Pasta making has become a favorite of D’s. And this week with all of our new CSA shares to experiment with, we decided to try making some lasagna from scratch (or from knead, squeeze, pinch, roll, and shape) Pasta is incredibly easy to make. Flour and eggs. That’s it. I tend to be a little wishy-washy when it comes to measurements (why I seem unable to bake) so I included a real pasta recipe from Jamie Oliver
Basically what I do is have D put some flour in a bowl (about 2 cups) and then 2-3 eggs and combine, then kneed. If it is crumbly add a few drops of water, if it is sticky add a bit more flour. Then there is a resting phase. 30 min covered to let the glutens do what glutens may when they are left unsupervised. I don’t ask questions.
After we emptied the dishwasher (love that D still thinks it is a great game-how long can this last?) I split dough up into 4-5 pieces and hand to D to do the rest. She puts it through machine. Cranks it, mushes it back together, repeats until I loose patience and encourage her move on to making it thinner and thinner. Then we cut the pasta it into longish squarish pieces and throw into boiling water to parboil. 2 min and drain. By the time one was done the next was be ready to go in. We laid them out on a plate and started arranging the other ingredients. The greens (spinach and chard) were sauteed with onion and garlic and pinch of salt. D put some layers of cheese on. Then we repeated with more pasta and some mushroomy layers. We luckily had more dough than we needed, so D made it into her favorite activity- play doh. She spent 40 minutes with same little piece and G was working on his train set unencumbered by any meddlesome siblings. This allowed for the rest of dinner to come together quite nicely. This is not the usual scenario in our home for dinner prep.
I made the mushroom layer with a number of dried and fresh mushrooms reduced with wine and tomatoes. The kids liked everything but the greens. I didn’t chop them small enough. But they did eat most of it regardless.
Archive for June, 2009
unboxed lasagna
outside the box
Just a few ways a 15 month old avoids putting his toys into the box… If Wall Street is looking for some creative types- other than dress code- he could be your man.
little vampires
We walked to pick up our CSA share from Ledge Ends Produce in Providence today. After choosing our shares from the bin Dunedin and Griffin realized that the last stop on the line held Strawberries. Strawberries are spelled with a capitol S in our house. They are pronounced with all caps, but I thought in print, this begins to get redundant. Needless to say we HAD to stop to sample “a w’iddle bit, pwease Mommy? Griffin wants some.”
As we left the CSA pick up area, there really were enough for Daddy to sample some, but when we got home this was all that was left.
Now both the children were strapped in, but both were covered in red dripping goatees when we got home 20 minutes later. Dunedin must have been passing Griffin some up front in the stroller…
I only got one.
at my bedside
Currently books in our house (big thick ones with written narratives in them) seem to be getting more use as footstools allowing little hands closer to light switches, everything on the counter and the raisin jar. But I still find myself reading a lot. But now it is mostly magazines or things I can put down without having to spend much time on reintroduction. Life with little ones seems to be lived in little cubits of time. About the length of a magazine article with corresponding pictures…
This being said, these are the books I keep reaching for over and over again, determined to spark a new idea, see a new lighting technique or share with the kids. The kids favorites are at the bottom. Zoo logy by Joelle Jolivet is huge at bedtime. And I don’t just mean that, when open, both kids can hide behind its nearly two-foot-tall pages. It has all of these fantastic block prints of animals in category groupings such as “Hot”, “Horns”, “Striped”, “In the Sea”, “at night” and “underground”. We can spend good parts of an hour laying on our bed playing eye spy and discovering animals we hadn’t heard of before. Also a big hit is Wheres the Cake created and illustrated by T. T. Khing, We get lost in the many layered stories that are told entirely through pictures. There are many plot lines and characters to be followed from the beginning of the book to the end.
the Herb huntress
Dinner time at our house can be a bit chaotic. Dinner time prep even more so. Mouths and emotions are left hanging open. Especially after day care days when the kids have to transition back to home life whilst hungry. But now that Dunedin has been helping in the gardening process she can identify herbs that we can add to our meals. As she spend dinnerprep time begging to ‘help” and Griffin spends the time hording all of the pots and pans needed for the meal, I have been sending D outside in our little enclosed backyard to get the herbs. She was reluctant but very excited at the prospect of going alone. She explained to me that she needed a ‘hunting outfit’ left for 10 minutes to find it and this is what she came up with. It is summer, mind you.
Chick pea salad pictured is with the 6 chive stems she picked.
