This post appears in the Face Time in the Kitchen challenge.

As a food blogger, I find myself in the kitchen a lot of the time. It’s my space, where I go to work, to cook, to bake, to photograph. I spend time online there, searching Pinterest and other blogs for inspiration. I watch television in there; I listen to my music. I sometimes dance, sometimes sing, sometimes decorate elaborate cakes, sometimes eat standing over the sink.

It’s MY space.

However, even though I find myself communicating throughout the day with other bloggers and friends via Skype, Twitter, and Facebook, it’s really a solitary experience. Sharing it even feels like a challenge much of the time, and I forget how it feels to allow others into my space. To cook together, to eat together.

And then there are those days, those sunlit lazy Saturdays that sneak up on me, and I find myself with a clean kitchen, ready to be dirtied. There is nothing that creates more desire to cook than a clean kitchen! So, when my husband, Jon, asks me to make something with him on days like that, despite my secret wish to not mess up those sparkling counters and empty sink, something in me wants to share, to create.

Jon and I have always been big travelers, in fact, we used to sneak off to Europe (especially Italy) nearly every year before we had our son, Seven. Now, we still travel, but it tends to be closer to home, and for shorter periods of time. We have always been a good team while on vacation, taking cues from one another and using each other’s assets to have the best time. Me? I’m the avid planner. I make sure no monument or museum goes unseen, no restaurant with a great review goes without a meal. Jon? He’s great with directions, keeping us safe, and going with the flow. We just work. It’s so easy to forget though, once you are back home and back to work – the team you once were fades back into the day to day grind.

Cooking can change that.

Making pasta from scratch is something Jon and I have done a handful of times. We have a countertop pasta roller that we’ve used to create pounds of ravioli and lasagna noodles; we have a pasta extruder that we’ve used to make spaghetti, linguini, and even rotini pasta. But this particular sunny weekend, we set out to make wide ribbon noodles.

There is something soothing and real about making pasta from scratch. The warm dough coming together in your hands as you knead, the smell of the flour. There’s plenty of time for overdue conversations that get lost in the workweek, moments for sips of sweet wine and watching our son play from the back window. There is time to look at one another; to remember why it is that we are together and who we married. It’s something that is so easy to forget…and astonishing how one lazy afternoon in the kitchen, face-to-face, can bring all of that rushing back.

As we roll the noodles through the pasta roller, we smile and laugh, comparing our creation to the meal we had high above the town of Positano, in a restaurant we couldn’t afford in those days but ate anyway. We remember runs like Balboa up the steps of the cathedral in Amalfi, where a laughing tourist captured our victory smiles. We reminisce about the hospital in Rome where we discovered I was pregnant with Seven, after years of unsuccessful trying.

Face to face time brought us back together. In our time machine kitchen. One afternoon.

There are moments worth sharing, places for being together. My kitchen is one of those places. Is yours?

Ribbon Pasta

Ingredients

• 4 cups All Purpose or Semolina Flour
• 2 tsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 6 large eggs
• 2/3 tsp Salt

Instructions

1. Add flour and salt to mixer, whisk quickly to combine. Add eggs and oil to center of flour and mix with dough hook until well combined. You may need to add a little water or flour to get a nice workable consistency, so have some readily available as you work.
2. Allow the dough to rest for 30 minutes before rolling it into your desired thickness and shape. Dry, or use immediately.

Want to know how to build a successful restaurant? Check out BonAppetit.com’s “Out of the Kitchen”, a glimpse into the inner workings of two successful restaurants. Meet the back of the house inner circle and see how face-to-face relationships keep customers coming back for more.

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Bon Appetit. The opinions and text are all mine.

Read the original on: She's Becoming DoughMessTic