Rebecca and I went to my neighbor's house to get eggs this morning, but she didn't have any: she'd just used them all to make fresh pasta for a family gathering in the evening, to celebrate the birth of the first great-grandchild. She had a back-ache and was working slowly, all hunched over the table, and frequently sat down to rest. As always, her sewing kit was on the kitchen table, surrounded by the sheets of fresh pasta, and when she had to sit down she'd immediately pick up the little flannel squares she'd cut out of an old sheet, and continue hand-sewing the hems on the burp cloths for her granddaughter's newborn.
Fresh pasta is ridiculously easy to make, and has only two ingredients, flour and eggs. I use this little hand-cranked machine to roll out the dough and cut it to size, but my neighbor, who often cooks for her extended family, has a large electrical one that kneads, rolls and cuts the dough, creating a range of shapes: tagliatelle, tagliolini, linguine, capelli d'angelo ...
Her back was really giving her problems, and so I offered to help, and finished the tagliatelle for her. At one point I inquired whether she shouldn't take a pain killer, and she looked at me in disbelief. "Haven't I worked enough in my life already?" she said. "If my back aches, it just means that I have to sit down and rest."
Rebecca and I didn't come home with eggs, but with a gift: a nice plate of fresh homemade pasta, which we cooked for lunch (after some further hand shaping).
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I blogged about some aspects of this special woman's life here and here.
