Lucas MacPhail is making a double batch of homemade fettuccine for the Alexandria Community Shelter for his Eagle scout project. He estimates this batch will feed six. First step is to break two eggs into a container, mix with fork and add 60 ml water. Then pour into pasta maker.
Lucas MacPhail was going to build a bench for his Eagle Scout project to be located at Lyon Village Community House in Arlington where he lives. “But people would use a bench once in a while, and it didn’t speak to me. I wanted to do something I enjoy and that would be personal.”
So he decided to make 100 meals of homemade pasta for the residents of Alexandria Community Shelter operated by Carpenter’s Shelter in Alexandria where Lucas attends high school. “Making homemade pasta for 100 is something people will remember.”
After about three minutes the machine begins to extrude the fettuccine.
He and his mother Ann Lyles MacPhail, who is the Assistant Scout Leader for Troop 2535, have been experimenting for a while. Lucas says, “We did a lot of tests. We tried to make the pasta manually, with a hand crank machine and with the current choice which is a pasta machine which mixes and extrudes the dough. We decided the last one made the most sense to make a large batch of consistent dough.”
Lucas says he first made homemade pasta with his grandmother in Illinois three or four years ago. “Her wrists hurt so I did most of the work. It was fun.”
Along the way Ann says, “We broke the machine. Our best guess is that the flour and water sat too long and made a glue to jam the machine. We did some trouble shooting—plugged it in again, soaked all the pieces and pried them apart so we could dissemble the machine without breaking it.”
Lucas says they will be making fettuccine because it is a lot more dense than spaghetti and won’t fall apart in the pot when it is cooking. The pasta will be supplemented with homemade meatballs, spiced up Prego’s spaghetti sauce, garlic bread and green beans. Ann explains, “We investigated making the sauce from scratch but the list of ingredients was long, and there was no way homemade sauce would fit the budget so we’re adding onions, basil, peppers and a bunch of different spices to jars of Prego’s sauce.”
Lucas set up a list of needed supplies and ingredients on Amazon as well as a Go Fund Me page, and immediately the donations came in—garlic, the jars of sauce, the spices and ingredients. “But it’s nice to have extra and if we get more donations than we need, we’ll use the extra money to make cookies.”
“He loves to make cookies,” his mother adds.
Lucas and his mother have started making the pasta, and neighbors and friends will join in on Memorial Day. About 20 members of his scout troop will help him in hourly shifts on June 1 and 2 to make the meatballs and sauce and put it all together into the meal for 50 for the first batch and on June 14 and 15 for 50 more to make the second batch. They will deliver the meals to Alexandria Community Shelter in Alexandria on June 2 and 15, and the older scouts will stay to help serve. “He could have done it all himself,” Ann says, “but the point of this is project management.”
Lucas says he thought about Carpenter’s Shelter because his church, Our Lady Queen of Peace in Arlington, often mentions it. Lucas had made pasta in the past for his confirmation project but it was the boxed kind. “Sure it’s cheaper but not so personal.”
Lucas started Scouts when he was about 5 years old. He says being an Eagle Scout is a family tradition since his brother and grandfather were also Eagle Scouts. “You learn to be successful and get knowledge about a lot of things. And there is the Boy Scout motto … trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind, clean, reverent … I would like to think we are practicing most of them, especially the ‘clean’ because there will be a lot of that on this project.”
Lucas estimates he will have spent about 100 hours on the dinner. He says the hardest part has been the paperwork and all of the planning. “I have executive functioning problems so this is hard.” Each Eagle Scout project involves writing a proposal and description and a report afterwards addressing what worked and what didn’t, what unexpected problems emerged and how they were solved.
And Ann adds, “Everyone deserves a good homemade meal.”