Weekend Recap @ Home in the Kitchen

This weekend has been one at home, and mostly in the kitchen. I had a lot of class assignments to do so I set my computer and textbooks up on the dining room table, alternating between homework and cooking. Being in the kitchen at least gave me a sense of having a weekend and doing something for myself instead of just being a slave to college this week. S's brother came to visit, so it was nice to have someone to keep S company while I devoted my weekend to assignments, and it was also nice to cook for someone else, which I always love doing. 

This weekend since I had time at home I set up my new KitchenAid mixer pasta cutter attachment and got to work. I've made raviolis before with a friend so I knew it took some time. I spent most of my afternoon alternating cutting 10 noodles and writing a few paragraphs. In the end, it was so worth it. To me, there is always so much love inside homemade pasta, it always tastes ten times better. 

I didn't want to drown my fresh noodles in tomato sauce, so I opted for carbonara so that we could really taste the semolina flour in the dough. It was delicious, and of course heavy! I always find that when I eat fresh pasta I am always satisfied with smaller portions. My favorite addition to pasta a la carbonara is cracked black pepper; I always add a lot because I love the peppery flavor with smoked bacon and the egg sauce. 

In the first photo is a snack I made with the extra pasta dough. I mixed nearly too much semolina flour for the pasta, so instead of making more noodles, I rolled it out on our pizza stone extremely thin. I brushed it with some thick olive oil, cracked black pepper, sharp provolone cheese, and some arugula to make a flatbread. It was our snack as I continued rolling out pasta noodles in the afternoon. 

And, of course, I started this weekend of cuisine with homemade waffles. I made a decent size batch in order to put the extra in the freezer - homemade frozen waffles. I like my waffle batter to be extremely milky (I use almond milk) and with a teaspoon full of vanilla extract. It's like dessert for breakfast. I think next time I will still use the almond milk, and instead of vanilla extract, I'll use almond extract. And since I'm not crazy about syrup, I put Nutella on my waffles instead. It was a wonderful weekend of sweet and savory to balance out the workload that I had.

Adieu, Yelle