Pasta History & Italian Food Myths: How it Went From Street Food & Kneaded With Bare Feet to America's Favorite Comfort Food? | Ep. 87"

Hey, everybody.

It's Nancy and Sylvia once again with another fabulous episode

of Family Tree Food and Stories.

Before we start, please take a moment to go to Podcast.FamilyTreeFoodStories.com,

and if you haven't already, subscribe to the show so that you get updates

of when we release every week.

Just so that you know, it's every Thursday morning that we release, and

of course you can listen to it any time.

But there's all sorts of fun information that will be on that page as well.

And of course, please remember, as we always like to say, every meal is

a story, and every story is a feast.

And boy, have we got a feast for you this week.

Right,

Oh, yeah.

We are going to do a crowd favorite, pasta.

I'm full already.

it's only grown in popularity.

I mean, it's just amazing that people love pasta foods we eat

without thinking much about also, it shapes who we are in some cases.

And pasta has always been one of those foods for folks out there,

Oh, absolutely.

I have some funny stories about pasta, but we can get along

those a little bit later on.

But as it turns out, we have some things that we know about

pasta that aren't quite true.

So we're gonna start off with a little bit of myth busters.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

It isn't just comfort food.

Yeah.

So as I understand, Marco Polo was said to have brought

pasta back to, well, the Eastern or the European countries from China.

That's a tidy, little, wrapped-up story, but not exactly correct.

Mm-hmm.

Cause long before Marco, dear Marco, people across the world

were already working with grain and water, if you think about it.

Very fundamental, that's kinda how you put things together to

make bread or, in this case, pasta.

'Cause in China, you have noodles going back thousands of years, and in the Middle

East, early dried doughs were designed to last, and that was an important factor.

Designed to last.

Because again, you had nomadic tribes, you had all kinds of folks and, you

It wasn't as simple as us, right?

Where you can just cook up a meal on an afternoon.

And so, that's kind of how pasta evolved, I think, probably, to being so important.

just before we recorded, I did some extra research, and I had a

question for You know how you always... Well, I wouldn't say always, but I

always thought at least that eggs were part of the ingredient of pasta always.

Well, apparently that's not true, so another myth- buster.

And you mentioned that pasta is an ancient thing, so they didn't use

eggs back then in the old days.

It was just flour and water and, their hands.

talk about feet later.

That's another story.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so And now the egg stuff is pretty good, when you eat pasta

in a restaurant, it'll usually say it's special kinds of pasta that

have egg in them, and it's good.

know, and it just adds to the richness, which is pretty good,

and so there you have that.

You know, what's also interesting is I think of pastas being Italian food, right?

Don't you?

it's manicotti, it's lasagna, all of those things.

But it really wasn't owned by any one culture.

It was shaped by many, and then it was, claimed, perfected,

and expressed everywhere.

and What I also thought was fascinating about the egg thing is

that eggs were expensive, so they were a luxury, and they were considered wasteful

in many cases to use eggs, and it was rich people's who used eggs in, pasta.

And I also learned that some pastas were considered so valuable

that they were locked away.

But that's part of the history of pasta.

but we're also wanna talk about the ancient history of pasta, which dates

back to 2000 BCE, and the oldest noodle dishes discovered were in, I

think it's pronounced Lajia or la- I'm think- I'm speaking like La Jolla,

right?

Probably not.

Like Spanish.

But it's L-A-J-I-A, China.

And it was also found in in the Italian tombs back in fourth century

BCE, in Etruscan tombs, and it was also called the Tomb of Reliefs.

So go figure,

Mm-hmm.

Yeah relief.

I don't know what all that meant.

That's kind of interesting.

But they found what they believe to be early pasta-making tools.

For instance, grinding stones.

You hear about that a lot with flour and water in ancient days.

Rolling tools, again, kind of to roll it out, right?

And dough cutters Now, this is not verified, but they think

that that was the truth.

Now, if they found old pasta, I don't know how you'd feel about eating some of that.

It'd be like Washington's cherries, you know, they found those canned

cherries, or the 3,000-year-old honey.

No.

You know, I'm, I'm not gonna take that chance.

How about you?

I'm surprised that it even exi- I mean, you could find it

because I would think it would sort

of degrade over time,

I would think of either that or it almost foss- fossilized yeah.

So then, it came forward, and it even became street food.

Now, there's something that more people don't know or even

picture about pasta was before it was also very elegant, it was messy.

In Naples, pasta, as you mentioned, was street food, and it was

bought hot but it was eaten right there, and often with their hands.

So apparently, the fork became something or something like a tool that would look,

I guess, like a fork in the early days, that made it a little easier to twirl,

and people gathered to watch.

It was like the gladiator stuff,

You went to go watch people eat pasta?

know.

But you know what it also brought to mind to me is that ear- in the early

days, food in many ways was performance art, I mean, think about being in

Japan as I was and having to get to used to the idea of slurping my noodles.

That seemed rude, you know, to do stuff at the dinner table like that, and yet

slurping is a cultural thing in Japan, as was apparently at one time spaghetti as

street food, although that's a stretch.

like, put a glob of it in your hand, and it's, like, dripping all kinds of stuff.

But I guess that's okay.

Maybe either lick it off each other as a romantic

don't know.

That's a little too... All right.

So, so speaking of romance, I'm gonna share a quick story because

I was talking to somebody the other day, and they were... We were

talking about date foods, right?

Because you go on a date, and you're gonna eat at some point.

And she went out to a restaurant with this fellow who invited her out, asked

her what restaurant she wanted to go to, and he made a reservation there,

which she thought was very sweet because he put some time into it.

Which I agree.

Well, apparently, talking about eating with your hands he kept pushing the food

on his fork with his fingers, and she didn't like that, and she says she's

never going back for a second date.

So

Yeah, They do a

Ferdinand in her date that we just

lot of wild things in Naples.

right?

But before pasta became refined, it was public, sort of

physical, and performance art.

And the other side of that, whether it's slurping noodles or it's doing that,

is there is something kind of awesomely authentic about it, too, It's like

an entire act of your physical being.

So, yeah, it's kinda

fun

there's joy in eating pasta, I have to say,

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

it's not the kind of food that you just eat without thinking.

It's comfort food and brings back all sorts of ideas and stories, and we've

got a few of those along the way too.

But now let's talk about tomatoes, because I think the, the tomato and

the pasta is something we always think about, but not always the case

because there's also sweet pasta.

But what's surprising about it is that, of course, we know that most

tomatoes were considered poisonous.

know.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

But, Tomatoes are not originally Italian.

They actually come from Mexico and part of South America, and then

arrived in Europe after the Columbian exchange, which i- i- who knows?

I mean, how did they... I'm not even sure imagining somebody

deciding just to chomp into a tomato that they thought was poisonous.

I wouldn't chomp into

have had a

bad experience from a rotten tomato or something, you know?

'Cause they are just delicious.

I do know people that can pick up a tomato and eat it like an apple.

if it's good, I can do that, but it's gotta be, like, right

off the... It's gotta be warm and s- sunny and right off the vine.

I am impressed.

people didn't trust them, you know?

They were grown as decoration.

And this is another thing that seems so Italian, and yet I think,

the tomatoes went that direction.

I mean, not that they didn't grow them in Italy, but, again, they

had that stigma attached to them.

And then, here we have tomatoes meet pasta.

And gosh, we wouldn't know what to do without our lasagna and spaghetti

and all of that kind of stuff.

Now, Bernie and I like white pizza, so you know, that's another variation.

But it's so cool.

pasta with butter and a, a good salt and pepper garlic

just alone is really good.

S- speaking of tomatoes, I have a question for you.

You may not be able to answer this.

Do you know if they had tomato worms way back when?

No, my uh, my telepathic abilities didn't allow

me to float backwards in time and find out, so tell me more.

Well, you know what a tomato worm is, those big

disgusting gr- oh, you don't?

Oh, all right.

So let me ex- if you've never grown tomatoes, you

are in for an experience because these are, they're probably about as

thick as your thumb, if not thicker.

they're long.

They're probably about four inches long when you see them, when they have

a, oh, typically have a horn on the top of their little head there, and

they're fat and they're green, and they will devour your tomato plants

overnight, If you watch them, you find them.

So we were growing tomatoes in the backyard in a raised garden last,

summer, and Bob says, "We've got rabbits." And I said, "We don't

have rabbits." He says, "No, we've got rabbits." ' Cause the tomato

plants would be gone, like, literally overnight, like whole stalks of them.

And so the next day I said, "You gotta come out here and see this."

They camouflage themselves 'cause they're the exact same color and they

look, they look like a big stalk.

And I said, "Look at that. You can see it. It's just e- give it five

minutes and it's gonna eat your tomato plant right in front of you."

And sure

enough, it was a tomato.

it sucks the thing down like you wouldn't believe it.

It's magic,

but disgusting.

So the only way to get rid of them is to pick them off, and they turn into

wonderful butterflies, but ugh, no.

So disgusting.

But Speaking of growing tomatoes, did you ever hear about the PBS

joke, the April Fools' joke?

me.

Okay, so this is a pasta joke.

The BBC pulled off their first ever April Fools', Fools' hoax about pasta in

1957, where they aired a fake documentary showing women harvesting pasta,

spaghetti, off the trees in Switzerland.

And then they aired it in, of course, BBC, British,

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

and they believed

That's a little scary, isn't it?

Our, our bright British friends.

Excuse us.

Let's move on to macaroni 'cause macaroni doesn't grow on trees.

Well, yeah macaroni.

But this does surprise me a little bit, not as much as that joke.

But anyway you know, b- from food to fashion insult.

I mean, wow.

In 18th century England, macaroni didn't just mean pasta.

This was fascinating.

It meant fashion.

Fashion.

So Macaroni was a man who traveled to Italy and picked up elaborate

tastes and came back a wildly dressed, flamboyant character, I'll call him.

So they thought that this was just a little too much over the

top, and it was an insult that you were Mr. Macaroni, I guess

I wonder how that even began.

That's so fascinating, I guess, because I don't know things, how things begin.

Uh, so it, even carried over into the song we all know, Yankee

Doodle, when they sang, "Stuck a feather in his cap and called it

macaroni."

Hey, you were mocking someone.

I never knew that.

I never knew that.

But remember we talked about Thomas Jefferson in a previous

episode, and, you know, I would've liked to have met old Thomas Jefferson.

I didn't think he was married, but I just was watching well, re-watching

the American Revolution, and apparently he was married, and his wife died

fairly early on, which is always sad.

But Thomas Jefferson, our dear foodie fellow, was largely credited

for popularizing pasta here in the States because he brought back

the first macaroni maker machine,

the original gadget, and He brought it back from France in 1789,

and then he tried to perfect it.

He was always doing interesting things and making

He was.

He was a curious man.

So he designed his own macaroni-making machine and

frequently served pasta to his guests, cementing his place in early American

high society as, yes, Mr. Pasta.

Yeah, he he was fascinating and as was Ben Franklin,

who did interesting things as well.

I mean, those guys were really on things.

I mean, just creating new things.

So yeah, pasta went from food to fashion statement to cultural

commentary, and how cool that was.

That's quite a journey for just a bunch of flour and water and an

occasional egg or two, as we said before.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But there's something also I wanna, I always wanna cover this 'cause I think

our listeners would love to know it.

At least I figure if I do, then there's some people out there

who do, and it's about nutrition.

We're all nutrition crazed right now and looking at how food, what it's made

out of what our forefathers and mothers ate, and all of that kind of stuff.

But here's something how pasta became a whole thing.

Because it's incomplete nutritionally by itself.

if you have eggs in it, then, you know, that's protein.

You know, it gives energy, but not everything your body needs,

thus, you're running a marathon.

People would famously eat pasta before you know, carb loading.

And yet people figured something out.

They didn't eat it by itself, they paired it.

With beans and cheese and vegetables.

You know, one of my favorite... I, I have a personal passion, so of course

I like pasta, but I have been on this constant hunt for I don't know how

many years for the best bolognese.

So every time I see a bolognese on a Or bolognese, I guess, if

you prefer to call it that way, on a menu, I'm drawn to order

you

still hunting for the best.

I'm

still

hunting for the best.

I had a friend and we went on a quest to find the best

fried banana peppers, and that ended when he was in a treadmill accident.

He

couldn't go anymore.

Oh, no.

Well, he recovered, but anyway, so that ended that quest,

and we never found the best.

But, those are kind of fun to do, Let's find the best fill in the blank.

But at the, at the restaurant, one of our most popular dishes

is cacio e pepe, and it's noodles with I think they are egg noodles.

I think so.

And they have Parmesan on them.

So you have just this very plain dish, and people will usually pair it with

some kind of a green vegetable or something on the side, which we do have.

But people just love it, and it's just a plain and ordinary pasta with

pepper and, just all the good stuff.

I'm not sure it's an egg noodle because if it's got sauce and

it needs to stick to it, I learned that the egg noodles don't hold the pasta

sauce as well as the non-egg noodles.

So that's

I'll have to check that out.

It's good.

That's all I know.

It's one of our top sellers, yeah.

so you add a small amount of meat, like with a ragu or a bolognese,

as I said before, which is my, thing.

And, and bolognese, so p- I've read recipes where it's got the pork and the

beef, but I'm kind of a, beefy person, so,

Yeah, I'm, I tend to be a beefy person too.

I ate so much at lunch today, I feel real beefy or cheesy or something.

But I keep looking for the nutrition value in Velveeta.

You know those little Velveeta.

Or maybe you don't even notice, I have a 10-year-old that loves them,

and when he comes in from school, I have to make him a Velveeta.

I mean, it's so instant, which means, I don't know, I

think ultra-processed, right?

And Velveeta is very ultra-processed.

But anyway, I guess they survive.

We did.

And you know, just kids love mac and cheese.

mean, just

Yeah, I've

never been a mac and cheese fan.

Bob's a big fan of it, so it's just, not my thing.

But adding meat, I wanna give a, a little shout-out quickly to somebody

who I met recently, a gentleman by the name of John Wood, and he's actually

up in, I think it's Missouri, and runs a company called Wellness Meats,

and they're all grass-fed meat.

So if you want healthy pasta with good meat, consider grass-fed meats, he's

just sent me a whole bunch of stuff, so I'm gonna go try them because that's...

We have to do a show on, on grass-fed meat because I think it's rather...

The whole subject is interesting on

know, now typically we people don't like our grass-fed steaks.

They're not as fatty.

They don't have that marbled fat.

Now, that's just the consumer.

They go out to eat, and they want a good, juicy steak.

So I don't know.

I've just heard that for years.

We'll

I'm gonna have to find out about, that.

I'll call John

and find out and But he explained to me, and I know we're getting off of the

pasta thing a little bit here, but he explained when... 'Cause this is a co-op

type of thing, like Ocean Spray is a

co-op, and said that they looked at grass-fed beef and meats in Florida,

and they weren't as good as they were in other areas because of the poor

nutrition of the, the soil and the, the grass that grows here in, Florida.

It's just, notoriously bad nutritional grass, so a lot

of people have to supplement.

Interesting.

Well,

But the

taste of...

Nancy.

Yeah, right?

No, I s- cows are, eating the grass and they could be smoking the

grass, but that's... Not for me.

Anyway, speaking of grass and beef and cows and pasta, we're gonna take a

quick break and be right back, 'cause we've got lots more to talk about.

Pasta.

. So Sylvia, you told me just a funny story about

a fellow that you knew, and I, I, I think it's something we have to share

because we were talking about cows and grass and pasta, and I guess you can

add grass clippings into pasta as well.

But tell me the story about the gentleman that you

had a friend who was blind, and he took

his service dog everywhere.

He's made speeches all over the country.

And when he stepped onto the tarmac, he would always look up at his handlers

and say, "Can you get me some grass?"

Yeah, yeah.

the dog to relieve himself.

But they would be like, "Sir, I, you know, what do you mean?"

So he had great fun with that.

He would tell the story at every speech.

Get him a little grass.

Father Sisco would probably say something like that.

Hey speaking of Father Cisco, I have to

interject this little comment.

We did a cooking class with him once.

he was, conducting a some kind of camp or something for kids, a cooking camp.

And this was a chef ago.

Not this chef, but another one that I, we took to this, to a small town

near here where the camp was, and we disguised vegetables in the lasagna.

'Cause the kids wouldn't eat vegetables by themselves, right?

So we put the, all of the veggies in the pasta.

Mm. Well, and Father Sisco is known for his own

mama's pasta sauce that he sells,

He is.

He is.

He goes all over.

Delta Airlines flies him everywhere to talk about

We'll have to put that in the show notes as well.

But anyway, so let's settle the big comment or let's settle the debate on is

it fresh or dried pasta that's better?

What do you think?

Well, the answer is fresh isn't better, it's just different.

It's just different.

Fresh pasta is soft and delicate, and best with lighter sauces.

I guess not meat, right?

No meat So dried pasta is firmer and perfect for holding up.

Now, I don't know mechan- scientifically what that difference is.

You know, I don't know.

I can't figure that out.

But hold up to stronger sauces, which is probably meat

sauces and that sort of thing.

I know if you get manicotti- Which we did the other night.

We went out for our anniversary to a local Italian place.

We also were surveilling, trying to figure out how they do their stuff, you know?

You always gotta surveil, I was a spy.

It was interesting.

But we always get manicotti there, and it's without meat sauce, but

you can get it with meat sauce, which I think is kinda interesting.

It's probably some sort of violation of the pasta laws for

manicotti, mean, seriously.

But it was good, I will have to say.

Oh, right, so you're gonna have to, reverse

engineer that recipe maybe, huh?

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kinda got the guy, though, my waiter.

I was trying to find a fault with this place, right?

Because I own a restaurant.

Well, I had told OpenTable and the wait- the hostess.

When I walked in she said, "Now, it's your anniversary, right?"

And I said, "Yeah." And so, Well, good." So we sit down, and Tom...

Th- and this is a big restaurant, and very popular.

It had become a thing.

Our friend Jen Hardy loves to use that phrase,

a thing.

Well, this restaurant's a thing.

I mean, it's just a thing, you know?

And you can make mistakes when you become a thing, but not when

you're starting a restaurant.

You can't make mistakes.

But we're sitting there, and at the end he just kinda throws the bill down.

It had gotten busy.

It was real busy, 'cause there's graduations going on up here.

And so it was clear he was gonna forget the anniversary.

So as Tom was walking away I said, " it's our anniversary." " Oh." And

so he ran back, and in a styrofoam thing he just kinda put the cake down.

It was a little tiny piece of red velvet cake, and just walked away.

Oh, mistake.

Yeah.

And so I talked to the hostess on the way out and I

said, "Next time you might wanna tell your waitstaff when there's an

anniversary or a birthday or something," 'cause it means a lot to people.

They chose a place based on that, right?

Anyway, a little bit of restaurant intel, okay?

For those who care.

I totally agree.

Totally agree.

But speaking of pasta,

Well, we got kinda off

You did the manicotti thing, so I think that's, that's very interesting,

a little surveillance or I call them super

sleuth spy work, but I get it.

But there are hundreds ... I think there's ... I read somewhere there's,

like, 300 different shapes of pasta.

Oh, it's mind-boggling when you're looking at the shelves

and you're like, "Oh, Oh, I tell you what I do like, though.

I like the kind of pasta strips that you buy, and you can buy all kinds of them.

And they even have, like, I don't, what, what are some, like, spinach ones?

green ones that are, like, vegetable-based.

But I like the ones that you don't have to boil the pasta strips.

Before you do.

Well, you know the big flat pasta that you put in a l- a layer with the lasagna?

Oh, before you cook it.

Before

Yeah.

before it's cooked.

I got it.

And you put it in, and you don't... You just add extra water.

It used to be you had to boil all the noodles lay

in pa- in lasagna.

Never.

I know

you nuts.

Yeah, my story.

I forgot.

See, I'm taking care of myself here, 'cause I can't apparently

keep up with lasagna making and the, all the ingredients, and I

ended up making pasta or lasagna without having put in the noodles.

My mom always made it without cooking the noodles

first, so that's how I do it.

And the last time I made lasagna was for a holiday party here with some

friends, and you had to bring, a dish, so I brought pas- the, the lasagna.

Lots of red wine in the sauce, so there was lots of juicy

That's what you told me.

That was the key.

And people said, Is there wine in this?"

I said, "You think?"

And lots of that.

What kind of wine?

Oh, it... No, it's just, it's usually a, a Cabernet, like a, a really

deep,

rich red wine that will, will go with it.

Nothing too light and delicate, but it's, something that the meat will hold up

with, and all the tomatoes and stuff, so.

And lots of cheese.

But you know what?

there's a pasta, I don't know what they call it.

They're like the little ears.

There's a particular name for it.

They're, they call them elephant ears or something.

I don't... I'm a f- I'm a snob.

I don't like those little things, or the curly ones.

You know, it's gotta be tagliatelle or regular angel hair spaghetti

or something like that.

I just, I don't

like it.

Yeah.

a snob.

a I'm a noodle

Heaven sakes.

Yep, but all of them have a purpose at least if you wanna follow the purposes.

The only thing I use is lasagna.

That's about the limit of what I do.

But long strands are for smooth sauces, I guess for spaghetti, And

then tubes, those little tubes, tiny tubes, are for holding sauce inside.

Duh, I mean, that makes sense, right?

Ridges are for gritting gripping.

I'm not quite sure what you... I, I guess it grips the sauce.

I

I don't know.

in the ridges, so

I would think small shapes for soups.

That makes sense, 'cause you might get a cup of soup, and you need

just tiny little pastas f- to be swimming around in there, right?

and there's a fairly new pasta shape that is, like, a long one

with a hole in it, almost like a straw,

and that was created by the guy, I can't think of his name.

I'll have to dig it out.

But he created the... He's got a podcast called Sporkful

and he created this design.

So I, you know, I

What for?

Yeah,

it's...

he uses it for?

Well, it's supposed to, I guess, suck in, suck

in... I'll say suck in.

Suck in the sauce, you know, like a

straw.

get that, yeah.

But yeah, I'm... It's too chewy for me.

I, I'm not

a, no.

I'm just still not a, a, fan.

I like traditional flat tagliatelle, thick...

think I would too.

know, wide.

The wide,

flat kinda noodle.

Or egg noodles are really good too, but

that's, that's for another s-

pas- pasta story, I

I do have a family pasta story.

So we are not Italian, I will, warn you a, well up front.

In fact, my mom's side of the family is very English, so they believe that the

spaghetti was being picked off the trees.

Mm-hmm.

But growing up, my mom would always use this Italian, I guess,

seasoning called Spatini Now, Spatini is made by the Canadian company Lawry's,

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

You know, it makes all

the spices and what- yep, all sorts of stuff.

Anyway, so Spatini was always this little pack, like you would buy packets of the

powdered, powdered stuff for making tacos and chili and things like that.

So it was always that, right?

And one day, my, my mom had stopped cooking a long time ago and, and she

had, I'd say moderate to mid-level dementia, and I was visiting my aunt

on the other side of the state and she said, " Do you still make spaghetti the

way, like meat sauce spaghetti, like the way your, your mom mades, makes it?"

And I said, "Like how?" She says, "Well, she used Spatini"

I said, "Well, of course.

What, what else would you use?" And she laughed.

But I can't leave well enough alone.

So you put that in, and I have to doctor it with, with all sorts of stuff.

I w- I would like the red wine, which mom didn't do, but I did the red wine.

Lots of garlic, and I'll add some other things to it

depending upon how I, how I feel.

But yeah, and everybody loves it.

So but

you can't get

delicious.

You can't get it in the store.

Nope.

Other... We have to actually do a show on things that you can't get anymore,

which I think would be interesting.

But you can get it online, and the only way you can buy it

is not in the small packets.

I have to buy it by, like, the pound and a half

well, you have to

So

then, yeah.

I buy two bags at a time, and it's packed up, being

put in the freezer in a plastic bag, and the other one is always

You know, you do a lot of dinner parties, but I don't because

I go to the restaurant, and that's where we pal around with people and stuff.

And it's just interesting.

I wanna start a grocery store chain called Empty Nesters.

I,

it doesn't even matter that they would have to charge more

for tiny packets of brown sugar

One-offs,

right?

if, ' cause I make homemade chocolate chip cookies.

I do that because I don't want my grandkids to eat all

that junk that comes in the

pre-processed kinda ultra-processed stuff.

And then they don't like it with nuts.

I do, and my husband does, and that's kind of our evening snack.

So I make 'em homemade,

and you have to buy...

No, not on chocolate chip.

No.

But you have to buy an entire giant brown sugar thing, and then I try to

freeze packets of it, but it's still not as good as if they had sealed packets.

So Empty Nesters Inc.,

Well, you know what I found very interesting down, here, which I

didn't see up north, is that they're selling pasta in smaller boxes now.

You can buy them

in smaller

boxes.

that's good, too.

Right, where they're... The, instead of the long skinny noodles,

they're cut in half so it's like half size

Yeah.

And, and I'll tell you another thing.

restaurants.

I'm really into small plates.

I'll even pay more to not bring home leftovers every night and

have to freeze everything, 'cause my freezer just starts filling up.

So, I'm fine with that 'cause I just have this thing about not wasting food and

leaving it on the restaurant f- trash bin.

But it's just interesting.

you just have different tastes in different eras in our

lives and... Anyway,

a main course

Yeah, we do that, too.

Anyway, I know restaurants have to survive, i.e., I know that very well.

But, you know, it's just, I wish we could find innovative ways to kind of

up the tastes and downsize the portions,

but.

that's an American thing.

I think bigger is better, but not always the case.

a little bit of, little bit of love and a little bit of pasta goes a

long way than of everything that

Or you can go to, what's one of those big steak

houses, those kinda mid-level,

um... A Texas Roadhouse.

Right.

Those people need to have a cattle farm next door to them.

I mean, the parking lots are filled all the time.

But that's a whole 'nother topic.

We're getting off of our... And here we go.

Okay.

This is some stuff.

Okay.

So here we go.

pasta's lasted because it adapts.

It doesn't insist on being everything, and in some ways it kind of is.

You can pair it with everything.

You can put stuff in it, just like at Father Cisco.

You can fool your kids.

So, it's kind of a cool dish that's evolved over these years

you've made pasta, you've made like pasta or

spaghetti yourself at home, right?

That's my thing

Oh, so you've never made like

spaghetti with...

No.

Okay.

Nancy, how long have you known me?

Well, long enough to at least try to guess?

Do you know the college kid... Yeah, well, t- do you know the trick

that, well, at least I was taught in college, how you just, how you find

out whether your spaghetti noodles are done when they're boiling?

I would love to know.

It's like rice, how do you ever know?

Well, rice is a little different.

You take out a strand.

This is... Now, this is a roommate told me this when we were rooming in college,

and you throw it against the wall.

Yay.

That

could be fun.

if it sticks, it's done.

Of course, you better make sure there's no sauce on it, so, 'cause it'll slide down.

But

Well,

you gotta clean the wall or the landlord says something.

Yeah, I love it.

I love it.

That probably goes on a lot.

But speaking of pasta, right?

Noodle fights.

One more thing, because I have to laugh at this.

When Bob and I first got married we were both commuting into the city.

And I was working, he was working.

We get home and he expects me to make dinner.

I was like, "Mm, okay, let's share this one, bud."

But not a very good wife.

Well, I was not a trad wife ever,

let me put it that way.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

not me.

So I would just put on a pot of water, boil the noodles, and we'd put whatever

sauce we had on it, butter, tomato sauce, whatever we had, whatever it was.

It's like pasta in a bowl, right?

One day he says, "You know, this is good, but do you think you can

make something else besides pasta?"

And we were, like, packing it on, by the way, too.

The clothes were getting a little hard to zipper.

And I said, "Absolutely, I'm happy to do so. What would you like to make?"

love that.

Yeah.

And from that point on, we shared.

So

Yeah.

Oh, that is

great.

That's a great story.

Or you could be like Bernie and I. Of course, this wasn't when we were

commuting anywhere for big jobs, it was when graduate school and law school.

We would pool our money and, and look through the jars and see if we could

find any coins, and sell our bottles.

At the time, you could sell bottles and get money,

I was gonna say you're gonna sell

that,

but I'm

that...

Oh, yeah.

Well, if anybody, if we had any buyers, we probably were that

desperate from time to time.

But we would eat at Long John Silver's, which is

a fish place.

I

It was a big deal

ever, so

It was a big deal.

yeah.

ha, all right.

So when you look at pasta, there you got flour, you got water, and

then we have, as so many things, we've built something around it and

paired it and balanced it, shared it.

but, I mean,

could

of pasta.

Speesy spicy pasta, pista masta, pasta masta.

It is a pasta story that certainly has many stories in every family.

In fact, my sister used to call it pasghetti, and to this

day, every time... Yeah, right?

Pasghetti s- try and pronounce-- get a three-year-old or a

five-year-old to pronounce spaghetti.

But perhaps that's food pronunciations for another show of five-year-olds.

Pasta, it has got history, it's got stories, and it's a lot older than you

might think, or any of us, thankfully.

But it brings back family together in so many ways, because it's comfort food.

And we're kind of a comfort show, we hope.

Because every meal has a story, and every story is a feast.

please remember to share, like, and tell us your stories.

Pasta ones, of course, because we wanna know what you're

cooking up in your household.

Something that might be different in that water pot.

So we'll see you soon, and we'll hear you soon.

Take care, and mangia.

Bye-bye.

Bye.