Claiming My Italian Heritage

Here is an important question which is normally answered in a negative fashion.

  Have you ever consumed fresh pasta? 

I say a negative fashion because when I generally ask individuals they answer with a resounding "no". This makes me quite sad. Being an Italian myself [mostly. i'm actually more irish, but let's not dwell on that small fact], I am aghast when I discover that the majority of my friends have never consumed homemade pasta. Aghast I tell you.

Once you eat fresh pasta, you will never ever want to go back. I am assuming this. Maybe you will want to go back, right away, to that comforting starchy mess of a meal. But just maybe you will want to run into the future flying the banner of homemade deliciousness to which your belly will gratefully thank you.

My brother and I worked together to turn out around 4 pounds of pasta. It was enough to serve eleven individuals and still have leftovers. 

 Bryan made the dough for me. I tried to make the first batch and kind of failed. He is the dough master. This picture depicts him trying to crush an egg in his large hands just by squeezing it. A rather difficult task. Harder than you might think.

I ran the pasta through our handy dandy little machine. First you flatten out a piece of dough and run it through the first part of the machine where it is made even flatter and thinner. Then you crank it through the second part of the contraption which cuts it into linguine. 

Bryan and Lauren eventually cracked the egg while giggling the entire time. It was kind of a mess. They splattered egg on the cabinet and floor. The dogs enjoyed the mess thoroughly.

After letting the pasta dry for a time, we floored the pieces so that they wouldn't stick together and threw them on a pan. Since it was around 11pm at this point, we stuck it in the freezer for lunch the next day.

My grandma made her wonderful marinara sauce for lunch. We took the pasta out of the freezer and boiled in for literally three minutes and it was done! Best meal ever. Fresh pasta really is the best.