridge:

 And peering into the jar of green goodness:

*Jars - we usually use Ball jars for canning, but with making refrigerator pickles, we love the Weck jars. 

German-made and with the cutest shapes, they're as much a work of art as they are practical.  We get ours from Lehman's Non-electric, but if you live in Vancouver, you can get them at Gourmet Warehouse on Hastings. The Wecks have rubber gaskets and metal clips. Apparently you can do regular canning with them, but hubby doesn't want to because the glass lids won't pop down like the metal ones do, and he wouldn't know if it'd sealed properly.

We have two different sizes/shapes, but I'd collect them all if I had the money!

Hubby also made refrigerator dill pickles, but I personally prefer tsukemonos.  :)  Have you canned pickles yet this summer?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Water, water, everywhere...and same with vermins

I saw the best quote the other day from Trent Hamm of The Simple Dollar:
"We all make mistakes in life. The thing that separates successful people from others is how we handle those mistakes."  It's the one lesson I hope the kids come away with if they remember nothing else I teach them.

Speaking of lessons for my kids, one of the ones I keep reminding ds#1 of is to not waste water:

Source: eLocal.com

Clean water is something that we should never take for granted.

~~~~~
We've enjoyed several meals of yummy sweet corn...

until the evil raccoons somehow got into our fenced garden (something they'd never done before) and destroyed the rest of that one bed. Luckily, we still have another bed, or two. One of those is surrounded by an electric fence, so they should fare better.

Raccoons, or some other pest, also swooped in on our Asian pears. One day our 2 trees were loaded with fruits, nearly ready for picking, and the next day, not a single fruit was left on either tree. Nada. If we catch the culprit, it is stew meat! Grrrr. The tree branch in this photo was so loaded with fruit that it had snapped off.

Luckily, there are other things we are able to harvest and process - more basil, for instance:

And here's hubby making the pesto, after I washed all the basil and the jars and lids, and the kids stripped the leaves.

A good friend, Tia, brought over two pullets that they didn't want anymore after her girls were done with their 4-H project. Meet Vader (guess what that was named after?) and Tawny (as in Sigourney Weaver's character from Galaxy Quest). Ds#1 gets the credit for these names. Do they look like they're doing a Rockettes' dance or what?

Our old hens had pretty much stopped laying due to the heat and their being broody, so we look forward to finally having some homegrown eggs again. Thanks, Tia!

In other exciting news, we'll be getting a new tractor soon - a lovely red Kubota! Hubby had looked at John Deere, but the dealer in town was surprisingly unresponsive, with the manager acting like he didn't really want to make the sale. The Kubota dealer in the town south of us, on the other hand, was so helpful and eager that hubby decided to go for it. Plus, the size and features that he wanted were cheaper with the Kubota. Can't wait!

Do you have any exciting gardening purchases?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

An old post I forgot to publish...

I'd written it back in early July before our trip to Vancouver; so, this will be your Monday treat...hahaha!

--------------------
I've never liked snow peas (I know, what kind of Chinese person AM I??), but have always loved other kinds of peas, our favorite being the edible pod types because of less waste. Until such time we get a hog to raise, I don't think we'll ever grow shell peas. It pains us to throw the entire husk away. Look at these lovely little edible pod peas!

This was our first big basil harvest; we made 9.5 pints of pesto.  Good eats ahead!

Not all is hunky-dory in the garden though.  There's something wrong with our onions. They have mottling on the green parts, making them look like aloe plants, and aren't growing very well.

Anyone else have problems with their garden this year that they can't attribute to insect pests?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Get ready to be inundated

Because it's always feast or famine, people!

No, sorry; it's actually because I tend to put things off and then throw everything into the pot...or the blog post.

So, let's rush through our Vancouver trip. Luckily for you, unlike some of my friends who are good about taking a million photos each time they go on vacation, I think we (the kids, hubby, and I) took a total of maybe 30 pictures. And I'm not sharing all of them - you'll be grateful to know that, for example, I'm not sharing the photo of the dead caterpillar ds#1 found in his salad or his stunning photos of various slugs they found while hiking.

Speaking of hiking, no trip to Vancouver is complete without a trek to Lynn Headwaters in North Vancouver:

Now that ds#1 is feeling more confident with birding by ear (and is really good with IDing by sight), we're doing more and more birding outings.  We went to Whytecliff Park, which we hadn't been to in years, and were rewarded with lovely views and some unusual birds.

Hubby likes to bring the boys to wholesome places for birding too (click to see larger photo):

That place (Wreck Beach, in case anyone wants to know) is pretty gorgeous though:

We also went to check out my mom's headstone at her grave site.  My sister and I helped our dad order the tombstone back in November. It arrived in February when I was already back home, so this was the first time I've seen it.  Dad wrote out the Chinese characters that they used to make lettering with.  I think it looks pretty nice.  And I think it's pretty generous of dad, who is an atheist, to honor mom, who was Catholic, by putting religious symbols on the stone.

Besides Lynn Headwaters, a trip to Vancouver would not be complete without eating authentic Chinese food...and lots of it.  My kids have gotten really fond of chicken feet now, so we order it at every dim sum:

This next item was a first for the boys (and hubby) - and a warning to the squeamish: you might want to skip down to the garden photos - care to guess what it is?

If you guessed "duck tongue", you are absolutely right!  Most older cultures still adhere to the "waste not, want not" ideal.

The funky thing is that inside of a duck tongue is some sort of bone or cartilage which makes the tongue stiff.  Consider this is your anatomy lesson for the day.  Traveling is very enlightening. 

We're back home now, in not-as-exotic southern Indiana.  But, we have fresh food back home, so even if we don't have anything unusual, it is all tasty.  Here's hubby between the broccoli and corn:

And what was hubby doing with a pitchfork, besides posing as model for an American Gothic revival? Digging potatoes, of course!

A few more random garden photos...summer squash that got too big while we were away in Vancouver enjoying the duck tongue:

More corn because we can never get enough:

The frisee, gone to seed...but look at how pretty the flowers are!

Not as pretty as the frisee flowers, but lovely in its own way is the asparagus forest:

Hubby put our indoor banana tree out in the garden where it's been enjoying the killer heat and humidity. I'm glad something is.

Aren't the cherry tomatoes adorable?

Well, enough of my babbling for one post. I plan to post shorter, less gross posts more regularly.  (Was that confusing to use less and more within 2 words of each other?)

If I've not already visited your blog, tell me about your vacation/summer/garden, and I'll swing by for a look-see!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams