The Egg Noodle Experiment

The flu has settled in at our house.

It started yesterday.  The hubby woke up and thought he was dying, then he realized he wasn't going to die and so went to bed and started praying for death to take him.  He had a fever of over 102, headache, chills, aches, and all sorts of other unpleasantness.  Syd hasn't come down with the full flu yet, but she's warm and flushed, and has a bad cough going on.

By some happy coincidence, my plan for yesterday's dinner was chicken noodle soup.  Given that I was chained to the house and my two sickies, I decided it would be the perfect time to try making homemade egg noodles for my soup.

First, I found a simple recipe.  Here's my condensed version:

4 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1/8 cup water

Break eggs into mixing bowl and beat with fork.  Add water and salt and beat more.  Add one cup flour and mix in until blended, then mix in remaining cup until dough begins to form a ball.

Work the dough with your hands on a well floured surface, adding flour as needed, until dough is smooth and elastic and no longer sticks to your hands.  Pinch off egg-sized piece, dip in flour, and roll out with well-floured rolling pin until dough is as thin as you can make it.  Lay out rolled out ovals of dough on paper to dry a bit.  Flip after half an hour and allow to continue drying until dough is dry to the touch, but still flexible.

Roll each oval up like a jelly roll and then slice off narrow strips with a sharp serrated knife.  These are your noodles.  When you have sliced all your dough into strips, pile them back up on the paper to continue drying for several hours or overnight.  When they have finished drying, you can either cook them or freeze them and use within a few months.

Sounds pretty simple!  I didn't have too many problems with the execution of the egg noodles.

Sydney was very excited to help me make noodles.  She's usually pretty excited to help me make just about anything, really.

The first few steps were incredibly easy.  Beat eggs, mix in other stuff, dump ball of dough onto table.  Check, check, and check.

Rolling out the dough was pretty easy too, though if I was going to make these again, the only thing I'd do different is to roll the dough out even thinner.  Paper thin.  Also, I think using bread flour may have made the a touch chewier than normal, so I'd be sure to use AP flour.

Syd just had to use the rolling pin for her itty bitty piece of practice dough.

At last, the dough was rolled out and laid out to dry.  The other side of my counter was full of egg noodle dough, too.  When you roll it out this thin, you're going to need a lot of square footage for the drying.

Then it was time to roll them up and slice them into noodles.  This part wasn't too hard, but you do need to make sure that your serrated knife is very, very sharp.

Sydney used her little butter knife to slice her dough into noodles, too.

Aaaaaand.... we have noodles!

And soup.  As you can see, they don't have as neat a look as store-bought noodles, but they're definitely much more filling and healthy.  When you make your chicken noodle soup with homemade chicken stock, organic roasted chicken, and homemade egg noodles, you can be sure you're not going to be hungry again in half an hour.

Have I mentioned that I make the best chicken noodle soup ever?  I'll post the recipe soon, given that it's the season for sickies.  I will say now that the key to good chicken noodle soup is to add a bit of fresh dill. 

Hopefully you won't need to make this for your own family for the same reason I did, but if you do, it's sure a great way to get them healthy again!

Five Tips for Frugal Living

While things certainly aren't as bad as they used to be for us financially, I still have to be very careful with our budget and watch what we spend, and I'm always looking for ways to cut corners and save a bit here and there.  Here are some of the principles of frugality I live by:

1. Hang on to loose change.
I keep a freezer bag on a bookshelf in the bedroom.  Every time I clean out my purse or my pockets, all the change goes into the bag.  Every few weeks I take the bag to the bank, dump it into their change machine, and come back with a wad of bills.  This goes right into my savings envelope.  You'd be surprised at how much change you'll have floating around after a couple weeks.

2. Never buy anything new if you can help it.
We're lucky enough to have multiple thrift stores in town.  I can come back with a bag full of clothing or books that I picked up for a few bucks.  I don't think Sydney has worn a new item of clothing in the last year, but you'd never know it from looking at her- even complete strangers come up to me and tell me how much they like her clothing!  If you have a discerning eye and take time to check items for stains or rips, you can get some amazing deals when you buy secondhand.  As an added bonus, it's much better for the environment.

3. Use homemade cleaning products.
You'd be amazed at what you can clean with a spray bottle, some baking soda, and a jug of vinegar, and at how much cheaper it is than buying ready-made chemicals that are bad for your family's health and the environment.

4. Try to fix it before you scrap it.
With a screwdriver and enough patience, you can fix almost anything.  I've repaired stuff from toys to computers to vacuums with a few minutes and a bit of fiddling.  I'm hoping to learn how to fix bigger and more complex things as well, but unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day.

5. Grow your own herbs.
This is oddly specific, I know, but hear me out.  If you a) do a lot of cooking from scratch and b) have been to a grocery store in the last ten years, you've probably noticed that herbs are insanely expensive, unless you never wander beyond the exciting world of parsley.  With some dirt, a windowbox, and a few seed packets, you can save hundreds of dollars every year by growing your own herbs and snipping off what you need.  There's less waste, because you aren't stuck trying to plan meals that include basil every day for a week, and fresh herbs make anything taste amazing.  And if it tastes great, your family will be much more likely to eat all those leftovers and save a bunch of cash.

That's it for now, but I'll have more tips in the future.  When you're as broke as we were for so long, you become very creative, and I've learned much over the last few years- the silver lining to the dark cloud of long-term unemployment, I guess.  And even though the hubby has found a good job, we still do these things because, well, it's silly to spend more money when you don't have to.