Tagliatelle bolognese

About a year ago, I posted about this awesome pasta Rich and I had in Cincinnati. Since then, I've been on a mission to replicate it.
I'd made fresh pasta before - but only as wrappers for raviolis or wontons. I'm always disappointed with the results because the crinkled edges never cook fully and there's always a hole that lets water in and filling out. But lately, I've been making pasta and cutting it into fettucce or pappardelle (strips from 1/4" to 3/4" wide). The first time I made it, I let the ribbons dry before cooking them. The only pasta sauce I'd made "from scratch" has been from a recipe Rich got in a middle school home economics class:

1/4 - 1 lb ground beef
1/4 c olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 medium onion, chopped
1 8oz can tomato sauce
1 6oz can tomato paste
6oz water
1 tsp basil
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp salt
green pepper, chopped (optional)
mushrooms (optional)
olives (optional)
canned tomatoes (optional)

Brown hamburger and remove from pan.
Add olive oil to pan and saute onion, garlic, and green pepper in it.
Add remaining ingredients and cook for 10 minutes.

It's really tasty, but I always end up with a really thick sauce and big chunks of meat - more like a chili than a sauce. The bolognese we had in Cincy was very meaty, but the meat was ground so finely, it wasn't overwhelming.
Rich and I went back to Cincinnati this weekend and were hoping to make a trip to Nicola's to have the tagliatelle bolognese again. We planned to go for dinner Sunday, but when we looked up their website to make reservations that afternoon, we found out that they were closed Sunday. And we wouldn't be able to stay until dinnertime on Monday. Instead, we left Sunday afternoon and stayed at Rich's mom's house Sunday night. We promised to cook dinner on Monday before continuing our trip home. So we made fresh pasta and tagliatelle bolognese. I used a bolognese recipe and a fresh pasta recipe, both from Martha Stewart.
We started early, around 2 pm. Rich's brother, Greg, is a senior in high school and can choose not to take his last class of the day, meaning he gets home around that time. I helped him with a couple calculus problems while Rich ran to the grocery store. Then Greg and I made balls of pasta dough, letting them rest while Greg finished his homework. Rich got back and started on the sauce, and by about 5 Greg and I were ready to roll out our dough (he, with a rolling pin and I, with a drinking glass). I boiled some water while Greg cut wide strips of pasta. By the time Rich's mom got home, the house smelled wonderful and we were ready to mix the sauce into the pasta and eat. A sprinkling of Parmesan cheese made the dish perfect. Not quite as good as Nicola's, but definitely my favorite homemade meat sauce.