The first foray into food for the holidays. This one was over a decade ago, so I'll share the highlights.

First, here are the results (before packaging):

The sauce was pretty straightforward: canned crushed tomatoes (I personally like Cento brand) mixed with some sauted onions and herbs. Pressure canned into reused Classico sauce jars. That's about it. It is worth mentioning that the Classico mason jars are not made to the same standards as something like a Ball canning jar. If you put it upside-down on a flat surface, you'll notice they wobble a bit. The opening isn't in a perfect plane, which can cause difficulty getting the two-piece lids to seal. The single-piece lids used commercially must be more forgiving.

For the pasta, the KitchenAid mixer and pasta roller attachment greatly sped up the dough-making. However, I have mixed feelings about the KitchenAid pasta roller attachment. The first one I received started leaving metal shavings in the pasta after a couple of uses. I believe this was due to a misalignment of the aluminum rollers. That was replaced under warranty, and the second one developed cracks in the plastic blades that scrape the dough from the rollers. A search for "kitchenaid pasta roller cracking" will reveal countless instances of this happening. It's clearly a defect in the original product design, but being outside of the warranty, KitchenAid won't do anything about it. Supposedly, the newest version has replaced the plastic blades with metal ones, but I'm still hesitant.

Equipment failures aside, the pasta-making was fun. Pureed blanched spinach gave the pasta its bright green color. And how does one dry multiple pounds of pasta in a tiny apartment? Extra clothes hangers to the rescue! Pasta was hanging everywhere until it was dry enough to package.

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