Homemade Pasta and Bean Sprouts

Well, I tried my hand at homemade pasta, and learned 2 very important things. First off, you don’t HAVE to use Semolina, despite what I’ve always been told and the many articles I’ve read on this subject. When it came to actually printing out recipes, almost all of the recipes called for plain all purpose flour. The recipe I decided to use called for 2 1/2 cups of semolina. I used 1 cup of all purpose flour and 1 1/2 cups of semolina. The resulting pasta was dense and not light, like I wanted. The second issue was hand-rolling out the dough. It was way more than my poor arthritic hands could take. I rolled out a quarter of the dough and my daughter had to do the remainder for me. Without the use of a pasta roller, we just weren’t able to get the dough thin enough for a product with a medium or light bite. Although smooth, it was quite heavy and thick.

I think, in the future, I’ll use less semolina to my all purpose flour, probably much less, maybe just 1/2 cup per recipe. I still have lots more experimenting to do. But I won’t be making more pasta from scratch until I have a hand-crank pasta roller. I’ve asked for one for Christmas - here’s hoping the kids will get their Mama one. I found an inexpensive model on Amazon. If we buy a hand-crank model, we’ll be able to use it even if we don’t have power.

I also have been trying my hand at sprouting beans and seeds. I hate that you have to buy special beans for sprouting, and can’t use the cheap-o bags of beans from Walmart. But beans are typically radiated when packaged specifically to prevent them from sprouting. I’ve found lots of various sources online that see sprouting beans and have purchased from various dealers. Last week, I sprouted a salad mix. I was amazed how 2 teaspoons of seeds can eventually fill an entire quart canning jar once sprouted. The salad mix was very nice it tasted a little peppery, but very much like eating a salad. I tossed the sprouts with raspberry vinaigrette and served them as salad with our dinner. I also sprouted a mixed batch of beans that was called a “crunchy mix”. I added these to a big batch of chili I was making instead of kidney beans, which one of my kids doesn’t like. I was amazed how tasty they were in the chili. They added a very nice crunch, unlike kidney beans that soften with cooking. I’m now trying two other varieties. One is mung beans, which form the sprouts typically used in Chinese food. It only took 3 days for these beans to grow nice sprouts. I’m going to allow them a couple more days’ growth before harvesting. I’m still interested in checking to see if health food stores might carry sprouting beans. If so, it may be cheaper to purchase them locally and not have to pay shipping. 


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