Noodles on the Brain (Amanda's old blog)

I recently decided that I need to commit myself to a personal quest to make ramen noodles. Like, real ramen. In real soup. With vegetables and meat and delicious broth from scratch.

Oh, and did I mention that I want to make the noodles from scratch? Yeah, it's a crazy project. It should take me a long time to get it right, but getting there is half the fun, right?

So, for my first attempt, I got the noodle recipe off the internet. I will likely look for varying recipes and tweak it as I go. It calls for flour, salt, eggs and water. It's really, really basic - however, getting the noodles right takes real skill.

Alright, so I mixed the dough, let it sit in a damp paper towel for half an hour, then I rolled it out.

That's Stacy and Eric's beautiful new cutting board. They got so many nice things at their bridal showers - I'm going to be so spoiled by the time I move out of this house.

Then, you have to fold the dough over a few times (with LOTS of flour in between so it doesn't stick) before you cut it.



Sometimes it's hard to choose which pictures to use - Brandon does such a wonderful job.



That knife is another totally nice kitchen utensil that I will miss when I move out. It is so sharp, it cuts through everything like butter. It's pretty much the only reason I was able to get the noodles as thin as I did, and they were still a bit too thick.


It was really hard to keep the water at a rolling boil without it boiling over, so I had to keep turning it down and back up, which was one of the major flaws of this project.


So, we had some beef broth in the freezer leftover from my last pot of cabbage soup (Hal made bread bowls - I'm sorry I didn't get any pictures). We heated up the broth and added some onions and lettuce.

Brandon had the brilliant idea of adding a touch of sesame oil to the soup.



Okay, so the broth was thin and the noodles.... they were doughy. Frankly, I'm labeling this a failed attempt. They were pretty bad. Here are the things I think went wrong:
-I didn't knead the dough NEARLY enough
-I didn't let it sit long enough
-I didn't slice the noodles thin enough
-I couldn't keep the water at a rolling boil

So now I know what to look out for for next time. Hey, it's a start, right? And since they started out terrible, they can only get better!


One other project before I leave you:


Knitting! It's been a while since I've picked up a pair of knitting needles, but this project has been going pretty quickly. It's a baby blanket for my stepsister - she's having a baby shower this weekend. I'll take a picture when it's done so you guys can see.


I've got all kinds of news about my crafting company, but I'm going to hold off for a while, until I have more to show you. Lets just say, get ready to change the URL for this blog on your bookmark menu!