The Great Pasta Experiment (Results: Inconclusive)

I don't know what came over me. It was a Sunday afternoon in December, the sky was that flat gray color that makes you want to do something with your hands, and I had exactly one hour before I needed to eat dinner. Somehow, in between those two facts, I decided that tonight was the night I made pasta from scratch. No box. No directions on the side of the bag. Just flour, eggs, a rolling pin I didn't technically know how to use, and a level of confidence that was not earned.

The dough phase was humbling. The recipe I found said to knead it for ten minutes until it was 'smooth and elastic,' which sounds simple and is absolutely not. Mine was sticky, then too stiff, then sticky again. I added flour. I added more flour. At some point I stepped back and looked at the counter and it looked like a snowstorm had specifically targeted my kitchen. My sweater was a casualty.

deep in it. the dough was not cooperating.

Cutting the noodles was where things got genuinely creative. I rolled it out, or I rolled something out, something vaguely flat, and then cut strips that were, generously, unique in shape. Thick in some places, almost transparent in others. One of them was curved. I held it up and genuinely could not tell if I should cook it or frame it.

she is art. she is my pasta. she is a little bit of a disaster.

Here is the honest report: it cooked. I boiled it, put some butter and parmesan on it (from a green can, I'm not going to pretend otherwise), and ate the whole bowl standing over the sink. It tasted like pasta. It tasted like my pasta, which felt different somehow, like the slightly crooked edges were part of it. I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to make something that is yours even when it's imperfect, and apparently that thought now extends to carbohydrates. The Creative Writing semester ends this week and I've been in a weird reflective mood, so maybe don't read too much into the pasta metaphor. Or do. I'm leaving it there either way.