in perspective

we own a pasta machine. this is the second pasta machine in my life, the first one was bought years ago, in a pre-children life, when i spent an entire afternoon making tagliatelle with my brother, hung the tagliatelle to dry in the kitchen, went to have a drink to recover from our efforts, and returned to find out that cats do, surprisingly enough, like fresh pasta. i then cleaned the pasta machine thoroughly, with much soap and grace. and found out that pasta machines rust in water. exit pasta machine. forever. or so i thought.

last year, we were visiting one of those local organic markets brimming with goodies, with my brother (again?), and there was a young woman offering fresh-made ravioli to the crowd. the ravioli were delicious, the machines lovely, glinting in the sunshine. enter pasta machine II. used once. on the day it was bought. put away. much too much trouble.

until a few weeks ago, when we went away for a few days to the beach with P. and her children, and we thought, why not, a nice project to do with the children, we'll make our own pasta. so i brought the machine along, although not the instructions, because i remembered them so well, of course. make the dough. divide it into eight balls, put away in the fridge for a few hours. then begin rolling. there are nine positions on the machine, each ball must go ten times through each position. easy, no?

yeeees. except it took us two days, and four shifts of two hours with two people per shift to get one portion of pasta ready. hhmm. so much for jamie oliver's claim that making fresh pasta takes as long as running to the store for the dry kind. we swore. we laughed. we cried. we drank. we got mad at innocents. we cursed. we philosophized. we questioned. mostly though, we turned. and turned. and turned that bloody handle. the result was amazing silky pasta. such as none of us had ever had. but clearly, clearly, CLEARLY, not worth the trouble.

i came home disturbed (in more ways than one), and immediately sat down to investigate the world of fresh-pasta-making. turns out the actual instructions would have been useful. not ten times through each position, but once. we might have been done in a little under an hour instead of the eight it took us. ahm. (the amazing thing is that P. is still talking to me...).

... and here is the other amazing thing. suddenly, making fresh pasta does not seem like so much trouble. in fact it's on our menu every week. because, you know, it takes barely longer than running to the store for the dry kind!