The Origin of Pasta by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Tortellini in the Struggle for an Evening Meal

In the beginning, there was an egg. Nevermind how the egg got there, just assume that it was. The pasta was void and formless, and the yoke of the egg was hovering over the face of the flour. Nevermind how the flour got there. Once again, just assume that it was.

Through a process of one part Brownian motion, two parts Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and just a pinch of magic: there was dough. This process is far too complex for the un-indoctrinated mind to comprehend, so don't even try. You'll cook your noodle.

After millions of years of random gravitational pulls and both the strong and weak nuclear forces, the dough became supple and extruded into a sheet of uniform 1/8" thickness.

With this perfect substrate of randomly aligned hydrocarbons, starches and that mysterious egg yolk, ricotta cheese naturally appeared. Once again, don't ask how, just assume that it did. Soon to follow was fresh parsely, both perfectly portioned and placed into a disk of dough precisely 1/8" thick and of perfect symmetry.

Through yet another unknown process, probably involving dark matter, the disk (much like space-time) folded over on itself, thus creating two parallel dimensions of dough, ricotta cheese, fresh parsley and that mysterious egg yolk.


Through meiosis (a process by which single celled, ricotta cheese and parsely filled dough replicate without dividing), an entire population developed. Some were slightly fat, some slightly thin. Some slightly tall, some slightly small. Some intelligent, and some as dumb as pasta. Through centuries of millenia, these random combinations of particles with no known origin formed villages, cities, towns and nations. For a while, they experimented with Marxism, then adopted communism with "pasta characteristics."

Then, mysteriously and probably through some sort of meteor strike causing cataclysmic climate change, they were no more. All that was preserved was an empty red pot. Once again, don't ask where that came from, just assume that it did. However, the leftover bio-mass of these little pinko commy hooligans might one day grow into your neighbor. Don't ask how, just assume that it will.

Photos by Missy Reynolds

Written by the Red Hairring

No animals were harmed in the filming of this propoganda (except the mysterious egg, which may or may not be a chicken yet), but 4 children were ignored.

Ninja Attack in West Lancaster

How else do you explain this being imbedded in the sidewall of Erik's tire? It took all of about 0.2 seconds for the tire to deflate and Erik is in mourning as this ends the 8-year-without-a-flat streak he was on. Way to go out in style!

"Jacob" Means "Deceiver"

It really does, which begs the question "Why is it such a popular name then?" During our math lesson this morning we discussed the concept of congruency. I would make a shape and he would then produce a congruent shape on his geoboard. I hyperlinked it to dictionary.com just in case you non-math types need a definition. Just a little service we offer...

Anyway, I would make a shape like this:
and he would produce the congruent shape on his board. I offered to let him be the teacher and make the shape for me to copy and this is what I get:
Congruent effort? I should say not.

I Am Not Martha Stewart

It seems like just about every week I have a major cooking disaster. It seems I needed more time with grandmothers and other folks who know what it means to "just add some till it looks about right." When I was adding water according to the recipe it looked about right but after the baking cycle ended we had travelled from "it looks about right" to "it looks like it came from Mars." However, I HAVE had some spectacular successes with the bread machine overall. After a failure of this magnitude I prefer to blame it on whatever contraptions were involved and move on to other contraptions for a while. Yesterday I took a huge gamble and switched from bread to pie (not a wise move in general for me because the score is Me: 0 Pie:132 to this point). But yesterday, God granted me victory!

In other fascinating food news today was our first pick up from Abundant Harvest! We opened the box and had a great homeschool time that started with the line "Kids these are called fresh vegetables. Repeat after me: FRESH VEGETABLES."

Libby heard the word "cauliflower" and decided that even if it doesn't look like a flower, it's name has flower in it and therefore it must be lovely. Erik took this picture and I think he's brushing up on his bridal photography...we could cut down the amount we are saving for her wedding if she stays enamoured with the cauliflower bouquet!

Here is Mr. Dan and the Leek of Power! The one curious component of the box this week was a large bunch of dill. Anyone know what to do with dill besides make pickles?