Two ingredient Elephants

you are probably asking what am I talking about, right?

Here's some quick background. I've been really getting on board with making homemade, natural foods AND with taking control of our food budget. Not that we currently spend a ton, but in a few months, we will be a family of 4 and want to get on top of things now.

So anyhow, after reading Jenna Woginrich's, Made from Scratch, I decided to try the recipe for homemade spaghetti. Yes, spaghetti can be purchased for $1, but taking a hard look at the ingredients, I still find a lot of "extras".

So, I enthusiastically went on to make my own and with Jenna's recipe, this even involves a "homesteading" technique. Meaning: BY SCRATCH -- no pasta maker for us!

3 large eggs
2 to 3 cups all-purpose flour

1. Crack the eggs into a medium-sized bowl and beat them lightly. Add flour to the eggs, ½ cup at a time, mixing until you have a slightly sticky dough. Knead it for a short time and when you’re content with the ball, wrap it in foil or plastic wrap and let it rest in the fridge for an hour.

2. Place it on a lightly floured surface and roll it as thin as you can while keeping it a solid sheet or dough. Sprinkle flour over the sheet of dough and gently roll it up into a long tube. Cut the tube into ⅛- or ¼-inch slices and unroll each slice into a long strand of pasta. Drape them over a coat hanger.

I ended up cutting the pasta with a pizza cutter. The most difficult part was hanging them on the hanger -- they seem to be "heavy" that they ended up allowing gravity to take over...(which this should have been a clue, see below for the blog post title connection).

3. Boil the pasta for 3 to 5 minutes. Drain and serve with Chunky Pasta Sauce.

They took no time at all....puffed right up.

Beaming, quite happy with "my very own pasta and sauce", I enthusiastically called my husband and son for dinner....

Looking at the dish, my husband says "Whoa, look elephant noodles!"

and yeah, yeah, even though the noodles were um, quite big...(I do admit they looked like elephant trunks or legs :P), the taste was so --- wholesome. Not "processed" as I have come to find grocery store pasta. Also, with the difference in taste, and well, size, you don't need to eat as much -- they are quite filling! It actually wasn't a hard process at all and it really doesn't take too much time. I just have to cut smaller and master the "drying process".....

And so another little notch on my Homesteading apron!!!