Once the vegetable is pure'ed and poured through a funnel into the mixer with flour and water, it travels through another funnel that rolls the dough into a thin sheet. Next stop is a third machine, which rolls it into even thinner sheets and then cuts the pasta into the required shapes. Someone stands by this last machine with a dowel and catches the long stands as they peel out, setting them on their way through the "drying tunnel"-a process that takes 24 to 36 hours as it moves the pasta from drying racks to drying trays to drying boxes into the drying room where they sit overnight. The next day, usually the first thing in the morning, the pasta is divided into 12-ounce bundles and packed into clear plastic boxes and tagged with the company's pretty salmon-colored label.

The younger Valente remembers when her family used to make colored necklaces out of the multi-colored elbows and shells, stringing them on twine and wearing them proudly until they broke and scattered like a mosaic all over the floor. Customers, she says, are even more creative, making the small pasta shapes into Christmas ornaments. She now hears that children even love to snack on their vegetable pasta, raw. "People write to us all the time, `My son doesn't eat vegetables but he'll eat your pasta,' " says daughter Valente picking up one tough tomato shell and squeezing it between her fingers. "It's really weird."

The older Valente still eats her pasta at home, often tossing spinach linguine with ricotta cheese. "I'm always surprised at how little work our pasta takes," she says. "It's so flavorful that it doesn't need a lot of sauces. You can just saute' some vegetables together and add it to the pasta." She also reserves a cup of pasta cooking liquid to thin a heavy pasta sauce.