Last weekend I texted my friends Danielle and Mark, asking if we could have a wholesome night where we did crafts and just hung out and and caught up. When Mark suggested making homemade pasta, Danielle and I were intrigued because we’ve never done it before. We decided on making homemade pasta and doing a paint-by-number.

I stopped at Target to pick up the paint-by-numbers before heading into the city to pick up Mark so we could run to the grocery store to get pasta ingredients. Since I’ve never made it before, I was just following Mark around the store while we picked out ingredients. Cookie dough wasn’t on our original list, but when we passed it looking for eggs, we knew we had to add it to the cart. Once we got everything we needed, we headed to Danielle’s house to get the night started.

Mark chose a basic recipe, but once we got there we decided to get started since we had to wait a half hour for the pasta dough to rise. We took turns mixing eggs and flour until it was more of a solid dough. We also decided that, while we were at it, we might as well make homemade sauce, too, so we let that simmer on the stove. While we waited for it to rise, we watched some playoff football. We caught the end of the Chiefs versus Texans game and the beginning of the Lions versus Commanders.

When the dough was ready, we rolled it out and cut it into pieces to be cooked. Once the pasta was done, we made our plates and sat around the TV to watch the rest of the game. I was pleasantly surprised with our cooking skills because the pasta was delicious.

At halftime we put the cookies in the oven and brought out the painting kits. I am not the most artistic person, so I knew mine wasn’t going to turn out the best, but I was just excited to do the actual painting.

I’m so glad we took the night to just relax, hang out and enjoy each other’s company.

— Mary Melnick, social media & editorial coordinator