One young man picked up my noodles and exclaimed, "Oh these are just like the Amish women make them!" I hope I didn't roll my eyes too much when I replied, " Well, there are still some of us old country women that know how to do this stuff." Don't get me wrong, I think it's wonderful that the Amish have preserved the old country ways and that people are rediscovering these riches through their knowledge, but they aren't the only ones!
Since I am a city transplant, my MIL taught me to make noodles. She learned to make noodles from her mother, who learned to make noodles from her mother, who learned to make noodles from her mother ... who knows how many generations. The one thing I do different, is I use a pizza cutter to cut the noodles while the dough is on the rolling board instead of rolling them up, using a knife to cut them and then unrolling each noodle. This is something I learned from my good friend Gwen, another old non-Amish country woman.
When I first married a farmer, I was given a couple of awesome non-Amish books to help me learn country ways. One was the Farm Journal's Freezing and Canning Cookbook and the other was Carla Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living. Both were very helpful, but Carla's book is the one I refer to most. Carla learned most of what she shares in this book from her family and the older women in her area, many of them Mormons not Amish.
I get such a kick out of my friend Becky! She's been exploring ways to store food on the Internet and a lot of what she comes up with is attributed to the Amish. Becky will share her delight in some new treasure of knowledge she has discovered with me and I will smile and nod my head ... and then suddenly she realizes, "Oh, you already know about this don't you?" There have been a few things she has shared with me that I didn't know about, like canning butter, but not to many.
Anyway ... on to the noodles ...
My first step in making noodles is to make the dough and then refrigerate it for a while.
Free-Ranged Eggs
Flour
Natural Sea Salt
Olive Oil
Add 1/4 tsp natural sea salt for every egg used. Mix in about 1/4 tsp olive oil for each egg. Slowly add flour until the dough is soft and pliable. Put in a plastic bag and refrigerate for at least 1/2 hr.
The oil and the refrigeration make rolling the dough easier.
If I'm not already there, the next step is to get properly dressed. No, I don't put on a cute little Amish dress complete with bonnet. I don't know how they do that without perspiring into the noodles. I know it can be done. They do it, and my MIL usually wears panty hose, a pair of slacks and a short sleeved shirt while rolling her noodles, but not me. The body tends to acclimate to what you grew up with. My summers were spent in bikinis, short shorts and halter tops as a youth. It doesn't make a pretty picture ... a fat old grama stuffed in short shorts and a cami .... so be warned! But, it works for me!
OK, so now I'm dressed and in position at my kitchen table armed with my rolling board (an old piece of shelving covered with contact paper), a rolling pin, my pizza cutter, a large spatula and my flour sifter full of flour. I take a small piece of cold dough, roll it into a ball and roll it in the flour.
Then through a process of flattening, flouring, turning, and rolling, I take this small piece and roll it out into a very thin sheet.
Next, I use a pizza cutter to cut the thin sheets into strips which I lay out on screens, racks, pans and cookie sheets to dry.
I find this faster and less messy than hanging them on the backs of chairs or on rods. They then go in my warm oven or over a fan to dry.
I let them dry at least overnight and then package them in zippies with my cute little labels!
All together, it takes about 2 hours to roll out and package 6 of my small packages. At $2.25 and $2.50, that's not quite minimum wage ... and then you figure in the cost of materials ... but if they keep selling like they have been, I might be able to work the price up to a respectable wage! I just have to have something to do with the weak shelled and odd shaped eggs that we can't sell. I also make banana and other egg rich breads that freeze well with them.
Well, that's about it! Now that you've seen much more than you wanted to -
GOD BLESS YOU ALL!
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