Portland, Pumpkin, Pasta, and The Professional

Mommy grew obsessive about a new pasta press attachment for her KitchenAid mixer, so we girls made a trek to Williams Sonoma in Portland to check it out and bring one home (less $ to drive up in person than pay shipping!). And naturally, while up there, we picked up a few additional absolutely-necessary kitchen items too. Must capitalize on the trip, of course. Here is Miss A making a hat out of a cake pan. She was confined to the stroller (Mom's no dummy!) but needed to get out some silliness and fidgety energy somehow.


After shopping we went to lunch. Well, we tried. Miri was very tired and cranky, so Mommy didn't get to have but one bite of her Thai Peanut Noodles . "To-go box, please!" -- it's a mother's mantra at this stage.


Aleaha helps put clean dishes away. She likes to help, and Mommy takes advantage of it, cuz we know it's a phase that won't last long!


Sunday night's project... Time to carve the obligatory jack-o-lantern. For a girl who doesn't like to get her hands gooey, it was surprising she wanted to gut the pumpkin.


Monday night's project... Fresh pasta! (Couldn't wait to dig into the new toy). One word: OHMYGOSH. Too yummy! And a fantastic job to entertain a three-year-old, since ya gotta make dinner anyway, ya know. The dough balls above are fed into the hopper, where the auger forces the dough through the extrusion plates. We have the cheesy set of plastic KitchenAid extrusion plates. Waste of time. But these babies? THEY WORK! Daddy was skeptical and wondered why we would spend so much dinero on this -- until he learned we can make homemade rigatoni and other shapes too.


Aleaha puts more dough in.


The machine cranks at Speed 10 to pump out the pasta.


And this is what you get! (Can't wait to try the other shapes)


Aleaha proudly shows off the results.


After dinner, she went down to her desk to "get some work done before bedtime, Mom." She's so devoted! (Mommy and Daddy set up a desk for her in the computer room. Bought us a few moments of peace, wherein we can surf ...and update the blog. ;) )