Sunday has always been pasta day for my husband and me — even when we were growing up.

When we came home from church on Sundays, my mom started making the sauce. As we read the Sunday paper and watched the Philadelphia Eagles play, someone inevitably wandered into the kitchen to stir the bubbling mixture. Next thing you know, they were nibbling a crusty slice of Italian bread coated with the fragrant puree. It was a heavenly sample of what would come later.

Since Dan’s heart attack, however, I feel a twinge of guilt on pasta Sundays. Although we try our best to eat heart-healthy meals, we still tend to eat more white pasta than whole wheat. I used to buy white whole wheat pasta, but it vanished from our supermarket’s shelves, and my family didn’t seem to enjoy regular whole wheat pasta as much.

Finally, I decided to see if I could make a better version from scratch.

I found a  “light wheat recipe” in the booklet for my KitchenAid Pasta Sheet Roller and Pasta Cutter Attachments. This version uses 1 c. white flour and 2.5 c. of whole wheat flour. To lighten the dough a bit more, I used white whole wheat flour, trying not to rock the boat too much on our Sunday tradition.

It was amazingly quick and easy to make. The dough was a little firmer than I’m used to. I cut it into 10 pieces, rolling it into sheets, beginning with thickness 1 and running it through 3. Then I cut it into fettuccine.

I arranged the strands into lightly floured nests on cloth-covered baking sheets. After they were frozen, I popped half the nests into a plastic zipper bag and stowed them in the freezer. We had the other half for dinner.

The pasta was lighter than store-bought whole wheat, with a little more bite than white pasta, and it was luscious. I can’t wait to try it this spring with fresh vegetables.