we put a pasta maker on our wedding registry. It was one of the more expensive things, since our registry was small and primarily composed of small-ticket items. My husband was against the idea, but I'd always wanted to be able to make my own pasta (and we both grew up making noodles by hand, and so we both know from experience how time-consuming that process is!) and he eventually agreed to it. I was totally surprised when some sweet friends of ours bought it for us, and we finally broke it out a couple weekends ago. I'd pulled the dino kale out of the garden that was weak and delicate after our long, cold winter. We blended it up in the food processor, then combined it with the ingredients for egg noodles to make kale pasta.
we kept some of the noodles long (we learned that if you are going to have bits of leaves in your noodles, you should cut WIDE noodles so those little leaves don't cause your very thin noodles to break up and fall apart) and folded some into birds nests. It was so fun to roll pasta together - we are definitely still "beginners" with this thing - and to dry them over chairbacks in the sunlight. I am looking forward to a lot more of this in the summer!
