Please passa the pasta

There is definitely good and bad in growing up with a father who liked to cook gourmet and was good at it.  The bad part was sometimes I wasn't sure what we were having for dinner.  One of the good parts however is the memories of helping dad make a meal.  I didn't help often, but there were a few select things that I helped with, making home made pasta was one of them.  A couple years back I bought a pasta machine, one of the basic style Atlas machines like dad had (probably still has).  Yesterday, now that we have usable counter space, I broke the machine out.  Early afternoon I mixed up the dough, then in the evening I got our boys together and we started cranking away at the pasta.  For those of you who have not made pasta, it is as much the experience, especially for the young, as it is having home made pasta.  You cut the ball of dough into about 2 inch, or 5 cm, wide slices of dough and then run each slice between the rollers at setting 1, fold it in half, run it through again.  Then you move to setting 2 and do the same thing.  You continue changing the settings (7 being the thinnest) until you get sheets of dough at the desired thickness.  After this you run the sheets through the cutter and you have linguine or fettuccine.  We went for the fettuccine.  The boys had a blast making it, and everybody raved about how it tastes.  In fact today, big trouble asked if we could make it again when we have time to.  I'm all for it.  I had it for lunch again today and still was great.