A day off = spinach linguine, apparently.

Today was a day off for me (Amber), and though I was out until far too late last night & didn't get to bed until 3am (I know), I had many plans for the day. Unfortunately 98% of my plans for the day never really materialized, what with the 6 hours of sleep and waking up at 9:30am and the constant rain all day in San Francisco. I'm trying to be easy on myself though, because I've been working hard lately, and also because ... well, I did work hard today, in certain ways.

Case in point: somehow it seemed completely obvious at 9:30am that my first order of business simply must be turning a pound of fresh spinach from my CSA (Eatwell Farm) into spinach linguine.

I've done this once before, a year or two ago, using the pasta attachments to my Kitchenaid mixer, and it worked fantastically well. Today was round two, and I think it turned out even better. It's not that hard to do, actually, but it is incredibly labor intensive. It took me around 3.5 hours of constant working  to get this meal from pile of spinach to pasta meal in a bowl. It was worth it, but let me just say this: the next time you go to the grocery store and see handmade pasta selling for upwards of $7-8 per container, don't scoff: a lot of hard work went into making it, and it took a while! This process definitely gives me a better idea of why these items cost more at, say, Whole Foods.

Since I had the day off and my camera was nearby, I decided to document the process.

 

 After it was finally done, of course, the only thing left to do was cook the linguine, and what goes better with linguine than a menagerie of yummy vegetables? Seen below: garlic, yellow onion, red bell pepper, three huge white mushrooms & the remainder of the romanesco I nearly devoured raw last night (oops). All sauteed with olive oil, salt, pepper & red pepper flakes (of course!).