Homemade Pasta

I started this week with attempting to make homemade pasta. I succeeded in making spaghetti and egg noodles. A few months ago, I purchased a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer and some of the various attachments that came with it. Of those were the pasta roller that flattens the dough, and two different cutters, one for large/egg noodle and the other for angel hair pasta. Therefore, in some ways you could consider me a cheater. I would not necessarily see it that way, as this was quite an in depth project. Although, I will admit I would not have wanted to do all this work with my own hands. I would not have had the time to cut each piece into the spaghetti noodle or had the perfect proportion of each strand. With this being my first time and not understanding the exact process to use the attachments, it was a trial and error in using the mixer to do the work. It was nice to have a dough hook instead of making it by hand. That definitely made creating the pasta dough very quick and easy. Tonight I had my children in the kitchen attempting to help me. My daughter Taylor is three and my son Jaiden is five so they like to help when they can. I enjoy letting them help me even though at times it can be more stressful than not. It is still quality time with them learning bits and pieces with me. I wanted to make spinach noodles tonight, but was not able to get into town for the needed ingredients. One of the reasons I wanted to start making my own pasta is because spaghetti is my favorite meal. The second is when I was younger I would spend a lot of time at my aunt’s house and I would always have a spaghetti dinner. She used spinach spaghetti and turkey burger to make her meal and it was a very delightful dinner. No one at my house would even try it because the noodles are green and more than likely the word spinach scared them away. Now in control of my dinners I have often looked for it in the stores and cannot find it on the shelves. They do have many varieties of noodles, just not the ones that I want. I know my son will freak out if I just cooked it for him, but maybe if he sees me create the noodles I could tell him I am making them green because it is his favorite color. I know that is a bit sly, but we need to eat healthier as a family and this might be one way to start. I used just a basic recipe for this project and semolina flour because it claims to make the noodles have a better taste. More so it is better for you with its high content of proteins and nutrients, that in turn it is more filling when consumed. I guess we will find out later this week when I make a dinner out of my new noodles. I look forward to sharing with you the taste outcome.