Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Adventures in Pasta Making

Eric and I both have a love for doing things from scratch. I'm not sure if this is something that will fade with age, or more responsibility, but for now, we both enjoy it. I think I read a little too much Little House on the Prairie as a kid.

So I wasn't too surprised when Eric wanted to make his own pasta.

I was pleasantly surprised when he bought the $30 hand-crank rather than the $179 Kitchenaid attachment. (Much love Kitchenaid, but let's be serious, here.)

His first pasta experiment was linguine. We've since upgraded to adding herbs and whole-wheat flour, but the first recipe was the basic Kitchenaid-approved one.

For those of you playing along, here's what he does:

4 large eggs (certified humane if you're cooking at my house! and if I have the $$ to shell out for them!)
1 tbsp water
3 1/2 c sifted flour (we use
all purpose but I've heard cake flour is more legit)

Mix for 30 seconds with the flat beater
Then attached the dough hook for 2 minutes

He pulls it out and hand kneads it for another minute or so, then wraps it in Stretch-Tite and lets it rest for 20 minutes, or until he's ready for it.






Here he is preparing to conquer the pasta-maker. It was a bit rocky
at first but he picked it up pretty quickly.









Homemade meatballs and sauce made by my awesome husband!










My DIY effort at making the patio look cute. At least I found a use for those wine bottles!


What are your DIY decor ideas for dinner parties?

Do you like making things homemade?

4 comments:

kdespres said...

OMG, what an excellent meal that was! I wish you had a picture on Nick with homemade sauce all over himself! Seriously though, LOVE the new blog, tres adorable AM!

El said...

One of my favorite DIY dinner party decorations is to cut some pine branches (small ones!) and layer them on a nice flat dish, add some holly (best with berries) and some mini Christmas ornaments, a couple of votive candles and a Holiday centerpiece is born!

Annemarie Elizabeth said...

Haha Katie i know, that was so funny. Maybe I should do a post inspired by Nick on getting food-related stains out!

If you feel like doing a guest post on some creme brulee action, that would rock!

Annemarie Elizabeth said...

El,

Thanks for reading! What a great tip- you should send me a photo sometime and I'll put it up. Your dinner parties are always so elegantly decorated in that cute backyard or in the house!