Tuesday, April 26, 2011

The simple things

Holidays give the illusion of time. Well, it's not an illusion, there is actually more time to do 'stuff' but, it's sort of an illusion when I manage to fritter away alot of time whilst achieving very little.
At least I feel like I can do that at a leisurely pace!
I love school holidays, kicking around with the family and friends (by the way the great bike adventure went really well and I am keen to do it- or some other rail trail, again).


It's on holidays I think of doing things like making pasta.
I didn't have a recipe but I knew the ingredients, I put all the plain flour I had in a bowl (maybe 2 cups), with an egg, a pinch of salt, a good slug (just channelling the Jamie Oliver in me!) of olive oil and enough water to make a stiff-ish kind of dough.
Then I let it rest for ages- like hours, I had other things to do.
Then the helpers gathered and we laughed, mucked around (well, it was kind of like play dough that you can eat it) and created and made the best pasta I have had in a long time.




It's during school holidays that I make big claims like "I think I will make the pasta from scratch every time we have it from now on".
My neighbour makes her lasagne sheets from scratch every time she makes lasagne, that's just her habit now (she isn't Italian in case you were wondering).
It really isn't that tricky, it is pretty fun. It could be achievable. Is it a priority? We'll wait and see.


8 comments:

  1. I can't tell you how many times I've said that I am going to get out my pasta machine to make pasta with the kids during the holidays. It has yet to happen. :)

    It looks very yummy.

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  2. Have always intended to try home made pasta but after trying gnocchi once...

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  3. Wow, it looks really good too. I'm super impressed with that effort. I have a brand new pasta maker that I've never used. I wonder if it will ever make it out of the box?

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  4. I have NEVER made my own pasta. I think I put it in the same category I used to put sewing with zips in. And actually, zips are easy and your pasta looks DIVINE.

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  5. Ah yum yum yum. I finally got off my bum awhile ago and went back to making my own pizza dough and it does make a huge difference. I used to make gnocchi a fair bit too. Look forward to seeing more pasta here ;)

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  6. I need to do that. I have moved my pasta machine from house ot house for years, and haven't gotten it out of the box since... oh, since I was in high school, probably! Yikes!

    I've started making my own bread. I don't eat that much, so it started as a once a week thing, and now I just can't come at buying bread. $5 for a lacklustre loaf of supermarket bread? No, thanks. It's amazing how easily it has become a part of my routine. It doesn't take that much more time than going to the supermarket, frankly!

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  7. ahhh you make it look so easy! Yummo!

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  8. i need to get back into making pasta - it's so easy and pretty fast. But then, I have a kitchenaid which make the job pretty speedy :)

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