Michigan woman’s artistic, homemade pasta creations bring her closer to family roots

By Alexandra Bahou , Johnny Sartin , Michael Glover

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    DETROIT (WXYZ) — Theresa Duford knows there’s something special about fresh homemade pasta.

“My love of pasta started at birth. It’s like inherited when you’re Italian, I think,” joked Duford.

Aside from the incredible taste, pasta is one thing that connects this metro Detroiter to her family roots.

“I grew up with fresh pasta from my grandma, who came here from Italy as a child. So we all grew up with fresh pasta,” she said.

It was a practice that was important to her, so in college, she asked her grandma for help to carry on the tradition.

“She taught me how to make pasta, and then I kind of … didn’t do it on my own. I was too scared to try it for some reason,” she said.

So the pasta machine sat, and sat . . . until the pandemic kept everyone inside.

“During the COVID pandemic, I probably was like cleaning and organizing and pulled it out. And I’m like, ‘you know what? I’m just going to just going to try it and and see what happens. I have all the time in the world now,’” said Duford.

While keeping ties with traditional pasta making, Duford starting expanding on her skills and building a pasta-loving community on social media.

“I just started posting it on Instagram and suddenly started connecting with all these people from all over the world, actually, and kind of like just exploring what is out there with pasta as far as the shapes and … different doughs,” she said.

And then there’s the color!

“Roasted beets make a beautiful like fuchsia color, it’s so pretty. And then … I use purple sweet potato powder and activated charcoal, you can use paprika, turmeric, egg, spinach. I mean, most things that are colorful, you can use it,” she explained.

Thanks to her pasta-making passion, she’s gained more than 100,000 followers on Instagram, all waiting to see what her next mouth-watering creation will be.

“I’ve always been friends with like musicians and artists, and I love being around them and just seeing what they get out of their creativity was something that I always wished that I had,” she said.

I guess you could say she’s now getting over that impasta syndrome.

“It will never look better than it tastes,” she said. I reminded her that while that may be the case, it does, in fact, look very, very good.

Her plan for the future: going on a road trip to meet her new pasta friends from across the country, and eventually traveling to Italy for the first time.

In the meantime, she’ll continue to celebrate and share in the tradition while also making sure her family stays full.

“She cooks more like my mom than I do, actually … the pasta is always wonderful. It’s always delicious,” said Theresa’s mother, Diane Parkanzky.

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