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THE NIGHT OF THE CHRISTMAS EVE GUMMY PASTA

My In-Laws gave my wife and I a pasta maker. A novelty item to be sure, but I was intrigued with it and began playing around with it.

After a while, I got pretty good, I could get the consistency just right...I was able to make batches of excellent fresh pasta, ziti, linguini, fettucine. I would put portions in zip locks and when I wanted some, I could just pull it out and have fresh pasta!

My in laws are Italian, they used to do the whole “7 fishes” thing (to the extreme) so I offered to make the main course of fresh pasta...my father-in-law, the Italian guy he is, would make the sauce, and good sauce it was. I was really going to impress my in-laws. This was a big deal...they were entrusting me, someone who was only 1/4 Italian, to make the pasta for the anchovy pasta.

The night before, I worked for several hours making enough pasta to feed 20 people. I carefully laid it out, placed it gently in zip-locks and placed it in the freezer.

Then next day, I came over with all that pasta. My In-laws have the biggest pasta pot you can imagine...it must be 25 gallons (in reality...maybe 10 I am guessing...:) so the thing took a frikking hour and a half to boil (or so it seemed)

When the water is boiling, I start throwing the pasta in, but...something ain’t quite right. It isn’t separating normally and is kind of...sticking together in great big huge ziplock sized globs.

Apparently, my clever little scheme didn’t scale up well, and the weight of the pasta on itself in the bags just pressed it all together.

Well...they had a good laugh at that, and my father in law mentioned he had boxes of pasta in the cellar (doesn’t everybody?) So...we dumped out the pot, threw away all that homemade pasta, refilled the pot and started heating the water again. An hour and a half later (again, so it seemed) the water was boiling, so I rip the top off the boxes and pour the pasta in.

I am watching it cook, dutifully stirring it, and I see all these little black specks and think “Hey...I didn’t put any pepper in there...”

And then I realized the pasta had been infested by weevils.

They still talk about that night in her family...