Make It Yourself

I need you to use your imagination for a little while here. Are you ready?

Imagine you’re a teacher. Not just any teacher, but a teacher for a class that isn’t state-tested, and is considered a “fun” class by the students. Now imagine that it’s the day before Spring break. Imagine that over a third of your students are going somewhere tropical and warm. And now imagine that, instead of the lower-50s weather you’re supposed to be able to enjoy at the end of March, you’ve got 28-degree temperatures, ice, and snow.

Think your students are a little antsy?

Imagine that all you want to do after work (which, by the way, has given you a terribly upset stomach) is go home and nap, and then have a delicious dinner.

Imagine (and this isn’t hard to do) that after said nap, you don’t want to leave the house. And, imagine that you have a big bowl of Peasto just begging to be used.

Are you there?

This was my Friday. I wanted pasta, and I wanted the rest of the Peasto, but alas… there was no pasta in the house. We also had a newly-professionally-cleaned counter (and the rest of the house, but the counter is what’s important here) so I embarked on a mission.

Make homemade pasta. And make it I did!

I started with a very simple recipe I found on SugarLaws. And I made it 1/3 bigger. So my ingredients:

• 3 cups whole wheat flour
• 3 eggs
• salt
• water as needed

I mixed the flour, eggs, and salt in my stand mixer, added water until a smooth ball formed, and then removed it to my floured counter. And I rolled it. And let it rest. And rolled it some more. And let it rest. And then I had, besides a no-longer clean counter, this:

And then, as per instructions, I rolled the dough up into a cigar shape so I could neatly slice it into ribbon shapes.

Which didn’t work. Either my knife wasn’t sharp enough, or the dough was too sticky, or something, but it didn’t work. So I rolled it all back into a sheet, and then transfered it in sections to a cutting board, and then sliced it (per Adam’s suggestion) with our pizza cutter.

Lovely, albeit a little uneven, fettucini noodles!

After a quick (really, about 3 minutes) boil in salted water with a tablespoon of olive oil, and a generous bath of Peasto, dinner was served.

The pasta had that perfect texture that only fresh pasta can have, and there really is something to eating something that took a lot of effort to make. I had hesitated making plain noodles for a while, even though I’d made filled pastas before, but now? Now I’ll be doing this more often. It was easy, and there were enough leftovers for a Saturday lunch. Or midnight snack.

Nutritionally, this was a PointsPlus bargain, and was satisfying enough that one serving was a great dinner.

Now, my professional advice? Say “screw it” to this confused weather, and spend your Sunday making homemade pasta!

Tagged as: dinner, fun, fun recipe, Italian, pasta, pesto, sauce, simple recipe, vegetarian