Lasagna, Pt. 1: How to make your own Pasta Dough

There is nothing better on a cold winter night than a fresh-from-the-oven homemade meal. Comfort food, by its very nature, is required on those nights. Chili, meatloaf, lasagna. Now, I realize that people are busy, that spending an afternoon making dinner is not desirable. HOWEVER. This recipe is completely worth it. I promise. It doesn't have to take forever, but it will take a bit as you're learning the recipe.  Once you've got it down, it'll only take about 20 minutes, tops, start to finish. Add in making the sauce, and you've got another 20 or so, plus oven time. Your family will love you for this. YOU will love you for this. Your hips may not, but even they can be placated by portion control. Without further ado, part one of how to make lasagna from scratch.

Homemade Noodles

Recipe from Gayle Van Camp (my mom)

Makes: Enough dough for an 8x8 pan of lasagna. (Mom says she can get a 9x13 out of this recipe...I double it for that.)

Ingredients:

 2 eggs

4 T. (1/4 c.) milk

2 c. all-purpose flour (can use up to 3/4 c. whole wheat flour)

1 t. salt

Directions:

Beat eggs in mixer a little.

Add milk, mix.

Beat 1 c. flour in at a time, alternating with salt.

Let mixer form it to a ball, (you may have to lock it in place if you can do that). 

Here's where my mom and I differ...she says grease the counter, I say flour it. Basically, if you want to let the dough dry completely and store it, greasing works, but it takes a long time. If you want to use the dough right away, flour the counter.

Flour your counter. :) Your dough will be a bit sticky now, so flip it around on the counter a bit so it collects some extra flour.  

Roll out your dough as thin as possible (check out these little rolling pin spacer things! They work great if I need a precise thickness - I ended up just putting on the thinnest set, which simply kept me from rolling the dough too thin) and cut the dough to size.

If you choose to grease the counter, roll the dough out as thin as possible, let dry some, then cut to width desired. Let dry more, then flip with a spatula so the back side can dry too. Once completely dry, you can store in the fridge or freezer until needed.

These noodles work famously for soups, to eat as regular pasta (though I usually can't get them thin enough for that...) or, my favorite use for them, in homemade lasagna.  My meat sauce recipe for this is upcoming, so check back soon!

How to eat a Passionfruit.

This is a passion fruit.

I think it's ripe...

I've never eaten a passion fruit before, and when I saw them on sale at the local Super Saver, I couldn't resist.

This is what the inside looks like.

Chris and I shared this for an afternoon snack. We discovered that it tastes mostly like a tangerine, with the texture of a pomegranate....sort of. It's still all its own fruit. The thing that's most distinct to me about it was the smell. Once you smell one, you'll recognize the scent. It's used in some sports drinks and fruit juices because it smells so good.

To eat, you simply slice open the fruit, over a bowl if you want to save the juice inside, which is pretty good. Then, you have the option of either eating the fruit as is, seeds and all, or eating around the seeds, which we did, (they're quite crunchy, and got stuck in my teeth...not fun), or you can press all the contents through a sieve and then eat. It's up to you.

I don't think we'll be buying passion fruit again any time soon, simply because they cost too much for what you got, but it was a good experience, and I'd recommend that you try one someday.