Before macaroni was pasta...

Growing up in my Italian Grandma's kitchen... Mario reminds me of the lessons I learned about making "macaroni" (it was never called pasta then...). A full sheet of plywood, smooth and worn from years of rolling and cutting stips of thick linguini and fettucini and table sized sheets of dough for making ravioli, covered Grandma's kitchen table. I would make "the mountain" - a big mound of white, silken flour. Then Grandma would say, "make the well." So, I would make it look like a volcano. She let me break the eggs to fill the "well." I learned to hold my fingers together with my thumb held up out of the way and swirl them around and around in the inside edges of the "well" picking up a little flour to mix with the eggs as my hand went 'round.