Dec. 30: Making Noodles

Making Noodles

One meal we love to have in the winter is homemade noodles, mashed potatoes, and gravy with various meats. Today, I taught the boys how to make noodles so they can make them when they get home if they want. 

First Step: preparing the ingredients.Here, the boys are measuring out the flour. We quadruple the recipe so that we have enough for our big family, so today's lesson included how to multiply fractions. Jer said it would take too long to do it that way, so they opted to just measure everything 4 times. Hilarious! We also had a lesson about how 3 teaspoons equals a tablespoon and that in a recipe, a T is a tablespoon while a t is a teaspoon.  I'm not sure they fully understood these concepts, but Hey- there's always next time!

Jer learned in culinary class to take a knife and go over the top of the measuring cup to make it exact. :)

Step 2: Assign the rest of the kids jobs so we can eat soon! Here, Karley & Kaydey are putting away the dishes & setting table. You can see them working in the background in some of the other pictures.

Jamo & Kayley are in charge of the homemade mashed potatoes. Here they are washing and cutting the potatoes.

Step 2 for Real: Jer is mixing the ingredients while Alex is spreading the surface with flour.

Step 3: Rolling out the dough. The dough can be rolled until it is paper thin. I don't usually have that much patience!

Keep the surface of the dough and the surface of the table covered with flour so the dough doesn't stick. Keep rolling!

Try to keep a rectangular surface, not Florida as shown here. You can easily fix your peninsula if you make one by accident. It's not a big deal, it's just easier to roll and cut if it is more of a rectangle than anything else.

Step 4: Rolling up the dough. Make sure there is plenty of flour on the surface of the dough first. Then roll it up into a log.

Step 5: Cut the dough into thin slices. They will blow up in the boiling water, so don't worry about making them too small.

Alex is unrolling the noodles and adding them to the pot of boiling water. I forgot to take pictures after this- sorry! We were hungry and wanted to eat! We spent the day in Iowa City running errands and got home close to 5, so we were anxious to get dinner on the table.

Step 6: Unroll the slices and add them to boiling water. You might want to break them up a little because the pieces are very long otherwise. They cook up way faster than store-bought noodles, so keep checking them for doneness. (is that a word?)

Step 7: Enjoy! We had ours with mashed potatoes, gravy, leftover Christmas turkey, and corn. Peas are good, too. Any kind of meat works- we have tried chicken, turkey, beef, and venison. Mmmm! Can't go wrong!

Here is the recipe. We quadrupled it, and had about 1 noodle left over. By the way, Margaret, thanks for teaching me about homemade noodles! :) I had never had them before I met Jim and we ate at your house!

Homemade Noodles

2/3 cup of flour

1 egg

1 tablespoon water

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon oil

And you know the rest!

Dec. 27-28: St. Louis Trip

St. Louis Trip

For part of the boys' Christmas present, Jim took them to St. Louis for the weekend. Jamo was in Tennessee on the band trip (they played at the Liberty Bowl!).

Saturday: They drove to St. Louis and did the Busch Stadium tour. They went to lunch at Hardee’s. Next, they went to the arch and had to wait in line for half an hour. They went to the top of the arch, then took a nap at the hotel. They ate pizza for supper and spent the evening in the hot tub. 

View from the stands. Look at the arch!

This is actually wallpaper!!! They digitally blew up baseball cards and turned it into wallpaper! 

Very cool!

Sunday: They went to the old courthouse and saw a movie about Dred Scott & slavery. They went back to the arch for some photo ops of the arch. After that, they visited the St. Louis Art Museum in Forest Park and looked at some Egyptian and Nigerian art. They had quite a lot of stuff from Nigeria there! Following that, they went to the zoo per Alex’s request, since he had never been to a zoo before! At the zoo they went to the reptile house, primate house, and the big cats. Later, they ate lunch at Panda Express in Chesterfield. This was a first for both boys, because they had never had Chinese food before. They did a little shopping and then went to Sports Fusion, where they played miniature golf and laser tag. They drove home after a whirlwind 2 days!

What did the guys have to say?

Jer- favorite activity was laser tag (with 34 players he got 4^th place & 6^th place) and going to Busch Stadium. The hot tub was really good- he had never been in one before!

Alex- favorite activity was the zoo and the mini golf. He had never seen a lion or tiger before! He had never been in a hot tub before, either, and loved it! Getting to go inside the arch was amazing! He wanted stay in St. Louis and not come home.

Jim- I got 14^th place in laser tag, and half of my group were little girls!!!