Life is a combination of magic and pasta. ~Federico Fellini

I love to cook.  I might not be the fanciest of cooks, but I love doing it.  Over the years, I have found myself wanting to rely less and less on highly processed food and cook more fresh, real foods.  I loved watching hours and hours of Food Network and if I am honest, was the most disappointed about not having channel 66 when we decided to cancel cable.  There is just something amazing to me about people that can create food that not only tastes good, but looks good too.

Because of this, taking a cooking class is one of the things on my list that I have most looked forward to doing.  I looked every month at local cooking classes, but between the kinds of things that were being cooked and scheduling, nothing ever came of all my searching.  One day last spring, my friend Tiffany and I were out for lunch and she mentioned that she had taken a cooking class up in Portland and would really like to take more.  She had found a bunch of different places up in Portland and sent the links to me.  It was the end of the school year, so it took me some time before I got to the links but when I did I found one that I wanted to do badly...a making fresh pasta class at Portland's Culinary Workshop.  I sent the link to Tiffany and we grabbed the last two slots.  

Finally the day came and Tiffany and I drove up to Portland to take our 3 hour cooking class.  Neither of us ate breakfast and our plan to stop at Starbucks before class didn't quite work out (two teachers getting up early on a Saturday in the summer was a lot of ask of ourselves).  We assumed that we were going to be able to eat some pasta at some point, so didn't worry about it too much.

Tiffany and I knew the second we walked into the class that it was going to be a fun morning.  The space was so incredibly perfect and the teacher made us feel right at home from the beginning.  Melinda was so much fun and we spent the first hour learning the basic of homemade pasta making with all sorts of interesting facts about food and cooking sprinkled throughout.  She showed us how to use the pasta makers and roll out gnocchi.  The first hour went so fast, I could hardly believe it.  And then she just turned us loose.  

The next two hours we mixed and rolled and folded and pinched pasta.  The whole store was ours to use, including this huge table just filled with everything imaginable if we wanted to make some kind of stuffed pasta, which we both did.  There were two instructors there to help us as we tried to figure things out.  We had such an amazing time!  We laughed more than a few times (mostly at ourselves) and shared the sadness of my first batch of pasta falling off the drying rack onto the floor.  I was SO happy that I had taken a cooking class with someone else!  I would have looked a little crazy laughing at myself by myself. 

At the end of the two hours, we both had a bunch of pasta to take home...but we hadn't eaten any except for our test gnocchi (which is very important to do in order to make sure you have the seasoning and consistency correct).  So after class, even though we had pounds of pasta with us, we stop at Pastini's at Bridgeport and had pasta.  

Here are a few pictures from our morning...

My ravioli...stuffed with feta, red peppers, onions and garlic.

Tiffany and I in mid-gnocchi mixing.
Luckily I had not stuck my other hand in before
grabbing my phone and having someone snap this picture!

All my pasta!
I made gnocchi, ravioli,
a couple different batches of spaghetti (one with herbs and one without),
 and some fettuccine. 

Tiffany had been to other cooking classes before and said that this one was by far the best one.  Most of the others she had taken were more demonstration classes where you watched someone cook and then ate at the end, but I am so glad this class wasn't like that.  We got to get in there and really try it out, which was exactly what I wanted.  Tiffany has already gotten her hands on a pasta roller and it is at the top of my birthday list!  I couldn't have asked for a better way to spend a Saturday morning!

Before we left, we were sure to grab the upcoming class list and already had a couple of classes in mind that we would like to take.  My class at Portland's Culinary Workshop was exactly what I was looking for when I put "take a cooking class" on my list.  We had a ton of fun, learned a lot and, yes, the pasta tasted great too!