Pasta Dinner Quotes

We ordered food a few hours ago and worked through dinner. I had pasta with chicken, while Kate preferred a turkey club with fries on the side. Much as I hate to admit it, I’m impressed. Obviously, she doesn’t subscribe to the “I can only eat salads in front of the opposite sex” rule of thumb a lot of chicks swear by. Who gave women that idea? Like a guy’s going to say to his friend, “Dude, she was one fugly chick, but once I saw her chomping that romaine, I just had to nail her.

Family isn't blood, necessarily; it's a thousand little choices we make every day. We choose to trust each other and forgive each other and go to the pasta place for dinner even though some of us would rather eat sushi.

Kitchen solace—the feeling that a delicious meal is simmering on the kitchen stove, misting up the windows, and that at any moment your lover will sit down to dinner with you and, between mouthfuls, gaze happily into your eyes. (Also known as living.)” RECIPES THE CUISINE of Provence is as diverse as its scenery: fish by the coast, vegetables in the countryside, and in the mountains lamb and a variety of staple dishes containing pulses. One region’s cooking is influenced by olive oil, another’s is based on wine, and pasta dishes are common along the Italian border. East kisses West in Marseilles with hints of mint, saffron and cumin, and the Vaucluse is a paradise for truffle and confectionery lovers. Yet

I'm unsure why one trifling incident this afternoon has moved me to write to you. But since we've been separated, I may most miss coming home to deliver the narrative curiosities of my day, the way a cat might lay mice at your feet: the small, humble offerings that couples proffer after foraging in separate backyards. Were you still installed in my kitchen, slathering crunchy peanut butter on Branola though it was almost time for dinner, I'd no sooner have put down the bags, one leaking a clear vicious drool, than this little story would come tumbling out, even before I chided that we're having pasta tonight so would you please not eat that whole sandwich.

Even before i had children, I knew that being a parent was going to be challenging as well as rewarding. But I didn't really know. I didn't know how exhausted it was possible to become, or how clueless it was possible to feel, or how, each time I reached the end of my rope, I would somehow have to find more rope. I didn't understand that sometimes when your kids scream so loudly that the neighbors are ready to call the Department of Child Services, it's because you've served the wrong shape of pasta for dinner. I didn't realize that those deep-breathing exercises mothers are taught in natural-childbirth class dont really start to pay off until long after the child is out. I couldn't have predicted how relieved I'd be to learn that other peoples children struggle with the same issues, and act in some of the same ways, mine do. (Even more liberating is the recognition that other parents, too, have dark moments when they catch themselves not liking their own child, or wondering whether it's all worth it, or entertaining various other unspeakable thoughts). The bottom line is that raising kids is not for whimps.

As we hoped, our kids began to learn Italian. One day Isaac sat down to dinner, looked at the plate of pasta we’d prepared, made a face, and said, “Che schifo!” a vulgar expression meaning “Gross!” We were so proud.

Feeling inspired, I grabbed one of Jay’s cookbooks from the kitchen shelf and flicked through until I found a recipe for something I recognised. Lasagna. That was just pasta, and pasta was easy, right? Trying not to be put off by the list of ingredients longer than my small intestine, I scanned the instructions. Chop onions… I could do that. Brown mince…trickier but manageable. Probably. Make a roux in the usual way… I sighed, shut the book with a snap and went off to make dinner in my usual way: pierce film; bung in microwave; wait for bell.

Not in the mood for pasta?” He narrowed those bold blue eyes to give her a critical study. “You must’ve hit your head harder than we thought.” “I was going to do it—get dinner, I mean. One of the fancy things you like, because—Hell.” She gave up, hurried to him to wrap her arms around him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I was so pissed off at what happened, at myself, I didn’t think.” He stroked a hand down her hair first, then gave the choppy ends a quick tug. “I’m not angry with you.” “I know. You could be, but you’re not. So I have to be even sorrier.” “Your logic is fascinating, and elusive.” “I can’t pay you back with sex or salt-crusted sea bass or whatever because you’re too busy taking care of me. So now I’ve got this black mark in my column against the bright shiny star in yours, and—” He tipped her head up. “Are we keeping score?” “No. Maybe. Shit.” “How am I doing?” “Undisputed champ.” “Good. I like to win.” He brushed her bangs back to study the injury himself. “You’ll do. Let’s eat.

I want to strangle my husband and slam the door as I leave. I want to leave a box of pasta on the counter with a note that says, “cook your own dinner and suck your own dick.

Kate Moss famously said that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” So I thought I’d put together a little list of things she’s obviously never tried before that taste so much better than buying into an oppressive body ideal could ever feel: Pasta, pizza, mangoes, avocados, doughnuts, peanut butter, sushi, bacon, chocolate cake, lemon cake, any cake really, blueberries, garlic bread, smoked salmon, poached eggs, apples, roast dinners, cookie dough, sweet potatoes, whipped cream, freshly squeezed orange juice, watermelon, gelato, paella, oh and cheese. You’re welcome, Kate!

I’m not dressed for the piano bar, but I won’t go upstairs to get clothes. He is expecting me to stay and to apologize and cook dinner and tiptoe around his mood, but instead I’m gonna go buy a new dress and shoes for tonight, then get to the restaurant by six and treat myself to a long, slow dinner with appetizers, pasta, and dessert. And wine. Then I’ll play vintage jazz in front of a nice group of folks who actually appreciate me. That’s what I’ll do instead.

America, it has been observed, is not really a melting pot. It is actually a huge potluck dinner, in which platters of roasted chicken beckon beside casseroles of pasta, mounds of tortillas, stew pots of gumbo, and skillets filled with pilafs of every imaginable color.

Being perceived as excessively domestic can get you socially ostracized. When I made hand-rolled pasta for a dinner, I learned the hard way that some guests will find this annoying, as they do not feel comfortable eating a meal that they regard as the product of too much trouble. When my son was in nursery school, I made the mistake of spending a few hours sewing for him a Halloween astronaut costume of metallic cloth, earning the disgust, suspicion, and hard stares of many a fellow parent who had bought a Batman or Esmeralda costume. When

Seasonality (eating the best at its peak) and seasoning (the art of choosing and combining flavors to complement food) are vital for fighting off the food lover’s worst enemy: not calories, but boredom. Eat the same thing in the same way time and again, and you’ll need more just to achieve the same pleasure. (Think of it as “taste tolerance.”) Have just one taste experience as your dinner (the big bowl of pasta, a big piece of meat), and you are bound to eat too much, as you seek satisfaction from volume instead of the interplay of flavor and texture that comes from a well thought out meal.

Culinary history is rife with controversy and debate. Ketchup on steak and pineapple on pizza are quaint discussions compared to outright fights over adding salt to the water when boiling pasta or the balance of peanut butter and jam in a sandwich. Foodies now wonder whether a Pop-Tart can be considered a ravioli.

Growing up in an Italian home I wasn't often hungry. Perhaps Italians know that hunger feels too much like sadness. They know that to love someone, to make them happy, means ensuring they are fed. Alex used to groan about how much food got eaten at our family dinners. He got heartburn from the thick, fatty salami and soft, warm polpette. He didn't understand our fawning over Nonna's secret pasta al forno recipe, stuffed with meatballs, cheese, pasta, and eggs. He couldn't believe we ate octopus and rabbit and, sometimes, mainly the older family members, pigs' feet. We fed him full of artichokes, macaroni, caponata made with capsicums and cauliflower and tomatoes while the cousins talked of breakfasts in Sicily- chocolate granita or gelato stuffed into brioche rolls.

I'll make dinner." That means dried pasta again, I suppose, cooked on Armande's wood-stove. There's a jar of it in the pantry, though I dare not think how old it is. Anouk and Rosette love pasta above almost everything else; with a little dash of oil and some basil from the garden, they will both be happy. There are peaches, too; and brandied cherries and plums from Narcisse, and a flan aux pruneaux from his wife, and some galette and cheese from Luc.

I’m not dressed for the piano bar, but I won’t go upstairs to get clothes. He is expecting me to stay and to apologize and cook dinner and tiptoe around his mood, but instead I’m gonna go buy a new dress and shoes for tonight, then get to the restaurant by six and treat myself to a long, slow dinner with appetizers, pasta, and dessert. And wine. Then I’ll play vintage jazz in front of a nice group of folks who actually appreciate me. That’s what I’ll do instead. Fuck him.

Two nights later, she was out with some work friends at a blue-plate hipster joint near the L train when she spotted Doug. He had a heavy beard and wore overalls. She liked his eyes, the way they crinkled when he smiled. When he came up to the bar for another pitcher, she struck up a conversation. He told her he was a writer who avoided writing by hosting elaborate dinner parties. His apartment was full of obscure food prep machinery, vintage pasta rollers and a three-hundred-pound cappuccino machine he’d rebuilt screw by screw.

I said, "I want to wear something funny and cool. Marjorie, could I wear your sparkly baseball hat?" The three of us looked at Marjorie. Now I remember thinking that her answer could change everything back to the way it was; Dad could find a job and stop praying all the time and Mom could be happy and call Marjorie shellfish again and show us funny videos she found on YouTube, and we all could eat more than just spaghetti at dinner and, most important, Marjorie could be normal again. Everything would be okay if Marjorie would only say yes to me wearing the sparkly sequined baseball hat, the one she'd made in art class a few years ago. The longer we watched Marjorie and waited for her response, the more the temperature in the room dropped and I knew that nothing would ever be the same again. She stopped twisting her spaghetti around her fingers. She opened her mouth, and vomit slowly oozed out onto her spaghetti plate. Dad: "Jesus!" Mom: "Honey, are you okay?" She jumped out of her seat and went over to Marjorie, stood behind her, and held her hair up. Marjorie didn't react to either parent, and she didn't make any sounds. She wasn't retching or convulsing involuntarily like one normally does when throwing up. It just poured out of her as though her mouth was an opened faucet. The vomit was as green as spring grass, and the masticated pasta looked weirdly dry, with a consistency of mashed-up dog food. She watched Dad the whole time as the vomit filled her plate, some of it slopping over the edges and onto the table. When she finished she wiped her mouth on her sleeve. "No, Merry. You can't wear my hat." She didn't sound like herself. Her voice was lower, adult, and growly. "You might get something on it. I don't want you to mess it up." She laughed. Dad: "Marjorie..." Marjorie coughed and vomited more onto her too-full plate. "You can't wear the hat because you're going to die someday." She found a new voice, this one treacly baby-talk. "I don't want dead things wearing my very special hat.

While Venice cowered under the watchful eyes of soldiers, the kitchen staff kept busy preparing foreign dishes for the inquisitive doge's steady stream of scholarly guests. We served professors from some of the oldest universities (pork and buttered dumplings for one from Heidelberg, and pasta with a creamy meat sauce for another from Bologna), a renowned herbalist from France (rich cassoulet), a noted librarian from Sicily (cutlets stuffed with anchovies and olives), a dusky sorcerer from Egypt (marinated kebabs), a Florentine confidant of the late Savonarola (grilled fish with spinach), an alchemist from England (an overdone roast joint), and monk-copyists from all the major monasteries (boiled chicken and rice).

If you want waiters in tuxedos with white linen cloths over their arms, menus with unpronounceable words all over them, and high-priced wines served in silver ice buckets when you go out for Italian food, our little restaurant is not the place to come. But if you mostly want good, solid, home-cooked pasta with tasty sauces made with real vegetables and spices by a real Italian Mama and will trade white linen for red-and-white checked plastic tablecloths, you'll like our place just fine. If you're okay with a choice of just two wines, red or white, we'll give you as much of it as you want, from our famous bottomless wine bottle — free with your dinner. This restaurant owner took competitive disadvantages and turned them into a good, solid, “fun” selling story.

NEAR THE BASILICA OF ST. ANTHONY Antica Trattoria dei Paccagnella, the most serious restaurant near the basilica, serves up nicely presented, seasonal local dishes with modern flair and an impressive attention to ingredients. The place has friendly service, modern art on the walls, and no pretense. It’s thoughtfully run by two brothers, Raffaele and Cesare, who happily explain why they are so excited about local hens (€9-12 pastas, €14-18 secondi, Mon 19:00-22:00, Tue-Sat 12:00-14:00 & 19:00-22:00, closed Sun, Via del Santo 113, tel. 049-875-0549). Pizzeria Pago Pago dishes up wood-fired Neapolitan pizzas (a local favorite) and daily specials depending on what’s in season. Get there early for dinner or wait (€5-8 pizzas, €9 salads, Wed-Mon 12:00-14:00 & 19:00-24:00, closed Tue; 2 blocks from Basilica

Buffalo Chicken Mac & Cheese This easy meal combines the flavors of buffalo wings and mac and cheese.  To cut down on prep/cooking time, use a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken! 1 Cup milk 1 (12 oz) can evaporated milk ¼ Tsp garlic powder ½ Cup buffalo hot sauce (Frank’s Red Hot is a good bet) 3 Cups shredded cheese (just cheddar or a mix if you’d like) 1 lb pre-cooked chicken, shredded ½ lb uncooked pasta (such as elbow macaroni) Chopped onion/celery/carrots, crumbled blue cheese (optional) Mix milk, evaporated milk, garlic powder, and hot sauce in slow cooker until combined.  Add salt & pepper (to taste).  Stir in cheese, chicken, and uncooked pasta. Cook on low for approximately 1 hour, stir, then continue cooking an additional 30-60 minutes, or until pasta is tender. Garnish with chopped vegetables and/or blue cheese (if desired).  Enjoy!

Dinner starts with a ceviche of beef, the love child of northern Italy's raw beef culture and the couple's interest in assertive flavors from around the world. Depending on the day, you may find lemongrass, cilantro, and miso- perfect strangers across Italy- canoodling with cured anchovies and handmade pastas. "It's not fusion," says Francesca. "We don't ever think 'How can we work a bit of Asia into this plate?' If it makes sense on the fork, then we go for it." From there Francesca takes me through the entire menu: from the esoteric and unexpected- fried snails over a dashi-spiked potato puree, glazed pork belly with cavolo nero kimchi- to gentle riffs on the soul food you'd find in a traditional trattoria- fried artichokes dipped into an anise-spiked mayonnaise, tender pork sweetbreads with tiny candy-sweet asparagus and a slick of Mazzo's exceptional olive oil.

Then just when I thought I was going to really break down for a good cry, I remembered a large bag of pistachio nuts in the back of the pantry. I don't know what made me think of them. I had hidden them beneath several packages of dried pasta. Sam liked pistachio nuts. I bought them for a cake recipe I had seen in Gourmet. I stood up like a sleepwalker, my hands empty of sheets or shoes. I would take care of all this once the cake was in the oven. The recipe was from several months ago. I didn't remember which issue. I would find it. I would bake a cake. My father liked exotic things. On the rare occasions we went out to dinner together over the years, he always wanted us to go to some little Ethiopian restaurant down a back alley or he would say he had to have Mongolian food. He would like this cake. It was Iranian. There was a full tablespoon of cardamom sifted in with the flour, and I could imagine that it would make the cake taste nearly peppered, which would serve to balance out all the salt. I stood in the kitchen, reading the magazine while the sharp husks of the nuts bit into the pads of my fingers. I rolled the nut meat between my palms until the bright spring green of the pistachios shone in my hands, a fist full of emeralds. I would grind the nuts into powder without letting them turn to paste. I would butter the parchment paper and line the bottom of the pan. It was the steps, the clear and simple rules baking, that soothed me. My father would love this cake, and my mother would find this cake interesting, and Sam wouldn't be crazy about it but he'd be hungry and have a slice anyway. Maybe I could convince Camille it wasn't a cake at all. Maybe I could bring them all together, or at least that's what I dreamed about while I measured out the oil.

Bruce has always been the cook in the family, and when Jordan was a preschooler, the little boy showed up in the kitchen and asked to help prepare dinner. They had been partners ever since. At first, Jordan was given a butter knife, which he used to cut soft vegetables. He arranged food on plates. He tasted pasta to see if it was done, and sauces for saltiness. By the time he was ten, he was helping Bruce choose recipes. He received his own subscription to Bon Appétit for Hanukkah and pored over every copy, folding down the corner on recipes he wanted to try. Eddie became their taster, coming to the kitchen from the piano, or the book he was reading, to give the dish a thumbs-up. When Bruce pictured happiness, it was cooking in the kitchen beside Jordan while listening to Eddie play the piano in the next room. That scene repeated regularly and made Bruce thrum with joy. Every time, he thought, I will not take this for granted.

But without Emily, Greg would feel—paradoxically for such a social creature—alone. Before they met, most of Greg’s girlfriends were extroverts. He says he enjoyed those relationships, but never got to know his girlfriends well, because they were always “plotting how to be with groups of people.” He speaks of Emily with a kind of awe, as if she has access to a deeper state of being. He also describes her as “the anchor” around which his world revolves. Emily, for her part, treasures Greg’s ebullient nature; he makes her feel happy and alive. She has always been attracted to extroverts, who she says “do all the work of making conversation. For them, it’s not work at all.” The trouble is that for most of the five years they’ve been together, Greg and Emily have been having one version or another of the same fight. Greg, a music promoter with a large circle of friends, wants to host dinner parties every Friday—casual, animated get-togethers with heaping bowls of pasta and flowing bottles of wine. He’s been giving Friday-night dinners since he was a senior in college, and they’ve become a highlight of his week and a treasured piece of his identity. Emily has come to dread these weekly events. A hardworking staff attorney for an art museum and a very private person, the last thing she wants to do when she gets home from work is entertain. Her idea of a perfect start to the weekend is a quiet evening at the movies, just her and Greg. It seems an irreconcilable difference: Greg wants fifty-two dinner parties a year, Emily wants zero. Greg says that Emily should make more of an effort. He accuses her of being antisocial. “I am social,” she says. “I love you, I love my family, I love my close friends. I just don’t love dinner parties. People don’t really relate at those parties—they just socialize. You’re lucky because I devote all my energy to you. You spread yours around to everyone.” But Emily soon backs off, partly because she hates fighting, but also because she doubts herself. Maybe I am antisocial, she

The next day, Angelina was tending a fresh pot of red gravy on the stove. She was going to make Veal Parmigiana for dinner, to be accompanied by pasta, fresh bread, and salad. She left the sauce on low and went to put the finishing touches on the pie she had planned. Earlier, she had made 'a vol-au-vent'- the word means "windblown" in French- a pastry that was as light and feathery as a summer breeze, that Angelina had adapted to serve as a fluffy, delicately crispy pie crust. The crust had cooled and formed a burnished auburn crown around the rim of the pie plate. She took a bowl of custardy creme anglaise out of the refrigerator and began loading it into a pie-filling gadget that looked like a big plastic syringe. With it, she then injected copious amounts of the glossy creme into the interior of the pie without disturbing the perfect, golden-crusty dome. That done, she heated the chocolate and cream on the stove top to create a chocolate ganache, which she would use as icing on the pie, just to take it completely over the top.

Everywhere you turn you see signs of its place at the top of the Italian food chain: fresh-pasta shops vending every possible iteration of egg and flour; buzzing bars pairing Spritz and Lambrusco with generous spreads of free meat, cheese, and vegetable snacks; and, above all, osteria after osteria, cozy wine-soaked eating establishments from whose ancient kitchens emanates a moist fragrance of simmered pork and local grapes. Osteria al 15 is a beloved dinner den just inside the centro storico known for its crispy flatbreads puffed up in hot lard, and its classic beef-heavy ragù tossed with corkscrew pasta or spooned on top of béchamel and layered between sheets of lasagne. It's far from refined, but the bargain prices and the boisterous staff make it all go down easily. Trattoria Gianni, down a hairpin alleyway a few blocks from Piazza Maggiore, was once my lunch haunt in Bologna, by virtue of its position next to my Italian-language school. I dream regularly of its bollito misto, a heroic mix of braised brisket, capon, and tongue served with salsa verde, but the dish I'm looking for this time, a thick beef-and-pork joint with plenty of jammy tomato, is a solid middle-of-the-road ragù.

I take a cue from the list I made on my first night here alone and make soup. I chop vegetables and boil pasta, pour a carton of chicken stock into a pot. Once I’ve combined all the ingredients and it’s time to wait while they cook, I turn to the second essay in the solitude book, but my mind is too full of different versions of the last summer’s story. There’s one where I fail him. Where I stop coming home so he stops making dinner, and I’m not around to see how much he needs me. And then there’s one where he fails me. Where I feel it—that he doesn’t want me there, that I’m in the way. So I stay away, for him and for me. So that I never face his rejection. So that I get to pretend I’m the most important thing to him, the way he is to me. Because if we have any sense of self-preservation, we do the best with what we’re given. I was given cakes and cookies and rides to school. I was given songs and dinners at a table with brass candlesticks. I was given a man with a sensitive heart and a devious sense of humor and enough skill at cards to win me a year of private college—tuition and room and board—and I took all of those good things and told myself they made us special. Told myself they meant we were a family the way Mabel and Ana and Javier were, told myself that we weren’t missing anything. We were masters of collusion, Gramps and I. In that, at least, we were together.

Domenico, my pen pal and the master of ceremonies, emerges from the kitchen in a cobalt suit bearing a plate of bite-sized snacks: ricotta caramel, smoked hake, baby artichoke with shaved bottarga. The first course lands on the table with a wink from Domenico: raw shrimp, raw sheep, and a shower of wild herbs and flowers- an edible landscape of the island. I raise my fork tentatively, expecting the intensity of a mountain flock, but the sheep is amazingly delicate- somehow lighter than the tiny shrimp beside it. The intensity arrives with the next dish, the calf's liver we bought at the market, transformed from a dense purple lobe into an orb of pâté, coated in crushed hazelnuts, surrounded by fruit from the market this morning. The boneless sea anemones come cloaked in crispy semolina and bobbing atop a sticky potato-parsley puree. Bread is fundamental to the island, and S'Apposentu's frequent carb deliveries prove the point: a hulking basket overflowing with half a dozen housemade varieties from thin, crispy breadsticks to a dense sourdough loaf encased in a dark, gently bitter crust. The last savory course, one of Roberto's signature dishes, is the most stunning of all: ravioli stuffed with suckling pig and bathed in a pecorino fondue. This is modernist cooking at its most magnificent: two fundamental flavors of the island (spit-roasted pig and sheep's-milk cheese) cooked down and refined into a few explosive bites. The kind of dish you build a career on.

I look over the recipe again. It sounds very simple. You boil some rice in water like pasta, I can do that. You cook some onion in butter, stir in the rice, pop it in the oven. Add some cream and grated cheese and mix it up. And voila! A real dinner. I pull out a couple of the pots Caroline gave me, and began to get everything laid out. Grant always yammered on about mise en place, that habit of getting all your stuff together before you start cooking so you can be organized. It seems to make sense, and appeals to the part of me that likes to make lists and check things off of them. I manage to chop a pile of onions without cutting myself, but with a lot of tears. At one point I walk over to the huge freezer and stick my head in it for some relief, while Schatzi looks at me like I'm an idiot. Which isn't unusual. Or even come to think of it, wrong. But I get them sliced and chopped, albeit unevenly, and put them in the large pot with some butter. I get some water boiling in the other pot and put in some rice. I cook it for a few minutes, drain it, and add it to the onions, stirring them all together. Then I put the lid on the pot and put it in the oven, and set my phone with an alarm for thirty-five minutes. The kitchen smells amazing. Nothing quite like onions cooked in butter to make the heart happy. While it cooks, I grab a beer, and grate some Swiss cheese into a pile. When my phone buzzes, I pull the pot out of the oven and put it back on the stovetop, stirring in the cream and cheese, and sprinkling in some salt and pepper. I grab a bowl and fill it with the richly scented mixture. I stand right there at the counter, and gingerly take a spoonful. It's amazing. Rich and creamy and oniony. The rice is nicely cooked, not mushy. And even though some of my badly cut onions make for some awkward eating moments, as the strings slide out of the spoon and attach themselves to my chin, the flavor is spectacular. Simple and comforting, and utterly delicious.

Did you eat?” he asked as he backed out of the parking lot. “No.” “Do you want to stop somewhere?” “Like Burger King?” “I was thinking something a little nicer.” “I’m wearing sweaty clothes and sneakers.” Briefly taking his eyes off the road, he glanced at her. “I think you look nice.” “Says the man in a dress shirt and tie.” “Trust me, you could wear a sack and I’d still be the inappropriate factor in the equation. Let’s stop and have dinner. We’ll go someplace small and quiet.” She sighed. “Fine. But you have to take off your tie and un-tuck your shirt.” “What?” “Either that or I’m not going. I look like a slob.” His fingers noticeably tightened on the wheel. “Fine.” When they arrived at the restaurant, a little corner place with outdoor seating and Italian cuisine, Elliot stood at the car door and loosened his tie. After unclasping the top button of his shirt, he frowned at his hips. “My shirttails will be wrinkled. Can’t this be enough?” She laughed at how uncomfortable the idea of wrinkles made him. “Fine.” Untwisting the clip in her hair, she flipped her head over and shook out her waves, hoping to hide the fact that she was in an old tank top with a bleach stain on the side. Flipping back, she paused as she caught him staring. “What?” His eyes were wide behind his glasses. “Nothing.” He shook his head and looked away. He took her hand and escorted her into the restaurant. The smell of delicious pasta cranked up her hunger. The hostess greeted them, and before Nadia could manage a word, Elliot asked for a private table in the back. They were escorted to the rear of the restaurant, far away from all other patrons. “Do they know you here?” He seemed to have some pull. “No, but if you make a direct request people don’t often tell you no.” She raised a brow. “I’ll have to remember that trick.” For as gentle as he was, he had a knack for being equally commanding. His clout was subtle but undeniable. She wondered if he even realized the influence he held over others. He wore authority very well.

Monday: Pasta • Tuesday: Legume • Wednesday: Dough (homemade quiche, pizza, or tortillas) • Thursday: Bread (to go with our veggie “fridge-cleanup” soup or salad) • Friday (shopping day): Potatoes and fish • Saturday: Wild card, dinner with friends or dinner out • Sunday: Grain and meat

My mother had just finished kneading a large mass of pasta dough and was patting it into a nice round ball before putting it aside to rest. That meant ravioli. We always began Sunday dinner with either ravioli or lasagne. The homemade pasta meant ravioli, because we buy the large sheets of dough for lasagne from Constantino's. Sitting on the stove, waiting for the oven to get up to temperature, was a roasting pan holding a large pork roast studded with garlic, glistening with olive oil, and surrounded by rosemary sprigs.

She hadn't had a bite of her dinner. I'd even curled the pasta into a little linguine nest in the center of each bowl. My mother's was still perfect and round and cold. The sauce had darkened. "This is delish," she said. "But it needs red wine. I tell you because I love you and you should know for the future." She went on about deglazing and how it brings out the earthy taste of the onions and never use wine you wouldn't drink yourself and a young, robust wine is what you use in red sauces, nothing fortified or dry, for example.

After a couple of days, James spotted something strange about the food they were eating. "It's an odd thing," he remarked to Jumbo, "but every single meal seems to contain at least one dish that's red, green and white. Yesterday it was that wonderful salad- tomatoes, basil and that white mozzarella stuff. Today it was some sort of herby green paste on white pasta, with tomatoes on the side." Jumbo screwed up his face. "What's so odd about that?" "They're the colors of the Italian flag." "So they are." Jumbo thought some more. "Probably a coincidence, though. After all, they eat a lot of tomatoes, so the red's there from the start." "Probably," James agreed. But later that afternoon he made an excuse to drop by the kitchen, and peer over Livia's shoulder at what she was preparing for dinner. "What are these?" he asked casually. "Pomodori ripieni con formaggio caprino ed erba cipollina," she said tersely. "Tomatoes stuffed with goat's cheese and chives." Ignoring the fact that his mouth was watering, he said, "They're the same colors as your flag." Livia affected to notice this for the first time. "So they are. How strange." "As one of the dishes at lunch. In fact, every meal you've cooked us has had something similar.

The meal began with pickled squid, oyster shooters, marinated anchovies, and scungilli salad. Then Rosalie set an enormous bowl of pasta con le vongole in front of Sal, who ladled it out, talking the entire time. The pasta was followed by huge platters of scampi, which we passed around. It was almost eleven when Rosalie set three enormous stuffed turbots on the table, and it was near midnight when she appeared with a plate of warm sugar-dusted sfinge. "So our first taste of the New Year will be sweet," Sal whispered in my ear.

she gathered a leftover dish of pasta (unheated), a napkin, a glass of ice water, and a loaf of half-eaten French bread into the family room. She bumbled through the large room, past a few opened and unopened boxes, setting down her dinner atop a pair of stacked boxes near the couch. She flailed her body down onto the couch, her long, slender arms reaching out to grab the water and the pasta, when she realized she had forgotten a fork.

Glorious Food Italians are known the world over for their food. Each region of Italy enjoys its own kind of cooing. For example, in Naples, pasta is served with a tomato-based sauce, while in the north, it is more often served with a white cheese sauce. The people of Genoa often put pesto, a flavorful mixture of basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, and grated cheese, on their pasta. The grated cheese called Parmesan originated in the area around Parma. Italians also invented many other cheeses, including Gorgonzola, mozzarella, provolone, and ricotta. No one knows when pizza was invented, but the people of Naples made it popular. At first, pizza was a simple flatbread topped with tomato and garlic. Since then, it has evolved into countless variations, served all over Italy and the world. Italians tend to eat a light breakfast of coffee and perhaps a small bun. Lunch is often the main meal, while dinner tends to be lighter. Italian meals may include antipasti, an array of vegetables, cold cuts, and seafood; a pasta dish; a main course of meat or fish; a salad; and cheese and fruit. Bread is served with every meal. Italy is justly famous for its ice cream, which is called gelato. Fresh gelato is made regularly at ice cream shops called gelaterias. Italians are just as likely to gather, discussing sports and the world, in a gelateria as in a coffee shop. Many Italians drink a strong, dark coffee called espresso, which is served in tiny cups. Another type of Italian coffee, cappuccino, is espresso mixed with hot, frothed milk. Both espresso and cappuccino have become popular in North America. Meanwhile, many Italians are becoming increasingly fond of American-style fast food, a trend that bothers some Italians. In general, dinner is served later at night in southern Italy than in northern Italy. This is because many people in the south, as in most Mediterranean regions, traditionally took naps in the afternoon during the hottest part of the day. These naps are rapidly disappearing as a regular part of life, although many businesses still shut down for several hours in the early afternoon.

To begin with, she would focus on tried-and-true dishes that she loved to make and which she knew would turn a profit. She had a petite filet mignon planned, which she would rotate with different sauces, but she would keep lobster and lump crabmeat confined to supporting roles with fresh pasta, in ravioli and in sauces, rather than serving up whole Maine lobsters at "market price." Her Chicken Cacciatore de Provence was an upscale twist on a farmhouse classic that paired her love of exotic mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, and fresh herbs with imminently affordable cuts of chicken. She wanted to serve a Spiral Stuffed Pork Loin in a savory reduction with yam patties and fresh garden peas, in season, which lent itself to a marvelous visual presentation and tasted like Thanksgiving dinner all on one plate.

How they eat: Remember the last time you had dinner with your naturally skinny friend? “I’m starving!” she exclaimed, poring over the menu. For you: The (boring) garden salad, of course. Low-fat vinaigrette, on the side. For her: The spinach ravioli in lemon cream sauce. “How can you stand to eat that rabbit food?!” she asked incredulously, eyeing your plate. Which did look pretty sad next to her puffy pasta pillows of ricotta, swimming in creamy, lemon-y deliciousness. While you resigned yourself to your salad, she dove in. “This is so good!” she declared. And then a few minutes later, after just twelve bites, she did the unthinkable—she stopped eating. Because she was full.

The fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be. This is clear. But there’s no guarantee that the leanest we can be will ever be as lean as we’d like. This is a reality to be faced. As I discussed, there are genetic variations in fatness and leanness that are independent of diet. Multiple hormones and enzymes affect our fat accumulation, and insulin happens to be the one hormone that we can consciously control through our dietary choices. Minimizing the carbohydrates we consume and eliminating the sugars will lower our insulin levels as low as is safe, but it won’t necessarily undo the effects of other hormones—the restraining effect of estrogen that’s lost as women pass through menopause, for instance, or of testosterone as men age—and it might not ultimately reverse all the damage done by a lifetime of eating carbohydrate- and sugar-rich foods. This means that there’s no one-size-fits-all prescription for the quantity of carbohydrates we can eat and still lose fat or remain lean. For some, staying lean or getting back to being lean might be a matter of merely avoiding sugars and eating the other carbohydrates in the diet, even the fattening ones, in moderation: pasta dinners once a week, say, instead of every other day. For others, moderation in carbohydrate consumption might not be sufficient, and far stricter adherence is necessary. And for some, weight will be lost only on a diet of virtually zero carbohydrates, and even this may not be sufficient to eliminate all our accumulated fat, or even most of it.

Emma reached out and grabbed Tina’s arm and restrained her. I reached into my inventory and found a knife and fork that I had for some reason left in there. I held the knife and fork out and said, “Come on, zombie! It’s time for some dinner.” Then I lunged at the zombie with the knife and fork ready to cut him into little tiny pieces. But before I could begin to cut the zombie up like up plate of overcooked pasta, the Ender King materialized and restrained me.

Sample One-Day Menu for Your Eight- to Twelve-Month-Old 1 cup = 8 ounces (240 ml) 4 ounces = 120 ml 6 ounces = 180 ml BREAKFAST ¼–½ cup cereal, or mashed or scrambled egg ¼–½ cup fruit, diced (if your child is self-feeding) 4–6 ounces breast milk or formula SNACK 4–6 ounces breast milk, formula, or water ¼ cup diced cheese or cooked vegetables LUNCH ¼–½ cup yogurt or cottage cheese or meat ¼–½ cup yellow or orange vegetables 4–6 ounces breast milk SNACK 1 whole-grain cracker or teething biscuit ¼ cup yogurt or diced (if child is self-feeding) fruit water DINNER ¼ cup diced poultry, meat, or tofu ¼–½ cup green vegetables ¼ cup whole-grain pasta, rice, or potato ¼ cup diced or mashed fruit 4–6 ounces breast milk/formula BEFORE BEDTIME 6–8 ounces breast milk, formula, or water (If breast milk, follow with water or brush teeth afterward.)

Keep the following guidelines in mind: Refined starches such as white bread and pasta are particularly harmful; avoid them completely. Do not consume any fruit juice or dried fruits. Avoid all sweets, except for fresh fruit in reasonable quantities. Two or three fruits for breakfast is fine, and one fruit after lunch and dinner is ideal. The best fruits are those with less sugar—grapefruit, oranges, kiwifruit, strawberries and other berries, melons, and green apples. Avoid all oil. Raw nuts are permitted, but only one ounce or less. The name of your diet is the “greens and beans diet”; green vegetables and beans should make up most of your diet. Limit animal-food intake to no more than two servings of fish weekly. Try to exercise regularly and consistently, like dispensing your medication. Do it on a regimented schedule, preferably twice daily. Walking stairs is one of the greatest exercises for weight loss.

He hefted the drill. “Now let me do the guy stuff while you go to the kitchen. Trust me, it’s a perfect arrangement.” “Luke’s going to cry,” I said darkly. “No, he won’t. He’ll love it.” To my disgust Luke didn’t make a sound, watching contentedly as Jack built the crib. I heated a plate of spaghetti and sauce, and set a place for Jack at the kitchen island. “C’mon, Luke,” I said, picking up the baby and carrying him into the kitchen. “We’ll entertain Cro-Magnon while he has his dinner.” Jack dug into the steaming pasta with gusto, making appreciative noises and finishing at least a third of it before coming up for air. “This is great. What else can you cook?” “Just the basics. A few casseroles, pasta, stew. I can roast a chicken.” “Can you do meat loaf?” “Yep.” “Marry me, Ella.” I looked into his wicked dark eyes, and even though I knew he was joking, I felt a wild pulse inside, and my hands trembled. “Sure,” I said lightly. “Want some bread?” -Jack & Ella

1 cup milk plus: 1. Small bowl cold cereal + blueberries + yogurt 2. 1 egg, scrambled or boiled + 1 slice toast + strawberries 3. 1 cut-up chicken sausage + toast + ½ banana 4. ½ bagel + cream cheese + raspberries 5. 1 slice ham on toast + ½ orange 6. ½ tortilla rolled up with cheese + melon + yogurt 7. Small bowl oatmeal + cut-up bananas and strawberries Lunch and Dinner 1. 1 salmon cake + carrots + rice 2. Fish pie + broccoli 3. 3 oz salmon + cup of pasta + peas 4. 2 fish sticks + cup couscous + veg 5. ½ breast of chicken + veg + small potato 6. Roast chicken + dumplings + veg 7. 1 meat or peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich + apple + yogurt 8. 1 small homemade pizza + fruit 9. Pasta with tomato sauce and cheese + veg 10. Chicken risotto + veg 11. Ground beef + potato + peas 12. Small tuna pasta bake + veg 13. 4 meatballs + pasta + veg 14. Chicken stir-fry with veg + rice

Salads?” he said. “I don’t usually make a lot of salads.” “I know this,” she said wearily. “But we need to make a couple of changes. Just minor changes. Buy some low-fat, whole-wheat bread for sandwiches. Don’t do pastas, breads and potatoes at every meal. Make salads, stock fresh fruit.” “There’s plenty of fruit around here,” he said. “Yeah, and it’s all in the pies.” “You have pie almost every day,” he pointed out. “You love my pies. You more than anyone, I think.” She scowled, then grimaced. “I’m going to stop doing that. Listen, can you make some lighter meals available, please? Or else I’m not going to be able to eat here all the time. I’ll have to pack a lunch, make my own dinner at home. This madness has to stop. I can’t keep gaining weight like this. I am not going to be fat!” Preacher tilted his head. “Jack complaining about the way you look?” he asked cautiously. “Of course not,” she said in frustration. “He thinks I’m perfect.” “Well, there you go.” “John, I don’t think you’re paying attention here. I have to go on a diet. You want me to write down what I need?” “No,” he said unhappily. “I think I’ve got it.” “Thanks.

Lion Daily Schedule 5:30 a.m.: Wake up, no snooze. 5:45 a.m.: Breakfast: high-protein, low-carb. 6:15 a.m. to 7:00 a.m.: Big-picture conceptualizing and organizing. Morning meditation. 7:00 a.m. to 7:30 a.m.: Sex. If you have kids who need help getting ready for school, make it a quickie. 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.: Cool shower, get dressed, interact with friends or family before heading to work. 9:00 a.m.: Small snack: 250 calories, 25 percent protein, 75 percent carbs. Ideally, have it at a breakfast meeting. 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.: Personal interactions, morning meetings, phone calls, emails, strategic problem solving. 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.: Balanced lunch. Go outside for sunlight exposure, if possible. 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.: Creative thinking time. Listen to music, catch up on reading and journaling. In a workplace setting, lead or attend brainstorming meetings. 5:00 to 6:00 p.m.: Exercise, preferably outdoors, followed by a cool shower. 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.: Dinner. Keep it balanced—equal parts protein, carbs, and healthy fats. A carb-heavy meal like pasta might make you crash. 7:30 p.m.: Last call for alcohol. A drink after this hour will knock you out. 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.: Socialize on the town, or connect with loved ones online while relaxing at home. You bought yourself an extra hour, so make the most of it! 10:00 p.m.: Be in your home environment by now. Turn off all screens to begin the downshift before bed. 10:30 p.m.: Go to sleep.

I wander back out, and find Patrick doing the unthinkable. He is cooking. There are two placemats on the island, napkins and forks. He has found a dish of leftover pasta I made last night, linguine with chickpeas, pancetta, and toasted breadcrumbs, with torn basil leaves and lemon zest. He's put together a frittata, which he has cooked on one side, and is deftly flipping it over to cook the other side. On another burner, some of my marinara that I put up last summer simmers in a small saucepan. A pile of shaved Parmesan is on the cutting board, two plates sit at his elbow.

Could you start the water boiling? I got that fresh pasta you like. After dinner, though, I've got to get down to the temple. We're going to sacrifice a few virgins, you know,

Elliot, that was amazing." The meal has been spectacular. We started with a salad of fennel, golden beets, and grapefruit. He did a veal roast with a classic shallot-cognac pan sauce, smooth with butter and brightened with thyme and parsley, the meat perfectly cooked, still rosy in the middle, with a great crisp brown sear on the outside. An interesting dish of fregola, toasted pearl pasta that is one of my favorite ingredients, cooked with sweet corn he charred on the grill, and chives. And simple steamed asparagus. Everything cooked perfectly, well seasoned, and full of soul.

The stainless-steel mold gives the cheese its disc shape, about ten inches thick and two feet in diameter. But the mold serves another increasingly important function, as an anticounterfeiting measure. The molds are specially produced by the Consorzio Parmigiano-Reggiano, an independent and self-regulating industry group funded by fees levied on cheese producers. Carefully tracked and numbered, molds are supplied only to licensed and inspected dairies, and each is lined with Braille-like needles that crate a pinpoint pattern instantly recognizable to foodies, spelling out the name of the cheese over and over again in a pattern forever imprinted on its rind. A similar raised-pin mold made of plastic is slipped between the steel and the cheese to permanently number the rind of every lot so that any wheel can be traced back to a particular dairy and day of origin. Like a tattoo, these numbers and the words Parmigiano-Reggiano become part of the skin. Later in its life, because counterfeiting the King of Cheeses has become a global pastime, this will be augmented with security holograms... One night, friends came to town and invited Alice out to dinner at celebrity chef Mario Batali's vaunted flagship Italian eatery, Babbo. As Alice told me this story, at one point during their meal, the waiter displayed a grater and a large wedge of cheese with great flourish, asking her if she wanted Parmigiano-Reggiano on her pasta. She did not say yes. She did not say no. Instead Alice looked at the cheese and asked, "Are you sure that's Parmigiano-Reggiano?" Her replied with certainty, "Yes." "You're sure?" "Yes." She then asked to see the cheese. The waiter panicked, mumbled some excuse, and fled into the kitchen. He returned a few minutes later with a different and much smaller chunk of cheese, which he handed over for examination. The new speck was old, dry, and long past its useful shelf-life, but it was real Parmigiano-Reggiano, evidenced by the pin-dot pattern. "The first one was Grana Padano," she explained. "I could clearly read the rind. They must have gone searching through all the drawers in the kitchen in a panic until they found this forgotten crumb of Parmigiano-Reggiano." Alice Fixx was the wrong person to try this kind of bait and switch on, but she is the exception, and I wonder how many other expense-account diners swallowed a cheaper substitute. This occurred at one of the most famous and expensive Italian eateries in the country. What do you think happens at other restaurants?

Next, 'baccala marechiara,' codfish with a sauce of tomatoes, capers, olives, garlic, and parsley, a lighter version of her puttanesca. She laid out fresh cod in a baking dish, ladled the marechiara sauce over it, and set it in the oven until the cod was cooked through and flaky. She would serve it on a platter over linguine dressed with the good olive oil and cracked black pepper. As the sun came up, she set out the fresh-baked bread, and its aroma enveloped the room. She'd made platters of salads, melon balls wrapped with prosciutto, a huge antipasto with cuts of cured meats, cheeses, and olives, and a fresh-fruit tray that exploded with color. She pulled the chicken out to rest, sampled the bourguignonne, set the lasagna to bubble and cool on the big table, stirred her soup and turned down the heat on it.

Have just one taste experience as your dinner (the big bowl of pasta, a big piece of meat), and you are bound to eat too much, as you seek satisfaction from volume instead of the interplay of flavor and texture that comes from a well-thought-out meal.

of whole-wheat pasta and tuna for a quick lunch or dinner. Wash, wrap in a paper towel, and store in plastic bags. Roughly chop them and store in plastic bags for use in

Ingredient Uses Refrigerator Storage Freezer Storage Fresh Greens Toss with a bowl of whole-wheat pasta and tuna for a quick lunch or dinner. Wash, wrap in a paper towel, and store in plastic bags. Roughly chop them and store in plastic bags for use

When we try to enjoy a birthday dinner, notifications about our friends’ tropical vacation photos make our pasta taste less delicious. When we try to choose a restaurant for our next date, the endless ocean of reviews and ratings leads us to spend more time choosing our meals than savoring them. When we try to have meaningful time off with friends and family, our alerts from work create guilt and dread over what we’re not getting done.

You know you’re living in the future when you can board a hundred-ton pressurized aluminum tube with wings, fly smoothly in a cushioned chair at 500 miles per hour, 31,000 feet above Earth’s surface, and while crossing the continent, get served a pasta dinner and a mixed drink by someone whose job, in part, is to make you comfortable. And for most of the trip you surf the internet, watch any one of a hundred movies, only to land safely and smoothly a few hours later and complain that the marinara sauce was not to your liking.

When my wife asks what I want for dinner, pasta or chicken, and I say I don’t care, what I’m often missing is that she’s asking for a little companionship, a little mutual ownership of a decision.

She got tipsy on pinot noir and ate too much of her pesto angel hair with blackened chicken-- now, at the door to the room, she's regretting it. She feels nauseous from the wine, and she knows her breath is bad from the garlic. Tom doesn't seem to notice; he's calm and a little giddy and keeps passing a hand over her ass, up under her dress. She wants to feel sexy; but she just can't, not with the thought of her dinner or her certainty that she has pesto in her teeth. Italian places are romantic in theory, but the pasta and the garlic and the rich sauces and filling wines are not conducive to carrying the romance past dinner.

also suggest that once every ninety days or so you take an hour to read your journal entries from that period. But don’t be overly focused on the details, like the budget meeting three weeks ago or last Thursday’s pasta dinner. Instead, focus on the broader patterns or trends. Capture the headline. Look for the lead in your day, your week, your life. Small, incremental changes are hard to see in the moment but over time can have a huge cumulative effect.

When people come to me and want to lose weight, my first recommendation is this: no fruits, alcohol, breads, or pastas after 3:00 p.m. A dinner high in protein and veggies on a consistent basis will have you losing weight faster than a sugar-free treat laden with chemicals for dessert.

I came across one company called NuManna, named in reference to manna, the foodstuff the god of the Old Testament had provided for the Israelites during the time of their wandering after the Exodus. The company marketed gigantic buckets of freeze-dried powdered foodstuffs with a shelf life of a quarter of a century, whose varieties included, but were by no means limited to, oatmeal, hearty beans and beef, cheddar broccoli soup, and pasta primavera mix with freeze-dried chicken chunks. In the Testimonials section of NuManna’s website, I read a brief blurb from a customer named Reagan B., which seemed to me an unwitting encapsulation of the absurdity of the entire apocalypse preparedness project. “This stuff is awesome,” wrote Reagan. “My wife has been away for a while so I ate NuManna while she was gone. It was simple and everything I had was really good. I wish NuManna was around when I bought a bunch of bulk food in the past from the Mormons. I don’t want to have all these ingredients and put them together. NuManna was simple and great tasting. I gave away all my other bulk food.” At first this comment seemed purely and unimprovably comic in its conjuring of a character who, for all his determination to be adequately prepared for the collapse of civilization due to nuclear war or the impact of a massive asteroid, was also the type of man for whom not having his wife around to cook dinner—which seemed to me to be at worst a Domino’s Pizza situation—forced him to crack open his apocalyptic food stash. (Equally bewildering, equally wonderful, was his purchasing food in bulk only to conclude that he lacked the stomach for the labor of assembling all these ingredients into meals.)

It’s not really such a bad place,” she says, looking around the room. She’s moved on to dessert. “They know how to make a decent rice pudding.” My hand shakes a little when I pour creamer into her coffee. If I got on a plane tonight I could be in Rome in time for dinner tomorrow. Homemade pasta, fresh tomatoes and basil. Real Parmesan cheese, not the kind that comes in packets. And wine—maybe something I haven’t tasted before, a grape varietal I don’t yet know. It would be nothing like here. A break from this place. From Mom. I want to get home and e-mail Paul. I will be there. I am coming. I feel her eyes on me as I pack up my things. “You should dye your hair before you leave,” she says finally. “See if the salon can fit you in this week.” “That’s a good idea.” I kiss her goodbye. “I bet Hannah is gorgeous, she’ll look just like Emily did at that age. Beautiful, but not the brightest bulb. It’s good you’re going. You’ll have to send me pictures.” She surveys my face. I try to keep it blank, unreadable. “Use my brightening mask when you get home. It’ll clear up whatever’s happening on your chin.” “I will.” I shift my purse full of papers and snacks and bottled water from one shoulder to the other. “I love you, see you tomorrow.

At dinner Paul orders the fried artichokes and a tahini plate to start, with a bottle of Verdicchio, later a bottle of red with the pasta and meat dishes—ravioli with meat sauce, baked lamb and potatoes, Amatriciana alla giudia. “You’re in for a treat,” he tells me. “Best in Rome, they use salted beef instead of guanciale.

Fideos secos, also known as sopa seca or Mexican “dry soup,” is typically made with thin spaghetti cooked in a guajillo pepper and tomato sauce, topped with avocado, queso fresco, and sometimes chicharrón (fried pork rinds). This grain-free version replaces the pasta with carrots—and I have to say, they just might be the tastiest carrots I’ve ever eaten (and this is coming from a girl who doesn’t really like carrots). Spiralized carrots are great as a pasta swap in dishes like this where you want a noodle with a good bite. Zucchini tends to get watery if cooked too long, but the carrots stay firm, creating a very pasta-like experience. 1 large (13-ounce) carrot (at least 2 inches thick) 2 dried guajillo chiles,* stemmed, split open, and seeded 4 teaspoons olive oil ⅓ cup chopped onion 3 garlic cloves 2 medium tomatoes, quartered 1 teaspoon adobo sauce (from a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce) ½ teaspoon ground cumin ¾ teaspoon kosher salt 4 ounces thinly sliced avocado (from 1 small Hass) 2 ounces (scant ½ cup) crumbled queso fresco 1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro *Read the label to be sure this product is gluten-free. Using the widest noodle blade of your spiralizer, spiralize the carrot, then cut the “noodles” into 6-inch lengths. Set aside on a plate. Soak the guajillo chiles in a bowl of ½ cup hot water until softened, about 30 minutes. Transfer the chiles and soaking liquid to a blender. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add 1 teaspoon of the oil, the onion, and garlic and cook, stirring, until the onion is golden brown, 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer the mixture to the blender. Add the tomatoes, adobo sauce, cumin, and ¼ teaspoon of the salt to the blender and blend well. In the same skillet, heat the remaining 3 teaspoons oil over medium-high heat. Add the carrot noodles and the remaining ½ teaspoon salt. Cook, stirring, until softened, about 5 minutes. Pour the sauce from the blender over the carrots, increase the heat to high, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens, about 5 minutes. To serve, divide the carrot noodles between 2 bowls. Top each with half the avocado, queso fresco, and cilantro.

I suppressed my amusement and tried to be less of a dick. “How did you win it?” He shrugged, acting indifferent and bitchy. “There was a giveaway. He asked his followers to write in a comment the last thing we’d made for dinner. So I wrote ‘Oatmeal, because it’s the one thing I can’t mess up.’” Le-fucking-git. Coincidentally, the times he’d tried to make pasta, it ended up looking like oatmeal.

They hadn't had a real meal together in years. Those late, boozy nights with sloppy cheeseburgers and too many appetizers were long gone. No longer would they get pasta and wine by the bottle, telling their Sicilian server not to judge them for how much cheese they wanted ground over their gnocchi and carbonara. They would drink beer and share those plasticky nachos and watch awful bands cover extremely good bands. Their indulgence might kill them one day, but wasn't it worth it? That had been her opinion. She'd never really considered what would happen once the indulgence was gone. Margo, luckily, was always up for whatever challenge made her days more interesting. She was constantly trying to make dupes for whatever she- or he- was really in the mood for. Egg white huevos rancheros, turkey meat loaf, chicken chili, and on one disastrous Thanksgiving, Tofurkey. Nutritional yeast weakly filled the big shoes of good Parmesan. Lettuce did the minimum to live up to the utility purpose of a tortilla while textured vegetable protein tried pitifully to be taco meat.

And just like that, my spirits lift. “That means you know where the food is.” “Oh!” Grace says. “You missed dinner.” “That sucks,” Suzy says. “It was lamb merguez—” “With a warm carrot salad—” “And an orange-basil granita—” “There might be some leftovers?” I scratch the back of my neck and look away. “That sounds lovely, but I was sort of hoping I could just make myself a peanut butter sandwich.” Grace slides down off the counter. “Don’t be silly, I’ll make you some pasta—what do you want? Puttanesca? Arrabbiata?” I feel a frown coming on; I fight it back. “A sandwich is fine, really.” She adjusts her glasses and plants her hands on her hips. “My dad would seriously disown me if he knew I fed someone a peanut butter sandwich for dinner.” “But I don’t want pasta. I want a peanut butter sandwich

Once the entrées have been selected for both the noon and dinner meal, consider the entrée for the main meal first and then the entrées for the other meals; choose the accompanying vegetables and potatoes, rice, or pasta on the basis of their color, form, texture, and flavor. A colorful vegetable in whole, sliced, diced, or mashed form makes the meal more attractive. Crisp vegetables complement a soft or creamy main dish. Next, select salads that contrast with the rest of the meal in color, flavor, and texture.

Basil and Mint Sorbet I tasted this unlikely but tantalizing sorbet at the ancient fattoria-turned-restaurant Locanda dell’Amorosa in nearby Sinalunga. The next day I tried to duplicate it at home. At the restaurant, it was served after the pasta and fish courses and before the main course. More informally, it starts out a dinner on a warm summer night. Make a sugar syrup by boiling together 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar, then simmering it for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Cool in the fridge. Purée ½ cup of mint leaves and ½ cup of basil leaves in 1 cup of water. Add another cup of water, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, and chill. Mix the sugar syrup and the herbal water well and process in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Scoop into martini glasses or any clear glass dishes and garnish with mint leaves. Serves 8.

Thinking about that day, the dog running for the tennis ball, the pasta that they ate together, the feeling wells up inside him painfully. Wanting to say and hear the words again, that can never again be said or heard. To return to the house once more, and not find it dark and empty, but airy and bright again with open windows. To spend an afternoon together, playing with the dog, eating dinner, doing nothing, only being together, just once more.