Homemade Noodles

I used to be really scared of homemade noodles because I figured you needed a whole bunch of serious equipment to make them, and who has time/storage for that? But, I've ran across a couple of good recipes, and now I just LOVE a homemade noodle. The weather here has stayed cold, so we had chicken noodle soup with this egg noodle recipe, and there aren't very many things that seem cozier than that. Here's a couple of my favorite noodle recipes (ingredients for both first, then the directions since it will be roughly the same):

Homemade Pasta:
2 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 beaten eggs
1/3 cup water
1 tsp cooking oil or olive oil

Spinach Noodles
1 large plastic container (1 lb. aka "the Costco size") of spinach, steamed, excess moisture pressed out
2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour

For the spinach noodles: process cooked spinach, eggs and salt in a blender until smooth. For both kinds of noodles, place wet ingredients in the bowl of your mixer and gradually add flour, letting mixer run constantly, for a total of 6-8 minutes. Hold out the last 1/4 to 1/3 cup of flour- sprinkle it on a clean surface, turn out dough to floured surface, and knead until all the flour is incorporated. (You can make these noodles by hand, total kneading time will be about 10 minutes). When dough looks smooth and seems elastic, cover with saran wrap and let rest for 10 to 30 minutes. The rest is very important: when you come back to your dough after the resting period, a little miracle will have taken place.

Divide dough into 2 equal portions. On a lightly floured surface, roll each portion out until thin (like 1/16 of an inch). Use plenty of flour, and flip it over several times as you roll. Cut as desired: I usually use a pizza cutter and cut into little squares if I am making soups, or long noodles if I am serving them with sauce. Also, you can roll the dough up jelly roll style (again, give it a nice sprinkle of flour before you roll it up) and then slice it thinly. My kids then love to unroll the noodles and make them into little nests.

Cooking in boiling water or soup for 8-12 minutes.

P.S. You can freeze extras- spread them out on a jelly roll pan, freeze, then transfer to a plastic bag.

P.P.S. We call them "green noodles" around here, since that sounds delicious to my children, yet "spinach noodles" sounds like a death sentence to them.