Titania Pasta Maker

I have been putting off getting a pasta maker for years. The ones that I have found were big, bulky and expensive. And pasta is cheap, so why bother?

Well, I tried homemade noodles a couple of months ago. I have pledged to reduce my purchases of corporate products and non-corporate pasta is expensive! -- but tastes SO GOOD!! So instead of paying $6 for a bag of egg noodles, I just made them myself. My family declared that only homemade noodles would suffice from that day on.

Which is great except for the fact that they are really time consuming when you are cutting all the pasta into strips with a knife.

So a couple of weeks ago, I was in a store looking for a smaller stock pot for canning just a few jars at a time, and instead found a compact pasta maker for $35. It impressed me enough that I bought it without even researching it first. It ended up being probably the most perfect pasta maker I could have gotten.

It is Titania from Imperia. The reviews I eventually read indicated that it was an authentic Italian pasta maker - the one that an Italian household would most likely be using.The pasta is easy to make. It is just flour, eggs, a little salt, and oil. I don't even measure. The consistency should be like bread dough when it is all mixed and kneaded thoroughly.
Now a lot of the reviews complained that the maker took more than two hands to operate. I was able to work the machine without clamping it to anything and while holding the video camera under my chin. And all the while I had three dogs dancing around my feet looking for fallen pasta scraps. I think those facts illustrate the actual ease of use of this pasta maker. I did not let the dough rest. I just rolled a ball of the dough in a little flour before trying to roll it through. You do have to start on a wide setting and work your way down to a thinner setting or your dough will shred and it is much harder to get it through the rollers if you skip too many widths.

I used the noodles I made in the video in this vegetable and chicken broth soup. Celery, carrots, kohlrabi, sweet onion, sauteed with olive oil, and seasoned with a little ginger. A couple chicken bouillon cubes, water and the cooked noodles. It was delicious!

And the noodles from start to finish probably took less time to make and cook than it would have taken store-bought dried noodles to cook. With homemade noodles this fast and easy, I don't think it will be hard at all meeting my family's declaration!

Reynolds Handi-Vac Review

I have wanted a food vacuum sealer for quite some time. Two things have kept me from getting one:
1) Space. All the vacuum sealers that I have seen were HUGE! My kitchen isn't tiny, but I am not giving up precious space if it isn't something that I will be using all the time.
2) Price. Most of the vacuum sealers that I have seen were over $100. Not a bad price if you will use it all the time and you know that you are getting something that will work the way that they say it will, but I don't want to dish out $100 and find out that it isn't going to cut it.
Plus, did I mention the space?

Then I saw the Reynolds Handi-Vac. It was small - about the size of a handmixer handle. It was inexpensive - $8.90! And the accessories weren't that badly priced either - the bags are $0.20ea for quart and $0.33ea for gallon.

I checked it out on the internet to see what others had to say about it. Most of the reviews were very good. Some, however, complained that it was difficult to use, or they just couldn't get it to work. I figured at the price, and with that many favorable reviews, I could afford to see just how difficult this was to use.

You judge for yourself - watch this video of my very first attempt at sealing a bag. A disclaimer is necessary, I didn't have a cameraman so I had to film with one hand and do everything else with the other.



It was SO EASY!! Kind of noisy, but very easy; I literally was doing this one handed. This video shows my very first attempt. I did not even read the instructions (who needs stinking instructions, right?). I just picked it up and went for it.

There were a lot of reviewers that said that it was tricky to get the bag to lay flat with bulky items; but I didn't even try to get it to lay flat and it worked fine, as you can see. I think the only thing that matters is that the vacuum surface has complete contact with the bag's vacuum valve.

There are no parts sticking out the bag; the vacuum valve is flat and smooth. The ziplock is easy to close (did I mention I did this one handed?). You can write on the bags just like other freezer bags. And these bags can be opened and vacuum-sealed over and over; so you can take a little food out and reseal the rest for later. I am thinking that this will be great for fresh vegetables that tend to slime before their time - like cilantro and green onions.

And, it came with batteries! It requires 6 AA batteries, which is a lot of batteries; but, I buy rechargeables, so that's not such a big deal. It would have been nice if they had included an AC option.

Also, the bottom of the device is rounded, not flat. So it does not stand upright, which would have been nice. My husband said that they might have designed it this way to prevent falls that might damage the vacuum nozzle. OK. Fair enough, but I'm sure there could have been other ways around that -- like a storage base to stick it in.

The vacuum itself is ergonomic and lightweight. Although it sounds like it is vibrating terribly while in use, there is only a slight vibration.

The nozzle end detaches for cleaning in the event that some liquids get into it. Since I was sealing steamed beans that were still steamy, this end filled with steam. You should not try to vacuum seal really wet ingredients, like sauces and soups, since they will just suck right into the vacuum. These are easy enough to seal in regular freezer bags by just squeezing the air out by hand before sealing -- I've been doing that for years!

Over all I would give the Reynolds Handi-Vac high scores on usability, price, comfort, size, speed and effectiveness. I would recommend this for anyone looking for a vacuum sealer that wants something small and inexpensive.

I will be updating this post in a couple months to let you know how the food actually stored in my crappy freezer that burns everything that isn't vacuum packed.