Bella Lucy

Okay, another note regarding the nickname. It takes on several forms mostly dependent upon my location. For example, when I am in New York my mother calls me Big Apple Lucy, in Vegas I am Viva la Lucy (my personal fav).  After a trip to Italy this summer and a slight obsession with homemade pasta that followed, I took on the new nickname of Bella Lucy. Italy is by far my favorite place I have ever traveled to. My husband and I travelled there in October and during our trip visited Rome, Tuscany, Florence, and Venice. Tuscany was by far my favorite part of the trip. We decided to go the agritourism route and stayed at a beautiful place called Terrapille. Terrapille is just outside of Pienza a tiny town known for their pecorino, or sheep's cheese.

We fell in love with several different kinds of food but by far our favorite was the homemade noodles. When we got back home and had our first boxed pasta since Italy, we decided we needed to learn to make our own! I had always thought that homemade pasta would be really complicated and require a lot of equipment. My mom sent us to a fabulous couple's class at the Kitchen Conservatory (www.kitchenconservatory.com) called The Impastable Dream. That night we made pappardelle with shrimp and zucchini, tomato garlic and basil pasta, herbed ravioli with spinch ricotta mouse, and fettuccine with pancetta. The next morning we ran out to buy a pasta maker (which was under $40) so we could try it on our own! The only other necessary ingredient for making pasta is "00" flour which is very fine and used for pasta and pizza dough. Kitchen Conservatory sells it for $4.95 a package.

For our family's Christmas celebration we volunteered to make pasta for everyone which was quite the undertaking for 15 people! We rolled pasta for most of the day and used the clothes rack to dry the spaghetti.

Please note my husband's polka dot apron.

We made pumpkin ravioli, ricotta and sausage ravioli, and spaghetti with meat balls. It was delicious and we look forward to doing it again!