The Heart of the Table | Generations & Legacy

Camp Nana Summer Tradition

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While brainstorming activities to do with my campers at my recent "Camp Nana," my very first idea was to offer a class on baking and cake decorating. But here in the mountains of North Carolina, we sit in a bit of a rain forest. A humid, wet rain forest. This is not the best environment for cake decorating, as the frosting has an incredibly hard time setting up.

My next thought was to do a cooking class where we actively ate what we cooked for dinner—doing double duty! Then I thought about pizza, which naturally led me to think about pasta. (My mind wanders in strange and mysterious ways...)

Pasta Perfection in the Mountains

The Pasta Rolling Station

This time, I thank goodness for strange thoughts, as this class went down with absolute pasta perfection. Of course, my over-achiever self decided that we would make differently colored pastas instead of plain old noodles. Why not? Using fresh beets, spinach leaves, and roasted carrots, we blended each vegetable into a vibrant purée to construct our own brilliant dough from scratch.

The technique is incredibly simple and a perfect activity for kids of all ages. You dump the flour onto your work surface and use your fiercely clean, washed hands to bring it together in a circle, creating a well to slowly swirl the wet ingredients in. We pushed the vibrant dough through the machines into impossibly thin, beautiful sheets.

You don’t have to have a massive group of kids to construct camp memories. You can make pasta with just one of your favorite kids, or you can gather a few and simply take turns on the machine. It’s all spectacularly good fun.

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