Covid Journal, Day 52: A Cooking Kind of Day

49 and raining this morning. It never did warm up, just rained and stayed in the low 50's all day. I picked a little bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley yesterday evening and they have brightened up the kitchen today. I did some string-trimming and weeding yesterday evening, and my goodness did I get muddy! But at least I feel better about making a dent in it.

Today I cooked--and baked. We needed bread and cookies. Well, who really needs cookies? But they're nice with coffee for mid-morning break. So I made Snickerdoodles, one of our favorites. Our son Derek stopped by this evening with his daughter Hannah, so half the cookies went home with them.

The bread was a disappointment--it rose beautifully for the first rising, but the second time in the pans it rose nicely at first, then sank. What's up with that? The last batch did the same thing. This is a little different recipe than the one I usually use, and I don't think I'll try it again.

Dinner was turkey-rice soup and garden salad. The turkey meat was leftover from the turkey I roasted a couple weeks ago. I picked the meat from the bones and froze it so we have lots of turkey for a variety of uses. The rice was free rice given away at a local thrift last winter, and I used leftover broth from a recipe I made the other day and some veggies to round out the soup. It was delicious, and there's enough that we'll be eating it for several days.

Then after dinner I made noodles. It's been a while since I've made them and we were out, so I made a double batch. Now we'll have plenty! Noodles keep well after they're dried, and stored in a plastic bag or glass jar. They're so easy to make--eggs, salt, water, and flour. I mix them in the KitchenAid mixer, then knead a little, cut the dough into 5 parts, roll out on the kitchen table, then run through the pasta machine to make the noodles. I have a cool little wood rack to dry them on. It does take some time to make homemade noodles, but it's worth it for the marvelous rich flavor. Here's the recipe I use:

4 large eggs (7/8 cup eggs)
2 tablespoons water
3 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

Place eggs, water, flour and salt in the KitchenAid® Stand Mixer bowl. With the flat beater, mix on Speed 2 for 30 seconds or until combined.

Exchange flat beater for dough hook. Turn to Speed 2 and knead 2 minutes. Remove dough from bowl and hand-knead for 1 to 2 minutes.

Cover dough with mixer bowl or plastic wrap and let rest 10 minutes. Then cut into 5 sections, and roll out each section to desired thickness. Then you can cut the noodles by hand, or run them through the pasta machine to cut to desired width and thickness. Hang on the drying rack for 24 hours or until brittle and dry, or toss into boiling, salted water if you want to cook them immediately.

That was pretty much my day except for the usual housework and ebay packing, and the nice visit with our son and granddaughter--at a safe distance, of course (sadly). On such a dreary day, cooking seems comforting somehow. Larry loaded all the finished furniture projects in the van so tomorrow we'll go to the antique mall and restock our booths. The other mall will be re-opening soon so we'll be heading there too to take in some new things in preparation for the first day open. A small step back to normalcy, I suppose, although I'm quite happy to just go on as we have been for the last two months.

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