More food stuff, and Mamma Mia!

So I've recently gotten into making homemade food a lot (if you couldn't tell by my rambling yeast trials), and I went on another Amazon splurge and got some attachment rollers for my stand mixer that will enable me to make my own pasta. I've always been kind of curious about doing that, but have never had the will/impulse to actually do it, feeling that that would cross some kind of "you've gone too far" line in my mind. Well, the line is good and crossed. In a way it makes sense ... if I'm making things with dough anyway, why not just make another form of it?

I also bought a digital scale so I can measure ingredients by weight as well as volume (should have done this a long time ago), the two bread books akscully recommended, because now I'm good and hooked on making bread, as well as a baking book by Dorie Greenspan, because her recipe for "Perfect Party Cake" looks delicious and I'm interested to see what else she has up her sleeve in that book. (Links go to my Vox journal, which has only recipes on it.) Seriously, ( look at these pics. )

Along those lines, I went to a farmer's market with corianderstem yesterday where I bought a bunch of fresh veggies, both to cook on their own and as ingredients for salad fixings and borscht, which I've never made before but have had imitations of. I love beets and the idea of a gorgeous, wine-red soup. I've also got the ingredients for a mushroom asparagus risotto recipe that Jade gave me.

And!! At the farmer's market they were selling herb plants, and I finally have my own basil plant! (And thyme, since I've been doing some French cooking lately and they all seem to call for thyme.) This is exciting for a number of reasons ... I love the idea of growing my own herbs that I can use whenever I want, and now I don't have to buy herbs in the store anymore, where they usually are a) expensive; b) sold too much in bulk, which means a lot of times it gets wasted because I don't use it all.

We also saw Mamma Mia, which was very cute. It's one of my least favorite roles of Meryl Streep's (usually I adore her but not so much in this one, don't know why), but I loved Julie Walters ("Go BILLY!") and Amanda Seyfried, who I hope becomes a bigger star. She's way more tolerable than the likes of Jessica Alba (and really, any other Jessicas), Lindsay Lohan (who I used to like), and most of the other girls in that age bracket. Of course, I could just be biased because I loved Lilly Kane from Veronica Mars, and was pleasantly surprised that she could actually sing!

Edited to add: ( This X-Files Quiz Meme ... respectable results but obviously my obsession is gone baby gone. )

Risotto ahoy!

Not sure why I had to take on two cooking projects at once, but it did mean I spent the better part of the day chopping vegetables. Cooking would take no time at all if I could be like the cooks on TV and have everything prepared for me ahead of time and all I'd need to do is add ingredients.

Anyway, the borscht is still being made. I did manage to finish the mushroom asparagus risotto, and my god is it stove intensive. (For that alone it's probably worth it just to order it in a restaurant.) I've never made risotto before, and the key is to have as much of everything prepared ahead of time as possible, because you're basically having to stand there the whole time, stirring it. To me, who made some prior preparation but not all, it felt like I was constantly trying to do 5 things at once, while stirring the risotto at the same time. It was delicious, though. Thank you to Jade who found and shared the recipe. If only she were here to share with the eating, because I have a ton of leftovers.

( Risotto pics. )