Pedroza Place

“So Tuesday night I decided to experiment with making my own noodles. (Earlier in the day I had made bread, which I do semi-regularly. I say this to explain that I am a modestly experienced baker.) I have fond memories of my Mom’s homemade noodles in her homemade chicken noodle soup, yummy!

So I mixed up the dough. I started in my Kitchen-Aide, but quickly realized this was a task better suited for hand kneading. (Oh, and I was using the recipe from my handy-dandy Betty Crocker cookbook.)

Once mixed the dough was supposed to sit covered for 15 minutes.
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Why I don’t know, it’s not like it has an yeast it or that it rises at all, but whatever, it sat. (Oh, off to the side you can see my cup of water and my measuring cup of flour. I started out too dry, added water, still too dry, added too much water, oops, added flour, just right!)

Then the dough is cut into 4 equal pieces and rolled out. I was experimenting with my two rolling pins and couldn’t decide which one I liked better. This is more than halfway done with the third piece rolled out and the last piece above it for comparison. Yes I was cutting the noodles with a chef’s knife.

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The recipe said to fold in thirds, loosely, and cut. I could see why; if you are cutting a shorter distance your noodles are bound to be more even. However, I was having a really hard time unfolding the cut noodles, so I abandoned that step and simply had uneven noodles! And, I found it was easier, once I had them rolled out, to pull the dough off the counter first and then lay it back down, before cutting. It was then much easier to pull the cut noodles off the counter.

I forgot to take a picture of my cut noodles drying on the counter, but if you had seen them you would have seen how wildly uneven they were!

However, I do have the finished product:

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Very Yummy, just like I remember my moms, thicker and more substantial than store bought noodles. We had ours with the spaghetti sauce that simmering in the crock-pot in the picture. If I do this more often I may look to invest in a pasta machine.
‘Cause you know that something like this is super affordable. It’ll pay for itself in no time, right? Though, realistically Amazon has lots of options. That’s in the future. For now, though, let’s eat!!

P.S. for those that follow my other blog, I’m about to update it for the first time in over 6 months. Craziness. Check it out.
”

“This week marked AJ’s official 18 month check up. AJ is really average it turns out 48% for weight and 50% height. I don’t think you can get more in the bulls-eye than that. AJ like helping these days, but the only thing he is good at is taking things out of other things. So Denise decided to put him to good use and had him clean out the refridgerator:
<%image(20090614-ajhelperweb.jpg|448|305|AJ likes to clean out the refridgerator.)%>
On Saturday we made a last minute decision after one of our other plans didn’t happen and went to the movies to see UP. We went to the Blue Jay Cinema:
<%image(20090614-bluejaywebcinea.jpg|448|336|Blue Jay Cinema)%>
If this place looks old it is because it is, I think it really hasn’t changed much in at least 3 decades.

The movie UP was very good however. It is the lastest in Pixar films. You may have seen the ads with the house and the balloons, but if you think this is just another kiddie film you are really wrong. It has a lot of things a kid would enjoy, but the moral of the story is very much for adults.
Just to get you curious about the movie I will tell you that it deals with this old man named Carl and you find out that his wife has just died (no she wasn’t murdered). Yeah, not the typical Disney plot line. As if that weren’t enough they add in this obessed Wilderness Explorer kid who is trying to earn the love of his absentee father (who is absentee because he just left his wife) by earning his last explorer badge. Very skillfully Pixar explains this to the adult audience in a way that leaves the younger audience none the wiser. Don’t worry about the younger audience however as they will be more than entertained by strange colorful birds and dogs that talk about squirells via their high tech flee collars. In all I really enjoyed the movie UP. I think most people, even if they are not Disney geeks like myself, will like UP as well.
One movie I did not like was the “”Dog Days of Summer.”” We rented this movie. It is an unrated movie, but if I had to rate it would be PG. I think it was made for TV, no bad language or visual sexuality but they talk about adult topics and there is some brief violence (it is ala Hitchcock, more implied than actually seen). Basically, it is about this guy coming back to his childhood home before it gets flooded by the local hydroelectric company. At first the town seems really nice, but then you find out all the bad stuff is happening. There is no happy ending and you finish the movie asking yourself “”was there a point to all that?!”” In all it is a very sad movie.
The only other news at our house is that we renewed our Disney passes. We went with Premiums this year, which were really expensive, but we payed for half of the cost via our earned Disney dollars (we have a deal on our Visa card that gets us Disney Dollars). I think this is going to be our last Disney pass for awhile. Our plan is to use this pass like crazy, until we get sick of Disneyland (Premiums passes have no blockout dates) and then switch to Knott’s passes. The main reason is that for the price of one Premium Disney pass, we can get three Knott’s Premium Passes (and they include 3 water parks).
As if this posting wasn’t long enough I found this picture I wanted to show to the Internet world. I call it strange places to eat sushi:
<%image(20090614-mexicoairportweb.jpg|336|448|Mexican Sushi Restaurant.)%>
This picture was taken awhile ago on our last day of our trip to Mexico. It is in the Mexico City International Airport, I had some California Rolls there and some Yakisoba.
So, that about raps it up for this week with us, hope you are all doing well. For the Jackmans, we are really looking for to the family reunion and hope to see many of you there. As for the rest of you, when are we going to see you??”

“A few days before Christmas this year we got a very big box. Denise was very happy about this box, but nothing happened with the box… That is until Saturday when Denise was happy to hear I had absolutely no excuses (I mean REASONS) to not put together this box. Like most things that come in a box, it required assembly. This assembly required a lot of banging on $2 rubber mallet:
<%image(20090601-bangshelfweb.jpg|375|336|It looks like I am building my own jail.)%>
After about 3 hours of banging, snapping, and accommodating we no longer had a heavy box. We had a genuine storage system!
<%image(20090601-shelfrelweb.jpg|448|327|We finished!)%>
Apparently, this was not enough hard work for us because later that day we decided to go out to Heart Rock (it’s only a 2 mile trail). Well, I went to Heart Rock. AJ and Denise went 3/4 of the way there and played in the creek (no rock climbing for those two). Of course I took a cheesy video:
”

“Today we went out to the “”Great Crestline Yard Sale.”” Ok, so they don’t really call it the “”Great Crestline Yard Sale,”” but they should. Anyhow, for those not in the know. Crestline on Memorial Day weekend is renowned for it’s yard sales. On this weekend if you are from Crestline you will fit into one of these three groups: 1) You are having a yard sale. 2) You are shopping at a yard sale. Or 3), being dragged to a yard sale (AJ and I fit in this one). Denise was out hunting bargains long before AJ and I were awake so we decided to go to San Francisco (no yard sales there):

Denise however noticed our absence and soon dragged us out of the house too. After many miles of yard sales and $15 worth of junk (it was actually AJ and I who bought the most junk), the townspeople of Crestline gave us our “”you are hearby resolved from the ‘Great Crestline Yard Sale'”” card and so like any good townsperson we went out for brunch:
<%image(20090523-deniseeggs.jpg|448|336|This is the ""Yes I got the good junk look."")%>
<%image(20090523-ajgame.jpg|448|336|This is the ""when do I get my hot chocolate look."")%>
Oh, and in other news… Did you ever wonder what happened to that other sock you were missing?? I think I may have found an answer:
<%image(20090523-sockthief.jpg|336|448|Busted!)%>”