The gleaming metal pasta machine sat in its box on top of the fridge for months, waiting for one of its carb-loving owners to remember to buy durum flour at Kalustyan’s, which we finally did last week.

Here are some photos from Francisco’s first homemade pasta experiment. The wooden clothes hanger doubles as a drying rack for the pasta before it is hand-cranked through the machine’s rollers, coming out as fettucine, linguine, or spaghetti on the other end. The sauce was homemade, with pancetta, baby tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, and fresh basil. The pasta was served with a side of vegetables that were grilled and sauteed–green beans, red onion, red pepper, mushrooms, garlic, and jalapeno–and paired with a Cabernet Franc.

Trust me, once you discover homemade pasta–how easy it really is and how amazingly different it is from boxed pasta–you’ll never go back. You’ll spend your weekends making and freezing batches of angel hair for a hurried weeknight dinner.