Monday ~~ January 13, 2014 I got some new toys for the kitchen and playtime was delicious....

Indeed, I got some new toys for my kitchen and I am telling you the result of playing with those toys was absolutely delicious. I have had a KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer for a few years and haven't really utilized it to full potential. No particular reason though because the mixer is an excellent product and works beyond expectations.

So I recently acquired new attachments for the mixer. I got the juicer, the slicer/shredder, food mill/smusher and all the pasta attachments which I used yesterday and I used the juicer Friday as well as the slicer/shredder. All attachments worked beautifully and I am very pleased with performance for all.

The juice we had was straight orange juice but every drop of juice was pulled out of the oranges and the amount of pulp is your choice so we had all the pulp as well since we both like the pulp. The slicer/shredder did an incredible job on the potatoes, onions, red peppers and green peppers and those turned into fried potatoes. The pasta attachments though, the absolute best. There is definitely a learning curve on all of the attachments if you have never used them for the KitchenAid or if you have never used a mechanical pasta roller or cutter.

I can tell you though you learn very quickly how the texture of the dough should feel, how much flour to use, how dry the dough should be and the thickness of the dough you need. I chose the attachment to make spaghetti noodles and they were perfect.
I used the mixer to mix the dough first then knead it with the dough hook. Then I put on the pasta roller attachment and put the dough through it and made long sheets of dough. Then I put on the spaghetti cutter attachment and put the long sheet of dough through that and out came spaghetti noodles in a nice beautiful pile. Then I took the pile and put it all at once into a pot of boiling water and 15 minutes or so later I had the most beautiful, tasty, fresh spaghetti noodles you have ever seen.

The seasoning I used was a bit of salt in the boiling water then I melted butter and sauted white onion and added that to the cooked pasta and topped it all off with a good amount of pepper. Then I put them in an individual serving bowl added meatballs on top of that and tada....lupper (lunch & supper) was complete and delicious.

The things I learned while doing all of this is that I need more room to process all of the dough and long sheets of pasta and I need to lay the sheets of pasta out separately and not on top of each other so they can dry a wee bit instead of being moist from sitting in layers. Today I am going to make wide noodles because I have some stew beef that is cooked and in the fridge so it is time for beef and noodles. Then for supper I think we might do a pizza and I will roll out my dough for the pizza with my pasta roller attachment. Dough is dough is dough and it can be used for anything once it is mixed together and that is the beauty of dough.

I wanted to write this blog yesterday however, we were so busy all day and I was just too tired to write anything by the time we stopped working last eve. We got the house cleaned, the basement partially cleaned up, our storage container straightened up and organized, a lot of cardboard ready to be taken to the recycling bin in town and every dirty dish in this house was washed, dried and put away before we went to bed at 3:00am this morning.

So this is this weeks blog which is I'm sure quite boring to some but quite exciting for me. No deep thoughts or questions. No in my opinion profound statements. Well not yet anyway but there is still time since I'm not quite done writing for today.

So far today I have been busy already as well. I have let the dog out, fixed one cup of coffee, fed the cats and made a long over due telephone call. The agenda for today is to get all of the clean laundry put away, get more of the basement cleaned up, get lupper made and get the bank books closer to being caught up.

I guess the questions for today are going to be:
Are there toys you want for your kitchen?
Are they expensive toys or inexpensive?
Are they things that you will use often?
Are they strictly food related or something else?

Nothing profound comes to mind at the moment so I will end with.......

I wish you all you deserve in your lifetime, rest well and dream peacefully when it comes time for you to wander your timbers of slumber.....