Day 8: Homemade Pasta

I woke up pretty late today. I figure that my body was recovering from the self inflicted tattoo fiasco that had taken place the night before. My late start got my daily routine a little outta wack, so I decided to do an easy goal today. I thought that talking with a British accent for a full day would be easy enough (its a pretty lame goal I admit, but I didn't feel too energized, so I felt that it would suffice). Its sad to say, but I have tried this goal (not for this project) on several occasions, and have yet to make it a full 24 hours impersonating a Brit. It happens every time, I get so close and then something screws it up. I either get caught off guard and mutter out something in my American tongue, or I meet someone new and don't feel like my fake pronunciation is believable so I switch over to my familiar accent. But 9 times outta 10, I just realize how stupid of a challenge is, thats when I simply give up. Was today going to finally be the day? Would I actually make it? Well, lets just say that today was one of those "9 times". I failed miserably. It was probably worst attempt yet. I broke character within the first two hours and was no where near completing my daily challenge. I went on doing close to nothing (watch youtube) for a while, and went to the grocery store with my dad. On the way back I got a call from my mom, who invited me to make pasta at her house. It was that simple. I needed a challenge, and she offered me one (a delicious one if I might add). I showed up at her house shortly after and we started almost immediately. Making the actual dough isn't the hard part (but its not like I would know, I missed the dough making process because I drive slow). Its just flour and eggs, that you then let sit in a bag for some time. When I finally showed up the dough was already in its little bag, doing whatever it needed to do to become pasta. My job was to feed the cubed dough through what is best described as a silver, mid evil torture device. The hand cranked machine would first flatten the substance and then, on a second hand cranked part of the contraption, would cut the stretched out mess of dough into long, easy to handle strands of noodle. We then coated them in cornmeal and suspended them on the drying rack that my mom painstakingly made. The noodles are drying as I blog and will be ready to eat by tomorrow night. It was fun making the pasta and all, but for the reasonable price that pasta is, I think I'll simply buy it next time. But I it is good to know my way around pasta because I am cautious nudging towards making lasagna from scratch for one of my goals. Maybe I'll settle for a more novice Italian dish. Who knows.