GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Category: Video

DIY Solar Beeswax Melter Video by Rick

Solar Wax Melter plans here. Rick built this DIY solar beeswax melter out of a cooler and stuff you probably have in your garage.

Beeswax is made by the honeybees, and when you harvest honey, the cappings on the cells of the honeycomb are cut off, and you can save these wax cappings, melt them down, and make candles, soap, and all sorts of beeswax products. In this how-to video you’ll see how honeybees make beeswax, and how they build honeycomb in a beehive.

A solar beeswax melter will melt and clean beeswax without using electricty. Its very hands off, you don’t have to do much with it, just leave it in the sun and the solar power takes care of it. This wax melter uses a cooler and a piece of glass, its important that the glass not be double glazed, according to Rick. A few pans from the store and you are good to go.

With the melted and cleaned beeswax, you can make all sorts of beeswax based products. Some of the most popular are candles, soaps, and lotions.
Some interesting facts about beeswax: bees eat honey from their hives to produce beeswax, and the ambient hive has to be between 90 -97 degrees F.

Do you use beeswax? let us know how below:

August 12, 2012
Well Water Pump Repair! GF TV video

The electric pump that pumps water to our drip irrigation system broke down, so its time for some electric motor repair. This pump supplies water to our drip irrigation system for our vegetable garden. We use soaker hose watering system for the garden, you can watch our how to make a DIY drip irrigation system video here

But the pump broke. I think it got flooded with the heavy rains we had. GF Radio co-host Mike suggested replacing the capacitor, so we ordered one and we’ll see what happens in the video here.

What we’ve learned about drip irrigation:

Most vegetables and flowers do not have to be watered everyday. I found myself over-watering the plants when I first turned on the plant watering system. I know have the water timer set to turn on the water every 3 days and it runs for an hour. The plan is to water the soil well and then let it dry out between waterings. You don’t want wet soil all the time. If you notice moss growing in your vegetable beds, you are over watering your plants.

Several beds have plastic mulch over the soil, we put the soaker hoses under the plastic and it all works fine. Check out the links below for more drip irrigation videos and posts

Soaker Hose Drip Irrigation How-to Video

Rooftop Container Garden Watering System Video

Flower Garden Watering system

July 11, 2012
Surfcasting with Lures How-to GF TV Video
Surfcasting, saltwater fishing from shore, is easy to do, and a great way to learn how to catch fish. In this how-to video we use lures at the beach to fish for striped bass and bluefish. Ocean fishing like this is not complicated, and i’m all about simple is good.

We went surfcasting at Fort Tilden Park, on the border of Queens & Brooklyn in New York City; its pretty wild to be in the city, yet on the ocean, weird dichotomy there between the urban business and the calm of the ocean surf.

A couple of things I learned about ocean fishing on this trip:
- Bring along water friendly shoes like those sandles with big holes in them, or don’t wear shoes at all if its warm enough
- Apply sunblock, the bigger the SPF number the better. Even if its cloudy, you should protect your skin.
- Make sure you have the proper permits and are allowed to be fishing where you are fishing. I’m big on following the rules, that’s why they are there.
- Pay attention to bag limits and eating limits. Around NYC, the fish have accumulated some chemicals in their flesh that you don’t want to eat large amounts of.
- Buy used surfcasting gear on craigslist, our suggestion is 10- 12′ lightweight rod and spinning reel. I used braided line for the first time in this video and it worked well.
A big thank you to my friend Brian and his dad Jack.

We’ll do more fishing videos in the near future, i’m all about eating food that is locally harvested. What are your surfcasting tips? Let us know below:
June 20, 2012
Chainsaw Wont Start – Chain Saw Repair : GF Video

Chainsaw wont start? Wondering how to fix a chainsaw and the chainsaw to start? Watch our how to fix a chainsaw video and you will be on your way. Chainsaw repair is not hard, and if you’re ready to go out in the yard and cut down some trees, your chainsaw has probably been sitting in the shop all winter. Follow these simple chainsaw tune up steps, and you will have your chainsaw running in a few minutes.

We have to talk about chainsaw safety here as well. Chainsaws are the most dangerous tool a homeowner can own without a license. I have a few friends with scars from using chainsaws improperly. Chainsaw chaps, a helmet, face shield, eye protection, steel toed boots are all mush-haves for safety.

Sharp chainsaw chains is key in cutting up trees and cutting firewood, you can sharpen your own chainsaw chains, but I suggest you have them done at your local small engine repair shop, they have the right equipment to set the correct cutting angle, a hand file can’t do that.

There’s more tree felling in my future, we have a few white pines on our property that need to come down, lest they come down on our house or garage, one of them is already splitting down the trunk, so we need to deal with that one soon.

Watch all our how to cut down a tree chainsaw videos here

June 12, 2012
Squash Vine Borer Treament Prevention #1 : GF Video

Squash Vine Borer eating your squash, pumpkin, and zucchini plants every year? Squash plants dying? Here’s how to prevent squash vine borers from eating your squash plants. The borer is the caterpillar of the Melittia cucurbitae moth. The moth lays eggs at the base of young squash plants, both winter squash, summer squash, and pumpkins and the eggs hatch and the caterpillar burrows into the stem of the squash plant, eating the plant from the inside out.

How To Prevent & Protect Squash Plants with our how to video:

There are several ways to prevent the squash vine borer from destroying your plants, I’ve heard about wrapping the stem in foil or pantyhose to confuse the moth, or placing a square of aluminum foil around the base of the young plant is said to confuse the moth. I have also seen larvae enter the squash plant farther up the stem, so using foil or stockings may or may not work. There are also commercial sprays to deter the moth.

Borer Prevention

Our borer prevention method we learned from our neighbor Priscilla, who can be heard on these GardenFork Radio episodes on growing heirloom tomatoes. The one good thing about Squash Vine Borers is they have only one egg cycle, so once you get your plants past the egg laying time of the moth, you can relax about your squash plants drying from squash vine borers.

You can buy floating row fabric from Fedco Seeds Growing Supplies here.

Check out our gardening how-to video on how to prevent Squash Vine Borers from ruining your squash plants. Let us know how you keep the borers from killing your squash plants below:

Squash Vine Borer Treatment method #2 Extraction

Squash Vine Borer Treatment #3 using Bt

June 4, 2012
Workshop Bench from recycled Kitchen Cabinets & Counter RWG Video

Recycling old kitchen cabinets into a new workshop bench on this Real World Green show. Upcycling or repurposing kitchen cabinets that would have been thrown out, we make these into an upcycled garage or basement workshop bench and storage cabinets. This how to re-use kitchen cabinets video shows one way to recycle construction materials, or materials from deconstruction of a kitchen renovation.

These kitchen cabinets are from my parent’s house and we made them into a work bench for my sister’s basement workshop. There are all sorts of ways to re-use kitchen cabinets, they make great storage units in your basement or garage, and if you don’t like the color, you can clean them with a grease cutting cleanser, sand them lightly, then paint them. Use a foam roller for best results when painting kitchen cabinets.

When deconstructing a kitchen with the plan to re-use the old cabinets, be careful when removing the cabinets. Many times they are screwed in without the thought of someone wanting to re-use them with lots of screws. Kitchen counterops are usually screwed in from underneath, but there may be construction adhesive holding them in as well. Use a pry bar, aka wonder bar, and gently wedge it between the lower cabinet and the countertop.

How have you re- used kitchen cabinets? What ideas do you have to put cabinets and counters to a second use?

May 13, 2012
Bee Swarm Capture Video – GF Video

Honey bee swarm capture, or bees swarm rescue, or hiving a swarm caught on video. Capturing a honeybee swarm is a neat experience. Bees swarm in the spring, and then they move to a tree limb to start looking for a new home. This is when we can capture the swarm.

This honeybee swarm was in Carroll Gardens Brooklyn, where there are a lot of urban beekeepers. In the spring the honeybees swarm, half of the bees leave the hive with the queen to form a new colony in a hollow tree, ideally. The swarm bees will cluster on a tree limb while their scouts fly out and look for a new home.

Beekeepers can take advantage of this cluster to create a new beehive. The bees are very docile while they are swarming, they have no hive to defend, so they are not out to sting you.
Luckily, these bees here on a low hanging limb that i was able to get to with a ladder. You take a bucket, place it below the swarm, and thump the branch on the bucket so the bees drop into the bucket.

Next time i should have a helmet cam on, it was a very cool thing to watch. This video shows the view from down on the ground. It was neat, to say the least. What is key here is I had an empty hive on standby for a swarm call like this.

You can also drop the bees into a cardboard box that has large vent holes covered with screening. The bees NEED lots of air or they will overheat.

We leave the swarm box on the ground for several hours to let all the bees fly into the box, ideally you will move the box in the evening, when its cooler and the bees are calmer.

Check out some nice photos of a swarm capture by Phillipe here.

In Brooklyn, honeybee swarms have become a regular occurrence, and people will walk right by without even looking sometimes. Check out all of our how to raise honeybee videos here

May 9, 2012
Foraging: Garlic Mustard & Nettle Pesto Recipe : GF Video
Foraging was on our minds this weekend, seeing some edible wild plants in our yard, after listening to this NPR story on eating and cooking wild foods like edible Garlic Mustard and Nettles.

Yes, you can eat nettles, despite the fact that the stems of the nettle plant have tiny barbs that sting if you grab Nettles without gloves. The secret is blanching before eating the nettles.

Garlic Mustard is an edible wild green, its leaves have hint of Garlic taste, though the mustard leaf taste is more prominent. Garlic Mustard is a non-native invasive plant that crowds out woodland native flowers like trilliums, bloodroot, etc. When harvesting Garlic Mustard, be sure to remove the entire root base, so it doesn’t grow back.

Our Wild Edible Plant Pesto Recipe made with Stinging Nettles and Garlic Mustard is inspired by an NPR interview of Leah Lizarondo whose food blog is Brazen Kitchen. A big thank you to Larkin Page-Jacobs of NPR and Leah.

Please tell us about your foraging recipes and tips below the recipe, thanks.

Foraging Videos & Edible Plant Identification:

Here are other plant identification foraging videos we have done:

Dandelion, How to find, forage, and cook Dandelion Video

Lambsquarter, Foraging and Cooking Lambsquarter Video

Click for photos of Garlic Mustard and Stinging Nettles for plant identification.
Garlic Mustard & Nettle Pesto Recipe

Recipe Type: pesto

Author: Eric Rochow

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 1 min

Total time: 11 mins

Serves: 2 cups

A simple pesto recipe made from foraged edible plants, Garlic Mustard, Stinging Nettles and Dandelion
Ingredients

1 cup Blanched Nettles

3 cups Garlic Mustard Leaves

1 cup Parmesan or Romano cheese, grated

1 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1 cup Dandelion Leaves ( optional )

1/2 lemon

1 tablespoon lemon zest

1 cup toasted walnuts

2 medium cloves garlic
Instructions

Wash all greens in a salad spinner – wear gloves when handling stinging nettles.

Take 2 large handfuls of nettles – wear gloves! and blanch in boiling water for 5 minutes, drain in a colander.

Grate 1 cup of cheese using the large holes on a box grater, don\\\\\\\’t buy the pre-grated cheese, it tastes awful.

Toast the walnuts in a fry pan on the stove, keep an eye on them, the burn easily.

Place the greens, walnuts, cheese, garlic in a food processor, pour olive oil over the ingredients in the food processor.

Add lemon zest and the juice from half a lemon.

Turn on the food processor and watch the fun, you want the greens to become a roughly chopped paste, but not turn to mush.

Serve this over pasta ( whole wheat pasta goes well with these flavors ) or in white bean soup, or on bread, its great.
3.5.3208
May 4, 2012
Garlic Mustard Plant Identification & Foraging : GF Video

Garlic Mustard is an edible wild plant food. Here is video on how to cook garlic mustard, we made a great pesto recipe. You can forage for the leaves, but you can also eat the flowers and the seeds.

Other names for Garlic Mustard are Jack-by-the-hedge, Poor Man’s Mustard, Garlic Root, Hedge Garlic, Jack-in-the-bush, Penny Hedge, Sauce-alone.

This wild mustard is a non-native invasive plant, its just plain bad to have it growing in North America. It takes over the growing areas of trilliums, bloodroot, and other slow growing woodland and hedgerow plants, taking up sunlight, nutrients, water. Deer do not eat Garlic Mustard, btw. When you harvest it, be sure to remove the entire plant, including the roots. I bring along a garden trowel or forked digging tool to remove the whole plant and roots.

The plant is a biennial, it grows over 2 years, the first year the plant is a low to the ground rosette, the second year the plant grows up and flowers. The leaves are spade shaped with ridges and about 2″ across. After the plant flowers, the seed heads are upright, they look like small string bean pods, about 2″ high and green. You want to remove the plants before they go to seed, as spreading the seed is a bad thing.

So until we eradicate this mustard green from North America, lets enjoy as what I call ‘free food’. In other words, yet another plant we call a weed yet is actually a nutritious plant that should land on our table. According to Wikipedia, mustard plants in general are a rich source of vitamins A, C, & K. I didn’t really think about the vitamin value, I just think its always good to have more greens in your diet. Maybe we can add this to some sort of power smoothie? What do you think? Let me know below.

May 4, 2012
Build a simple ledge nest birdhouse GF.TV video

Here’s simple bird house you can build that is perfect for a parent – child project using simple tools. This kind of birdhouse is used for ledge nesters, these birds are looking for a protected flat surface where they can build nest.

You can watch our other how to build a birdhouse video here

You can use scrap lumber for this project; its a great way to declutter your workshop and do a good deed at the same time.

We need to build birdhouses to provide birds with nesting sites as their habitat is changed by humans. The bird house plan in this how-to video is a ledge nest style birdhouse for birds who would normally nest on an outcropping or a tree limb. The other style of birdhouse commonly built is a cavity nest, its you typical birdhouse, a box with a hole drilled into it.

Not all birds will use a cavity nest, so we build ledge nests too. I put the ledge nest birdhouses under the eaves of our outbuildings, so the bird nest has protection from rain.

Ledge nest is best located under the eave of a roof

These houses need to be put up high, 10 feet high if possible, the birds do not like to be disturbed. We have several near a dusk to dawn outdoor light, and the birds are attracted to the moths that fly around the light, free food right there.

Do you build birdhouses or go birdwatching? let us know below:

April 23, 2012
Drone Laying Worker in a Queenless Hive

When we check our honeybee hives, we first just stand there and observe them. We could tell there was something wrong with one of the hives.

note the large drone cells scattered about

It was quiet, the hive next to it was buzzing with activity.

We opened it up to hear this odd low frequency hum in the hive, not something you usually hear. One look at a brood frame told us we had a bad problem on our hands.

The queen was dead.

And to make matters worse, one or more workers had started laying eggs in the cells, and since workers are infertile, all the eggs are drones.

Queenless hive, signs of the drone laying worker here

So how can a worker bee lay eggs? If a hive is queenless, her pheromone is absent, and a few of the workers can then begin lay eggs. It doesn’t happen everytime a hive loses queen, and this is the first time it has happened to us.

You can’t just put new queen in one of these hives, as the laying workers will kill the new queen. You have two choices, either combine the queenless hive with a healthy hive nearby, or get rid of the laying workers.

One of our Facebook fans explained how she did this:

Rhonda wrote: “Not good. I had this happen last year. I took the hive that had some young bees and some older bees in it and moved at about 2000′ away from the original location, dumped all the bees out onto the ground-every one of them, then took the hive body back to the original location. The younger, drone layers had not been out of the hive yet, so they could not find their way back home. I then transferred a queen cell from another hive into that hive and before long everything was good again. I know, it as a bit chancy, but the other options weren’t much better.”

Healthy frame of brood, note the curled up larvae.

The laying workers are nurse bees who have yet to leave the hive, so they have don’t know any outdoor landmarks or orientation to return to the hive. The older bees, who are foragers, know the location of the hive, so when dumped out of the hive, they will fly back to its location.

This hive was pretty weak, so I’m thinking right now i’ll combine it with the stronger hive next to it, and perhaps split the strong hive in week or two, with a new queen in the split. * we did the beehive combine, click here to see how to combine beehives

Have you dealt with a drone laying worker? Let us know below

April 19, 2012
Tap Maple Trees to Make Maple Syrup How To – GF Video

Tapping maple trees to make maple syrup in this DIY video. We tap our Sugar Maple trees to collect sap in preparation for making maple syrup. This is a DIY low tech low volume method of tapping some trees in your yard or perhaps a neighbor’s field. Several of my neighbor’s have sugar shacks complete with large evaporators and huge piles of firewood, some use traditional sap buckets to collect sap, others use plastic lines and taps.

For my yard, I went with plastic taps and lines, they are not expensive, and I used the food grade plastic buckets from my homebrew beer kit to collect the sap. After we collected the sap, we boiled it down, and we’ll post a video about that soon.

The general rule of how many taps to put in a tree, according to the Conn. DEP is 1 tap for a 12″ diameter tree ( 38″ in circumference ), 2 taps for 18″ diameter or larger tree ( 56″ in circumference )

The holes you drill for the taps should be 1.5″ deep with a 5/16″ bit. If you are tapping trees that were tapped previously, pay attention to the previous tap holes. New taps should be 6″ left or right of an old tap hole, and 12″ above or below the old tap hole.

Sugar Maple sap needs to be stored at 38F degrees or cooler, ideally you will boil the sap the day you collect it. If the sap has turned milky and foamy, it has gone bad.

Do you tap sugar maple trees? What are some tips you can share with us below? Thanks for watching!

Here is the tree identification book we like to use:

Buy From An Indie Bookstore Here
Buy From Amazon Here

April 16, 2012
5 Minute Chocolate Cake In A Mug Recipe : GF video

5 Min chocolate cake mug cake is a simple easy recipe to make quick chocolate cake in your microwave. mix the chocolate cake recipe, microwave for 2 minutes, and in 2 minutes you have chocolate cake.

Here is the 5 minute chocolate cake recipe:

3 TBSP of vegetable oil

1 egg

3 TBSP milk, or water – milk is better

2 TBSP sugar

3 TBSP flour

2 TBSP cocoa

2-3 TBSP chocolate chips

Pinch of salt

Dash of vanilla

In a pyrex 2 cup container or microwave proof mug, mix the wet ingredients together, then add the dry ingredients to the wet batter. Mix together, but don’t whip it, just mix it.

Place in a microwave on High for 2 minutes. Turn the cake out onto a plate, or if its in a mug, you can dust with powdered sugar. Let it cool a bit before eating, its hot.

Do you have a 5 minute microwave cake recipe? let us know below:

April 5, 2012
How To Poach Eggs GF.TV

Learn here how to poach eggs with Eric’s simple poached egg recipe. Poaching eggs is a healthy way to cook eggs with no oil, you cook the eggs in water, hence the name, poached eggs.

A properly cooked poached egg has a runny yolk, i think, but not too runny. You have to experiment with the timing to get the perfect poached egg. There are all sorts of methods to poach an egg, but I think the method we show you in our poached egg video works best. Its not a lot of work, you don’t have to have a fancy egg poacher pan, and it works.

Poached eggs are great on toast, but people also poached eggs for fancy dished like Eggs Benedict, and the Middle Eastern dish Shakshouka, in which eggs are poached in a tomato sauce. I’ve seen a few different versions of this, and its on the to do list in the GardenFork kitchen.

Eggs in general are just plain healthy for you. They are a great source of protein, they keep for a long time in your fridge, and they cook up easy. Eggs contain all the amino acids you need, and are a good brain food. Pasture or free range eggs, with the chickens being the free-er the better, are the best eggs to get, i think.

How do you poach eggs? let us know below:

March 25, 2012
Replace the Front Wheel Bearings On Your Car GF.TV video

Yes, you can learn how to replace the front wheel bearings on your car or truck. Eric shows you how to repair your own truck wheel bearings, using his Ford F150. The front wheel bearings of his truck are making that classic wheel bearing ‘whorl’ sound, so we take an afternoon to make a wheel bearing video.

Front wheel bearings are usually easy to replace, but can be a bit messy, wear latex or nitrile gloves and save your hands from grease. Buy the new wheel bearings and new wheel bearing grease before you start, and work on one wheel at a time. It helps if you have a car repair manual, we like the Haynes manuals, available here.

You need only basic car tools to do this, it helps to have few wood blocks to prop up the hub while working on it. You might also consider changing the disc brake pads while you’re replacing the front wheel bearings, since you have to remove the disc brake calipers to remove the wheel hub anyway. here is a video we did on how to replace your disc brake pads.

Consider having the disc brake rotors turned, or replacing them also, again, since you have to remove these to work on the bearings.

Be sure to safely raise the front of the vehicle off the ground using jackstands.

Have some suggestions or questions? let us know below:

March 2, 2012
Winter Bee Check & Sugar Feeding – Beekeeping 101 Video

Getting your honeybees through winter is a challenge. We feed our bees sugar in the form of a sugar cake, (sugar cake recipe below video) and show you in this video how to feed your bees sugar in the winter.

Note: I know use the Mountain Camp method of winter sugar feeding, but the video below is a good visual on checking your bees in winter.

Another benefit of sugar cakes on top of the hive is that they sugar absorbs moisture, reducing the chance of condensation forming on top of the hive and raining down on your bees, killing them.

We use these insulated inner covers in the winter, which help greatly in reducing condensation. So the combination of a winter cover and sugar cakes, I believe, really helps with moisture buildup in the hive.

Many books talk bout using fondant in winter, but I’ve found it is hard to make, and I’m not sure what the exact benefits it has over just plain sugar cakes, which are super simple to make with re-useable foil pans you buy at the store. We add a homemade essential oil mix to the cakes.

Read more of our beekeeping posts here and watch beekeeping videos here. Thx!

Do you use sugar in your hives in winter? let us know below:

February 25, 2012
Sugar Cake Recipe Winter Beekeeping 101 Video
Here’s a video on how to make sugar cakes to feed your bees in winter. Overwintering your honeybees is challenge, here is one way I help the bees overwinter, feeding them sugar cakes with this recipe. You can make these at home. I use foil pans you can buy at the grocery store.

Note: I know use the dry sugar aka Mountain Camp method of providing sugar to honeybees in the winter. Watch our dry sugar Mountain Camp video here.

The sugar cake recipe:
- put 5 pounds of sugar in a large mixing bowl
- add 7.5 ounces of water
- add a teaspoon or two of essential oil mix if you choose
- mix together and then spread out in a 9×13 or similar foil pan
- allow to dry overnight
- take off the inner cover of the hive
- carefully turn the cake upside down onto a thin plastic or wood board
- slide the sugarcake onto the top of the hive, and either put on either a shim or an insulated inner cover, and then the outer cover.
Here are some photos of how to make sugar cakes for bees.

You can add a homemade honeybee essential oil mix to the sugar cake recipe, you can see the essential oil recipe here. Update: I know buy the pre-mixed essential oil mix, its not that expensive and saves time.

To put these cakes on top of your hive, you must use a spacer – shim, or an insulated inner cover.

There are many opinions on how to get your bees through the winter, this is one way we make sure our honeybees have enough food to get through the winter. What I like about sugarcakes is that the cakes absorb moisture in the hive, which reduces or prevents condensation in the hive.

Many beekeeping books say you should open the hives only when it is 45-50F, but I’ve found if you act quickly, you can pop the top of the hive to slide in sugarcakes when the temperature is in the 30s. Obviously you aren’t going to do a hive inspection at 30F, but you have a few seconds to open the inner cover an add sugar above the supers.

Again, I think the dry sugar method is much better now, check it out here.

Do you use sugar in your hives in winter? let us know below:

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February 18, 2012
How to make homemade pasta GF TV Video

Home made pasta, aka fresh pasta, we show you how to make a home made pasta recipe in the GF cooking video. Pasta from scratch is not hard, there’s just a few steps to get it right. Homemade pasta tastes different from store bought pasta, and when you make it yourself, there are infinite variations possible. neat.

There’s a good chance you have a pasta machine in the basement, an xmas gift from a while back that you never got to, so you’ve got the equipment. If you don’t have a pasta machine, check out these pasta machines
or the links at the bottom of this article.

My technique for making home made pasta is based on a method Jamie Oliver shows us in his book, Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook
– a book I really like, BTW.

Home Made Pasta Recipe ©2012 Eric Rochow

100 Grams all purpose or Italian “OO” flour

1 egg

For homemade pasta, you can use either all purpose flour or an italian flour labeled “OO”, i believe its a finer grind flour, but if you can’t find it, all purpose flour works fine.

The ratio that I’ve found works best is 100 grams of flour to 1 egg. If you are making fresh pasta for 4 people, I’ve found 300 grams of flour and 3 eggs works well.

Put the flour and eggs in a food processor, and pulse until the flour comes together and looks like small pebbles.

Dump the pasta dough mixture onto a floured board, and collect the flour into a ball.

Now knead the dough by stretching the dough out and folding it over on itself. Its best to watch our how to video to see this. Knead for 5-8 minutes

The dough is kneaded when you press your finger lightly into the dough and the dough fills out the dimple you’ve made again, the dough bounces back.

Shape the dough into a rectangle, wrap in plastic wrap, and put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, longer is better.

Take the dough out of the fridge and cut into square pieces about 3″ x 3″, 3/4″ thick. how many pieces you will have depends on how much flour and eggs you mixed together.

Take one of the dough squares and run it through your pasta machine at its widest width. Fold the dough back over on itself in thirds, like folding a letter into an envelope.

You will now run the dough through each width setting on the machine, holding the dough so the folds are on the sides. You may need to flour the dough when rolling it through the machine to keep it from sticking.

After you have run the dough through the machine at its smallest width, take the dough and fold it back on itself until it is about 4″ wide or so, you want a width that is small enough so you can run the dough through the machine again.

Run the dough the machine again, starting at the widest width and progressing through to the narrowest setting. Note: some machines have a real narrow final width, you may not want to get the dough that thin, it depends on what kind of pasta you want to make, and how thick you want it to be.

You can cut the dough in half if it gets too difficult to work with. And you can flour the dough as needed.

You are now ready to run the pasta dough through the die cutters to make various kinds of pasta, or you can hand cut it on a board, or you can make ravioli with the dough. I’ve found it works best to let the pasta dough rest under a towel for 10 minutes or longer before running it through the pasta cutters, you may need to flour the dough again, you want it quite dry.

The flour you use for dusting can be whole wheat or semolina or just regular flour. I’ve used whole wheat thinking it gives a bit of a nutty taste to the pasta, but maybe i’m just fooling myself.

Once you cut your pasta, you can drop it into boiling water or let it dry on a dowel or broomstick set between two chairs. Fresh pasta can take 3 minutes to cook, or 8 minutes, it all depends, you’ll have to keep an eye on it.

February 10, 2012