Making pasta at home is definitely time-consuming, but just as rewarding. The flavor and texture of the pasta can’t be beat, even by buying fresh pasta from a pasta store, in my opinion. Further, if you want to use quality, healthy ingredients (whole grain flour, organic eggs) you can. And then there’s the volcano aspect . . .

Here’s the (easy) list of ingredients:

Mound the flour on a clean surface and clear out a hole in the middle. Crack the eggs in the hole, add the salt and olive oil to the center, and start beating the egg with a fork. The edges of the volcano of flour will just work their way into the egg mixture. Once the mixture is pretty smooth, you might need to help the flour walls come in a little bit - just be careful to help from the highest peaks first. Once the fork isn’t really doing the trick, start kneading. After about five minutes of kneading, wrap the ball in plastic wrap and refrigerate for half an hour.

Using extra flour, roll out small chunks of the dough into large ovals about 1/4″ thick. Use a piece of dough about the size of a clementine, or a little larger, per oval. Use plenty of extra flour here to keep this from sticking.

Get out your trusty Imperia pasta machine. Roll the ovals through the bottom area starting at level 1 and going to levels 3 then 5, with about three passes through each size with each oval. If any weak spots or holes appear in the dough, just fold it over and keep rolling it through.

Then, flour the sheets again. Finally, you can roll them through the cutting areas, or cut the sheets manually to make other shapes. Tonight we made small rectangles, wet the middle, and folded them into bowties.

August 24th and August 25th at the Hollywood Bowl.

Tickets aren’t on sale yet. No more info on their site, but that’s where the ticket link will be, when it happens.

Things That Suck is a new book out by an old friend. And while, yes, you could say that one thing that sucks is having to blog about a friend’s book, I’ve got no problem with this one. People ask me for links all the time (no, not from this site, which probably has all of seven readers - that also sucks) and I generally shy away. But here’s one I’m OK with - into even.

First, the book itself is a lot of fun. It’s basically a list of 1500 or so phrases describing situations most of us have seen, largely outside of our control, that are just no fun to be in. Most are little, niggling issues that can drive you nuts if you think more about them. The key, I think, is recognizing their general harmlessness and unimportance, and that seems to be one point of the book.

It’s lighthearted - mostly. I was a little taken about by some of the entries, and I contacted the author (OK, my good friend) Jason about them. He pointed out that having harsher items in the list served to put into perspective the lighter entries. And he’s right: getting your shoes muddy is really no big deal considering the much larger problems we face both individually and as a society.

Beyond the text, there is a fun flip-book style animation sequence of something that sucks in a different way. It’s not lewd, but I shouldn’t ruin it.

Finally, I’d also urge you to check out the website and blog. The website has interactive elements that allow users to add to the list, and to send messages to others of things that they presumably just found, that suck. Next, the blog, on a totally different topic, chronicles the author’s attempts at selling the book - pretty fascinating. I’m told the URL of the blog may change, so if that doesn’t work for you, try the link off the website.