Noodle Day

 Yesterday was noodle day at daughter's house.  The girls are actually at the point they can do it all themselves while we sit nearby chatting.  But yesterday was different, all hands on deck because it's a big, long, messy job to make the quantity needed for Thanksgiving, Christmas, PH's stocking and enough for the girls to eat them raw - their once in a year treat. Ugh.   The problem yesterday was the pasta machine was breaking down bit by bit before our eyes.

While daughter and PH made two trips to the hardware store for clamps Adelaide mixed the dough while Elizabeth and I kept itkneaded and rested and tried to make the machine work without clamps.  Not.

We were all channeling our inner Pasta Granny as we took turns rolling, turning, rolling, turning

                                                   Until the pasta sheet looked like this. 

There was flour everywhere, on our noses, clothes, the floor, everywhere.  It IS a messy and big job.

This is all done for two reasons.  This was something the mother and aunts in PH's family did as a matter of course.  Don't show up at any gathering without a pot of noodles, and all three pots were different.  So, the torch has been passed, in this family, down to the girls. We have a photo of six month old baby Elizabeth in her high chair watching and fingering a pile of flour on her tray, and look at her now!   But yesterday we took PH from his football game to take a turn at it.  It is, after all, his family's tradition we are passing down. This all happens to remember a tradition in his family.

Even now there is someone in each cousin's family that makes the noodles as a descendant of one of the three aunts and there is ALWAYS a pot of noodles at any gathering and they all taste different.  

Finally, the machine gasped it's last, we couldn't convert the kneading fixture to the noodle cutting fixture because it was running quite literally on one gear notch so turning the crank handle was a trial.  So while daughter worked that, I took a pizza cutter and sliced the noodles.  These noodles will truly be homemade looking!  The pizza wheel wobbled and that may be ok for pizza, it makes a wonky looking noodle. Elizabeth said I was cutting them too wide and daughter said I was cutting them too narrow.  We tried a noodle cutting gadget given by a friend but while those were uniform they were much to narrow.  So, wonky they are.

Talk about soldiering on!  While daughter churned out those dough balls into pasta sheets, Elizabeth and I cut and Adelaide hung them on the drying racks.  We were running on fumes but we had to get it done because no one wanted to get a new machine and drag out this mess any longer.  It was a one day, once a year job.

New machine ordered and arriving today.

We were running behind schedule and were all hungry because the day was to end with son-in-law's birthday dinner.  And cake.  And yes, he is older than four.