Pasta is a type of Italian food made from an unleavened dough of durum wheat flour mixed with water or eggs, formed into sheets or various shapes cooked by boiling or baking. Rice flour, or legumes such as beans or lentils, are sometimes used in place of wheat flour to yield a different taste and texture, or as a gluten-free alternative. Pasta is a staple food of Italian cuisine. Pastas are divided into two broad categories: fresh. Most dried pasta is produced commercially via an extrusion process, although it can be produced at home. Fresh pasta is traditionally produced by hand, sometimes with the aid of simple machines. Fresh pastas available in grocery stores are produced commercially by large-scale machines. Both dried and fresh pastas come in a number of shapes and varieties, with 310 specific forms known by over 1300 documented names. In Italy, the names of specific pasta shapes or types vary by locale. For example, the pasta form cavatelli is known by 28 different names depending upon the town and region.

Common forms of pasta include long and short shapes, flat shapes or sheets, miniature shapes for soup, those meant to be filled or stuffed, specialty or decorative shapes. As a category in Italian cuisine, both fresh and dried pastas are classically used in one of three kinds of prepared dishes: as pasta asciutta, cooked pasta is plated and served with a complementary side sauce or condiment. A third category is pasta al forno, in which the pasta is incorporated into a dish, subsequently baked in the oven. Pasta dishes are simple, but individual dishes vary in preparation; some pasta dishes are served for light lunches, such as pasta salads. Other dishes may be used for dinner. Pasta sauces may vary in taste and texture. In terms of nutrition, cooked plain pasta is 31% carbohydrates, 6% protein, low in fat, with moderate amounts of manganese, but pasta has low micronutrient content. Pasta may be made from whole grains. First attested in English in 1874, the word "pasta" comes from Italian pasta, in turn from Latin pasta, latinisation of the Greek παστά "barley porridge".

In the 1st century AD writings of Horace, lagana were fine sheets of fried dough and were an everyday foodstuff. Writing in the 2nd century Athenaeus of Naucratis provides a recipe for lagana which he attributes to the 1st century Chrysippus of Tyana: sheets of dough made of wheat flour and the juice of crushed lettuce flavoured with spices and deep-fried in oil. An early 5th century cookbook describes a dish called lagana that consisted of layers of dough with meat stuffing, an ancestor of modern-day lasagna. However, the method of cooking these sheets of dough does not correspond to our modern definition of either a fresh or dry pasta product, which only had similar basic ingredients and the shape; the first concrete information concerning pasta products in Italy dates from the 13th or 14th century. Historians have noted several lexical milestones relevant to pasta, none of which changes these basic characteristics. For example, the works of the 2nd century AD Greek physician Galen mention itrion, homogeneous compounds made of flour and water.

The Jerusalem Talmud records that itrium, a kind of boiled dough, was common in Palestine from the 3rd to 5th centuries AD. A dictionary compiled by the 9th century Arab physician and lexicographer Isho bar Ali defines itriyya, the Arabic cognate, as string-like shapes made of semolina and dried before cooking; the geographical text of Muhammad al-Idrisi, compiled for the Norman King of Sicily Roger II in 1154 mentions itriyya manufactured and exported from Norman Sicily: West of Termini there is a delightful settlement called Trabia. Its ever-flowing streams propel a number of mills. Here there are huge buildings in the countryside where they make vast quantities of itriyya, exported everywhere: to Calabria, to Muslim and Christian countries. Many shiploads are sent. One form of itriyya with a long history is laganum, which in Latin refers to a thin sheet of dough, gives rise to Italian lasagna. In North Africa, a food similar to pasta, known as couscous, has been eaten for centuries. However, it lacks the distinguishing malleable nature of pasta, couscous being more akin to droplets of dough.

At first, dry pasta was a luxury item in Italy because of high labor costs. There is a legend of Marco Polo importing pasta from China which originated with the Macaroni Journal, published by an association of food industries with the goal of promoting pasta in the United States. Rustichello da Pisa writes in his Travels that Marco Polo described a food similar to "lagana". Jeffrey Steingarten asserts that Arabs introduced pasta in the Emirate of Sicily in the ninth century, mentioning that traces of pasta have been found in ancient Greece and that Jane Grigson believed the Marco Polo story to have originated in the 1920s or 30s in an advertisement for a Canadian spaghetti company. Another legend states that people used to believe pasta was invented by the Greek God of fire, but this is nowhere mentioned in classical literature. Food historians estimate that the dish took hold in Italy as a result of extensive Mediterranean trading in the Middle Ages. From the 13th century, references to pasta dishes—macaroni, gnocchi, vermicelli—crop up with increasing frequency across the Italian Peninsula.

In the 14th-centu

Carnmaclean, an Anglicisation of the Irish ‘Carn Mhic Giolla Éain’, meaning McClean’s Cairn, is a townland in the civil parish of Templeport, barony of Tullyhaw, County Cavan, Ireland. Carnmaclean is bounded on the north by Garvalt Lower and Moneenabrone townlands, on the east by Carrick West and Tullynacleigh townlands, on the west by Mullaghlea Glen townland and on the south by Altshallan townland, its chief geographical features are mountain streams, forestry plantations, a stone quarry and spring wells. Carnmaclean is traversed by rural lanes; the townland covers 186 statute acres. In earlier times the townland was uninhabited as it consists of bog and poor clay soils, it was not seized by the English during the Plantation of Ulster in 1610 or in the Cromwellian Settlement of the 1660s so some dispossessed Irish families moved there and began to clear and farm the land. By 1720 Morley Saunders, was the owner of the townland. By deed dated 24 December 1720 the aforesaid Morley Saunders leased, inter alia, the townland of Carnmacleane to Thomas Enery of Bawnboy for a term of 41 years.

By 1778 it was in the possession of 1st Earl Annesley. An 1802 Rental of the Annesley Estate mentions a lease of Carmaclean for 31 years dated 1 May 1778 from the Annesley Estate to a tenant, Andrew Brady; the Tithe Applotment Books for 1826 list three tithepayers in the townland. The Ordnance Survey Name Books for 1836 give the following description of the townland- The soil is of a blue gravelly nature... There is limestone in abundance, it is quarried and used for building but there is none sold. The Carnmaclean Valuation Office Field books are available for August 1839. Griffith's Valuation of 1857 lists eight landholders in the townland. In the 19th century the landlord of Carnmaclean was the Annesley Estate. In the 1901 census of Ireland, there are five families listed in the townland, in the 1911 census of Ireland, four families. Carnmaclean lies in the Roman Catholic parish of Glangevlin; the IreAtlas Townland Data Base

Shadrach Bond was a representative from the Illinois Territory to the United States Congress. In 1818, he was elected Governor of Illinois. In an example of American politics during the Era of Good Feelings, Bond was elected to both positions without opposition. Bond was born in 1773 in Maryland, he had twelve Illinois Country connections through his uncle named Shadrach Bond, a scout with George Rogers Clark's Illinois Regiment in the American Revolutionary War. Because they held some of the same offices in Illinois, the two Bonds are sometimes confused; the young Bond learned from his uncle of the rich farmland of the Illinois Territory, emigrated to the American Bottom, an fertile section of the Mississippi River basin. Bond would be an Illinois farmer for the remainder of his life. Shadrach Bond was made a Freemason in Temple Lodge No. 26, Reisters Town, Baltimore County, Maryland. When he moved to Illinois, he became a member of lodge The Western Star Lodge No. 107, Territory of Indiana on December 27, 1806.

Bond was elected Illinois first Grand Master when the first Illinois Grand Lodge was constituted on December 11, 1822. A Democratic-Republican, Bond was elected to the Indiana Territoral Council. After Illinois Territory was organized, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives; when Illinois was admitted to the Union, Bond was elected the first governor. As Illinois's first governor, Bond led a new state that had sterling prospects but no transportation infrastructure or cash in hand. Bond made transportation his top priority as governor; because the state had no money, the General Assembly passed and Bond signed bills to build operated toll roads and bridges, headed by a road connecting the state's first capital, Kaskaskia on the Mississippi River, with what was the state's largest city, Shawneetown, on the Ohio River. The road was built and taken over by the state of Illinois as a state highway. After two centuries of improvements, much of it is now part of Illinois Route 13.

Bond was less successful in his advocacy for a canal that would connect Lake Michigan and the Illinois River. The canal was built in the 1840s, long after Bond had left office. Governor Bond was concerned about arson; the Illinois criminal law made arsonists eligible for the death penalty, along with persons guilty of rape and murder. The governor was by no means concerned with appearing to be tough on crime, however, he took steps to abolish the whipping pillory for misdemeanor offenses. Bond's most controversial act was his attempt to veto an act passed by the General Assembly to create a non-capitalized State Bank of Illinois; the bank was ready to issue banknotes based on the prospect of future economic growth within Illinois. Bond considered this dishonorable and felt that there should be no banks chartered by the state government of Illinois until the State had enough specie to support the value of its banknotes; the undercapitalized bank was chartered anyway, promptly went bankrupt, justifying Bond's concerns.

After Bond's single term as governor, he returned to his Kaskaskia farm. He was no longer in the center of Illinois politics, as the General Assembly had moved the state capital from Kaskaskia to Vandalia. President James Monroe appointed Bond chief record keeper of the Kaskaskia land office, an important job in a land-hungry frontier state; as a respected local leader, Bond helped to raise the local share of funding to secure the construction of the state's first penitentiary in Alton. In the early 1830s Bond was elected Master of his Masonic Lodge. Shadrach Bond died of pneumonia on his farm at Kaskaskia in 1832, he is interred in Evergreen Cemetery in Chester, his grave is marked by the Governor Bond State Memorial. In September 2008, his obelisk – the tallest and most prominent monument in the cemetery – was toppled by Hurricane Ike. In 1817, Illinois Territory named the newly created Bond County for Shadrach Bond; the honor was bestowed for Bond's service as a congressional delegate. Governor Bond Lake in Greenville, Illinois is named in honor of Bond.

Solon J. Buck, Illinois in 1818, at Thayer's American history site Robert P. Howard, Mostly Good and Competent Men Theodore Calvin Pease, The Frontier State 1818–1848United States Congress. "Shadrach Bond". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress