I Turn My Camera On

Spoon is one of the greatest bands ever, but sadly I cannot follow their instructions at the moment. Because my camera is GONE. At some point between lunch and dinner yesterday it disappeared. I don’t know if I’ve misplaced it or if someone took it- both possible, unfortunately- but I’ve torn the house apart and come up with nada. So I’ll keep looking, but until the camera turns up or we get a new one, bear with me on the crappy photos.

The camera had my breakfast and lunch photos, so you’ll just have to visualize…

BREAKFAST: Blueberry Chobani with Kashi Cinnamon Harvest, Chopped Apple and Almonds

LUNCH: Black Beans and Brown Rice with Chopped Roasted Red Peppers, Jalapenos, Cheese, Salsa and Guacamole.

The brown rice was from one of those Bird’s Eye Steamfresh Bags. Four minutes in the microwave and you have perfectly cooked brown rice- and no scraping burned rice from the bottom of a pot. Love it!

I’d been itching to test out my new pasta roller attachment for the KitchenAid, so yesterday afternoon I whipped up some pasta dough in the food processor. So easy- just add 3 beaten eggs to 2 cups of all-purpose flour and run for about 30 seconds. Then remove dough from machine, knead for about 2 minutes, and let the dough rest for a half-hour or so.

This process is going to be really hard to describe without photos but I’ll give it a shot. At some point I’ll do it again with pictures! Once the dough rests, you just divide it into smaller portions (4-6) and flatten each portion into a disk. Set the pasta roller onto the widest setting and run dough through. Then you fold the dough into 3rds by bringing the outside edges into the middle. Run through roller again. Repeat folding technique with alternate edges. Run through roller again twice.

After this you just keep running the dough sheet through the roller, increasing the setting (making it more narrow) each time you run it through the machine. On the KitchenAid, I went up to about a level 4. Repeat with the rest of the portioned dough, and keep rolled dough under a damp towel so it doesn’t dry out.

Apparently my next purchase needs to be a pasta CUTTER. I tried cutting noodles with a pizza cutter, but it was a big disaster. We had spaghetti, linguini, fettucini, something like egg noodles… not very consistent. Oh well, who am I trying to impress??

For the sauce I tried out the Broccoli-Mushroom-Walnut Sauce from Vive le Vegan. The original recipe actually calls for this to be used as a filling within a phyllo crust, but she does give a variation for how to use it on top of pasta. Very yummy- pretty close to a pesto. The toasted walnuts give it heft and a great smoky flavor. But be forewarned, the final product does not LOOK pretty at all. I won’t tell you what it  brought to mind. You can use your own imagination for that.

Here’s a cameraphone shot of the final product, courtesy of Brian:

God I miss my camera.

*SURVEY TIME*

New Year’s Eve/Day plans?

We’re actually headed to an Old 97′s concert at the House of Blues tonight, so that’s probably our big night out. Tomorrow night we might just hang out at home, make dinner (or order takeout) and play Guitar Hero. Is that sad?? Eh, oh well. We’re so geriatric.