making pasta - quotes and descriptions to inspire creative writing

Rory took out the flour and eggs while his mother fetched him an apron. At ten he was almost tall enough to reach the high cupboard with the sieve but not quite. He took a chair from the dining table and climbed up high. Tool in hand he climbed down carefully and replaced the chair. Mom was distracted with the baby, giggling her and singing a lullaby. He called out to her. "How much of each?"

"Uh, three and two." Rory dipped his cup into the sack of wholewheat and counted three. Then he cracked two eggs, whisked them and tipped them into a well in the middle just like Granny has shown him. After a time he noticed that it was too dry. It didn't look like good pasta at all. His face fell and his eyes watered.

"Mom, mom, it's dry!"

"Oh, what, you did two flour and three eggs, hun?" Rory felt angry, she could have said that at the start, now his pasta was a mess. His enjoyment evaporated like summer rain from hot tarmac and he even stopped listening to the soft Jazz coming from the kitchen radio. Mom put Livvy in her bouncy chair and came to see.

"Right," she said, "two more eggs, a little flour, a tablespoon of olive oil and a little water. We can fix this, Rory." She rumpled his hair with her hand and Rory rolled his eyes. He wanted to be cross with her right now and she was making even that difficult. Despite himself his face recovered to normal and he fetched the eggs. "Right on, son. Never give up, that's the spirit!" A few minutes later the dough was a satisfying ball ready to be kneaded. He felt it in his arm muscles, this was nothing like just throwing the dried stuff in a pot, but he liked it so much more. After a time the grainy texture became silky and it was time to wrap and refrigerate. Later he'd get to feed it through the pasta machine...

Amid the flour that covered the old dining table sat the boys, clustered around the pasta machine. One at a time they fed the dough that Granny had flattened with her pin through the rollers watching it grow ever longer and thinner. They turned the dial to change the roller thickness and sent it in again, over and over until it was long and papery. They could almost taste it already covered in a tomato basil sauce and sprinkled with parmesan. It was hard to believe that all it was was flour and eggs, kneaded and shaped. The final job was to send it through the cutters to make tagliatelle and hang it on the rack. Today it was green, so either spinach or more basil. Either way, they didn't care - fresh pasta rocked and they got to make it themselves.