I grew up in a large Italian family and every Christmas we would have homemade macaroni. My grandparents would make many pounds of it leading up to the holiday and now that my grandmother has passed, we are continuing the tradition. I always admired the process and the hard work that goes into making real homemade macaroni. My grandparents would set up their hand crank machine in the basement (they had an extra kitchen there) and they would put so much love into mixing the dough. They would spend hours rolling out the dough and passing it through the machine until it was thin enough to pass the "Nana" test.

When it was thin enough, they would hand cut it with their special ribbon edged roller. After that, my grandfather would delicately hang each of the macaroni strands on a clothes rack and leave them to dry. We would always help.

Now my nephew, Carter, my Mom and my sister, Nancy, (pictured below) are keeping the tradition going. They made this batch of homemade macaroni for our Christmas dinner.

Chrissy, TownSquare Media
Chrissy, TownSquare Media
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Check out the finished product, the machine that my grandparents used and now we are using. It is stamped with the date it was manufactured, 1918! It's 100 years old and we are still using it.

Chrissy Townsquare Media
Chrissy Townsquare Media
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