Pasta, Scales, and Little Lamb Tails

Mangiamo!

This past Tuesday, God & Nature professor Loren Wilkinson taught us how to make pasta from scratch.

First, Loren explained to everyone how you must get the right mixture of flour and eggs blended together. After that, we started flattening out the dough by hand, and then through the roller.

Loren (Proffesor) shows Kris (Messiah), Allie (Wheaton), Sylvia (Calvin), and Mieke (Calvin) how to pass the pasta dough through the roller

We continued passing the sheets of dough through the roller multiple times, each time making the opening smaller for the dough to pass through. This makes the sheet thinner and thinner. After passing each sheet through, we hung them so that they wouldn't stick to themselves or each other. It's great to have someone tall around for this, like Mieke!

Mieke (Calvin) hanging the pasta sheets

Once the sheets of pasta were the appropriate thickness, we put the cutters on the roller. Depending on the piece you choose, the pasta will be different widths. We used two different ones, allowing us to make linguini and spaghetti.

Sylvia (Calvin) and Allie (Wheaton) making spaghetti

And voila! You have your flattened and cut pasta.

Loren and Mary Ruth cooked the pasta for us for dinner. They dressed the linguini up with a coconut crayfish sauce (thanks for the crayfish, Caleb!) and left the spaghetti plain for us to choose our own toppings. The meal was fantastic!

The coconut crayfish pasta was great. Thanks Loren and Mary Ruth!

As the weather has warmed up even more, the ocean has been becoming more and more inviting to divers. Staff and students have been hopping in to harvest some fresh food. Matt has been trying to catch as many fish as he can for our family feast this coming Friday. The meal serves as a project for God and Nature, where some students will have to find and prepare local food for everyone. 

Top Left: Jacob (Messiah) and Caleb (Staff) show off their fresh catch
Top Right: Daniel (Staff) ready for a dive
Bottom Left: We'll have lots of wrass this Friday at our family feast!
Bottom Right: Matt (Messiah) shows off his paua and wrass

Many students were keen to spend Wednesday afternoon lending a hand at the Topps' sheep farm. Some students helped Brian collect manure for the gardens on campus, and others had the chance to help with lamb "tailing" and herd marking. Did you know that sheep are born with tails? They're removed at a young age to keep them clean and healthy. You can keep this in your arsenal of random facts for the next family party; the holidays are coming after all!

Top Left: Sam (Eastern) with the disinfectant spray for the tails
Top Right: Betsy (Messiah) helps Kevin Topp with the lambs
Bottom Left: Daniel (Staff), Jacob (Messiah), and Caleb (Messiah) packing down the manure
Bottom Right: Jacob (Messiah) finishes off his hard work with a game of tennis with Sandy Topp