I love pasta. It's more of a life long affair. I love cooking some up and serving it with my homemade meat sauce, or making baked dishes or adding it to some soup. It's even great with a little butter and parmigiana cheese.

So, I thought I'd take on the task of making pasta from scratch. And since St. Patrick's Day is coming up, I decided to make spinach fettuccine.

I will warn you, making pasta from scratch is a lot of work. Let's get started!

Step 1: Ingrediants

1. One pound duram flour plus extra

2. Five ounces blanched spinach

3. One teaspoon salt

4. One large egg

5. Six large egg yolks

6. Two teaspoons olive oil

7. Water

8. Food processor

9. Pasta maker

Step 2: Blanching Spinach

Fill a pot big enough to hold the spinach with water and bring to a boil. While the water is heating up, fill a bowl large enough to hold all the spinach with ice water.

Once the water comes to a boil, toss in the spinach and boil for three to four minutes. Immediately take the spinach out of the boiling water with a slotted spoon and place it in the ice water.

Now you have blanched spinach.

Step 3: Making the Dough

Squeeze as much water as you can out of the spinach. In a food processor blend flour, salt, and spinach.

Through the feed shoot on the processor, add the egg, egg yolks, and oil. Remove the mixture from the processor and place in large mixing bowl.

Adding water: Start adding a couple teaspoon at a time. This is the tricky part of making the dough. The dough needs to be smooth and stretchy. The amount you need will be different every time. Even the days humidity level will affect the amount. For me the air was very dry today and so was my dough, so I had to add a good bit of water to get the dough just right.

Step 4: Making Pasta

Follow the instructions on your pasta maker when making the noodles.

Pull small amounts of dough off the main hunk when making the noodles. Using too big a chunk of the dough makes it harder to run it through the pasta maker. Dust the dough in a light covering of flour before running it through the pasta maker.

If your dough falls apart while running it through the maker you need to add more water.

You can either cook the pasta up right away, or drape it over something (I used yarn tied between a couple chairs) to dry the pasta fully.

Step 5: Slurp It Up!

Enjoy your hard work with your favorite sauce or toss it with a little butter or olive oil. Twirl it on your fork and slurp it right up! This pasta is definitely worth the effort.