Egg Noodles

Our oldest child keeps chickens, and she brought a dozen home to Grandma and me. Grandma has been having a bit of a time eating lately so I decided to make a batch of chicken and noodles for dinner. While I was busy making homemade noodles. I remembered making noodles for my grandpa’s mother, Grandma Kay. She was too busy to make homemade noodles, but she told me about some aunts of hers who did. Grandma Kay said the two ladies of the house lived with the man of the house, an accountant, who had tuberculosis. The doctors back east sent him to the Rocky Mountains for clean dry air. The two women, one his wife, the other his sister, were very regimented, kept a very clean house, and were very careful with their noodle production.

They made noodles for winter, and they wouldn’t let Grandma Kay, then a little girl, help because they were so particular about their noodles. As Grandma Kay watched me making noodles, I could tell she was disappointed by my lack of respect towards the food forms I was creating. (I wasn’t very particular because we were eating those noodles for dinner that night.)

I got to thinking about the two aunts. Considering the man of the house was ill, he wouldn’t have been able to hunt or plow so winter food would have been worth getting over. The protein from the egg preserved in the flour would have been very welcome in that household. Grandma Kay didn’t say the aunts kept chickens I bet they did. She did tell me they moved back where they came from. I asked if it was because the man of the house died. In a shocked tone she told me, “Oh, no. He lived. Totally healed. He took walks every day, ate healthy food from the garden, and they changed his bed linen every morning, rain, or shine. They healed him, then the two aunts returned back east.”

Egg Noodles

2 cups flour

2 eggs

1 tsp. salt (optional)

Mix all together in a mixing bowl. When the flour is sticking together pour onto the table and knead the flour into the dough. To knead, use the heels of your hands to push the dough away from you until you have a flattish piece of dough in front of you .Once it is flat, fold the dough in half a couple of times. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Once the flour is all incorporated and you have a stiff pliable dough, roll it out thinly with a rolling pin. The dough will be hard to roll out. The easiest way to work with it is to make walnut sized (or smaller) balls and roll them out to the thickness wanted.

Dust both sides of the thin dough with flour. Roll the thin dough up as if you were making Lilliputian cinnamon rolls then cut the long log into disks. Once unrolled the disks become noodles. Put the cut disks in a bowl of flour and toss them about until they lose the disk shape and become strings of dough. Wala noodles.

To dry for winter use lay in a single layer on a dehydrator rack, put in the food dehydrator and follow the manufacturer’s directions for dehydrating. Store in a mason jar or other waterproof containers then check once a week or a month to make sure they are not molding. If the noodles are not completely dried, they WILL mold (voice of experience here). Check for mold once a month until  used up.

To cook treat like any other pasta. Bring a pan full of water to a boil, add the noodles, bring the water back to a boil and cook until the noodles are a consistency you like. For me that’s about 8 to 10 minutes but it will vary depending on how thick the noodles are made.

In 2000 Michele Priddy left the work force to become a stay-at-home mother and wife. Being a one-income family in today’s society meant she had to learn to budget quickly. Food became a priority early because she wanted the children to have the best nutrition, she could offer them even on a budget. She also taught cooking classes on how to stretch the food dollar with simple ingredients at various churches in her community. Michelle has put her kitchen strategies and recipes in booklets, her church newsletter and also in her hometown newspaper, The Goldendale Sentinel. We hope you will enjoy her strategies, stories, and recipes. You can contact the Leavenworth Echo at Reporter@leavenworthecho.com or 509-548-5286 if you have any questions or comments for Michelle.