Pasta Making Quotes

Going round and around inside a dryer can be fatal, whereas pasta is rarely fatal. Unless Isabelle makes it.

Well, when I was five, I wanted my mother to let me go around and around inside a dryer with the clothes,” Clary said. “The difference is, she didn’t let me.” “Probably because going around and around in a dryer can be fatal,” Jace pointed out, “whereas pasta is rarely fatal. Unless Isabelle makes it.

Well, thanks. It was nice of you to give me anything." The tension between them seemed to press down on her like humid air. "Better than a bath in spaghetti any day." He said darkly, "If you share that little bit of personal information with anyone, I may have to kill you." "Well, when I was five, I wanted my mother to let me go around and around inside the dryer with the clothes," Clary said. "The difference is, she didn't let me." "Probably because going around and around inside a dryer can be fatal," Jace pointed out, "whereas pasta is rarely fatal. Unless Isabelle makes it.

make pasta, not war.

Evil has an ordinary face. It laughs, it cries, it deflects, it rationalizes, it makes great pasta.

Pasta is rarely fatal. Unless Isabelle makes it." -

Germany, thanks for the water~ Now I can make pasta again~" -Italy

With my friends, the sad truth is that our best “best friend” days are behind us. In college, we used to be able to meet each other in the common area of our off-campus housing, excited about our evening ahead, which consisted of someone making an enormous tureen of pasta and drinking wine from a box while we took turns regaling each other with details of our terrible love lives.

O Lord, refresh our sensibilities. Give us this day our daily taste. Restore to us soups that spoons will not sink in, and sauces which are never the same twice. Raise up among us stews with more gravy than we have bread to blot it with, and casseroles that put starch and substance in our limp modernity. Take away our fear of fat and make us glad of the oil which ran upon Aaron's beard. Give us pasta with a hundred fillings, and rice in a thousand variations. Above all, give us grace to live as true men - to fast till we come to a refreshed sense of what we have and then to dine gratefully on all that comes to hand. Drive far from us, O Most Bountiful, all creatures of air and darkness; cast out the demons that possess us; deliver us from the fear of calories and the bondage of nutrition; and set us free once more in our own land, where we shall serve Thee as Thou hast blessed us - with the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine. Amen.

Um… Eve…can I ask…?” “About what?” Eve was still frowning at the pasta like she suspected it to do something clever, like try to escape the pot. “You and Michael.” “Oh.” A surge of pink to Eve’s cheeks. Between that and the fact that she was wearing colors outside of the Goth red and black rainbow, she looked young and very cute. “Well. I don’t know if it’s – God, he’s just so–” “Hot?” Claire asked. “Hot,” Eve admitted. “Nuclear hot. Surface of the sun hot. And–” She stopped, the flush in her cheeks getting darker. Claire picked up a wooden spoon and poked the pasta, which was beginning to loosen up. “And?” “And I was planning on putting the moves on him before all this happened. That’s why I had on the garters and stuff. Planning ahead.” “Oh, wow.” “Yeah, embarrassing. Did he peek?” “When you were changing?” Claire asked. “I don’t think so. But I think he wanted to.” “That’s okay then.” Eve blinked down at the pasta, which had formed a thick white foam on top. “Is it supposed to be doing that?” Claire hadn’t ever seen it happen at her parents’ house. But then again, they hadn’t made spaghetti much. “I don’t know.” “Oh, crap!” The white foam kept growing, like in one of those cheesy science fiction movies. The foam that ate the Glass House…it mushroomed up over the top of the pot and down over the sides, and both girls yelped as it hit the burners and began to sizzle and pop. Claire grabbed the pot and moved it. Eve turned down the burner. “Right, pasta makes foam, good to know. Too hot. Way too hot.” “Who? Michael?” Claire asked, and they dissolved in giggles.

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.

Fructose molecules glycate things 10 times as fast as glucose, generating much more damage. Again, this is another reason why spikes from sugary foods such as cookies (which contain fructose) make us age faster than do spikes from starchy foods such as pasta (which doesn't).

Tragically it is indeed the goddamn gluten that makes the pasta taste so good

I can’t be expected to make promises under the influence of pasta and wine!

I've always been super aware that we could all die at any moment. This ceiling could fall. I could trip and land on this pen I'm holding. I could choke on my cold pasta lunch. I could be attacked by that pigeon eying me from my window sill. I could be shot...by a stranger...who lost something in their heart. Remember death is real. It's not scary. Living is the thing to care about. Don't hold grudges. Smile and make others smile as often as possible. Don't let jerks run the world.

Si! Today there was a report from scientists who have spent their entire lives studying chimpanzees and you know what they said? They said the monkeys are learning to make spears! They've never been able to make weapons before but now, now, all of a sudden they can!" She gave him an ominous look and took the lid off the pot of boiling water. "Mark my words, Giacomo. They're doing it for a reason. The next thing you know, they'll be coming after us." "Mmm. That will be bad." "Si, very bad." She threw the pasta into the pot. "But I will be ready for them.

A three-star Italian chef pal of mine was recently talking about why he — a proud Tuscan who makes his own pasta and sauces from scratch daily and runs one of the best restaurant kitchens in New York — would never be so foolish as to hire any Italians to cook on his line. He greatly prefers Ecuadorians, as many chefs do: 'The Italian guy? You screaming at him in the rush, "Where's that risotto?! Is that fucking risotto ready yet? Gimme that risotto!" . . . and the Italian . . . he's gonna give it to you . . . An Ecuadorian guy? He's gonna just turn his back . . . and stir the risotto and keep cooking it until it's done the way you showed him. That's what I want.

eating a low-fat diet rich in whole grains such as bread, rice, pasta, and cereal can easily make you fat and malnourished.

The Pasta-Sauce Principle Cure boredom by boiling down your message, making it as rich and brief as possible. When in doubt, cut more out. If people want more, they’ll ask for seconds.

You may think that being chic has nothing to do with the most insignificant and mundane moments of the day. Moments like preparing your meals, emptying the dishwasher, and paying bills. But the secret is: those moments aren’t insignificant. Au contraire. They are very significant. That’s right—if you can change your attitude about making the pasta sauce, choosing your clothes for the day, folding the laundry, setting the table, or dealing with the incoming mail, you can completely change your life.

In the movies, some foreboding music might play in the background or the light might dim. But there was none of that. Evil has an ordinary face. It laughs, it cries, it deflects, it rationalizes, it makes great pasta.

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.

There are as many ways to make Hungarian goulash as there are cooks in Hungary. The dish’s origin was from the ninth century when Hungarian shepherds or gulyás threw in whatever they had to make stew. Some recipes call for beef, pork, veal, or lamb; some include pasta, and some don’t. Take your pick of other ingredients: vegetables, potatoes, beans, sauerkraut, wine; no two recipes are the same except they all have paprika.

Still, there will be a connection with the long past—a reference to forgotten events and personages, and to manners, feelings, and opinions, almost or wholly obsolete—which, if adequately translated to the reader, would serve to illustrate how much of old material goes to make up the freshest novelty of human life.

She turned and smiled. “Kitchen-sink pasta.” “My favorite. But you really ought to come up with a better name for it than kitchen-sink pasta. Sounds only slightly more appealing than bathtub gefilte fish.” She shuddered. “Who in god’s name would make bathtub gefilte fish?” “I dated a Jewish girl whose grandmother made it,” I laughed.

To any woman out there who is fed up with trying the same thing over and over, I offer this suggestion. Instead of getting back on the treadmill “one more time,” try this. Alter your diet so that you eat no grain-based carbohydrate: no flour, no sugar, no bread, no pasta, and no high-fructose corn syrup. Then go to the gym and perform a workout of leg press, pull down, chest press, row and overhead press. Lift slowly and smoothly but with as much effort as possible. Go to complete fatigue, or as close to it as you can tolerate. Work out once, or at most, twice a week. Make sure your workouts last no longer than 20 minutes. Then sit back and watch what happens. —Doug McGuff, MD

The Cheese Shop is a specialty food store right by campus, and they sell cheese, obviously, but also fancy jams and bread and wine and gourmet pastas. They make really great roast beef sandwiches with a house dressing—a mayonnaisey mustard that I have tried to duplicate at home, but nothing tastes as good as in the shop, on their fresh bread.

She deliberated too much afore making decisions; he acted on instinct. He liked Oreos, she preferred pasta worms.

Whom the gods would destroy,” Cleveland said, “they first make pasta.

Eating these foods makes me… Energized. Grain products such as pasta, bread, and rice are made up of carbohydrates which act as fuel for our bodies so we can move, dance, and play!

A chronicler in Italy described how bodies were layered in the ground- bodies then some dirt, bodies then some more dirt- "just as one makes lasagna with layers of pasta and cheese.

In the time I spend lollygagging over my whites and colors, Anna will drywall her attic, prepare her taxes, make her own fresh pasta, and start up a clothing exchange on the Internet.

I make 'Buela's recipe for sofrito that I'll use to season the ground beef. Softening the garlic and onions, adding tomato paste. This is the first step for most traditional dishes, the flavoring that gives a rich taste for everything from beans to stew. Then I brown meat and make a homemade sauce from fresh tomatoes. I grate fine shreds of mozzarella cheese and boil sheets of pasta. While the oven is preheating, I slowly layer my guilt, my hope, and a hundred dreams. I don't know if it means anything at all, but 'Buela has always said my hands are magical, and I use them now to put all my feelings into the pan.

The Langhe is a paradise, a giardino: pears, apples, pomegranates, chestnuts. Everything you could want to eat falling from a tree. And above all, nocciole. You see those trees? Those are South American hazelnuts. Fatter. Rounder. There are also the smaller Turkish hazelnuts, but Ferrero Rocher uses the big ones to make Nutella. And wine- everywhere, wine. Barbera, Bonarda, Dolcetto, and the king, Nebbiolo, the king of all grapes.

Simple carbohydrates such as sponge cake, rice, or pasta make it through to the small intestine pretty quickly. There, they are digested and rapidly cause an increase in the levels of sugar in our blood. The doorman detains proteins and fats in the stomach for considerably longer. A piece of steak may easily be churned about for six hours before all of it has disappeared into the small intestine. This explains why we often fancy a sweet dessert after eating meat or fatty, fried foods. Our blood sugar levels are impatient and want to rise quickly, and dessert provides a quick blood sugar fix. Meals rich in carbohydrates may perk us up more quickly, but they do not keep us feeling full for as long as meaty or fatty meals. Small Intestine When the mini-morsels reach the small intestine, the real process of digestion begins. As it passes through this tube, the motley cake mush will almost completely disappear into its walls—a bit like Harry Potter on Platform 9¾. The small intestine pluckily pounces on the piece of cake. It squeezes it, hashes it up from all sides, wiggles its villi in what we might now call the cake chyme, and when it is thoroughly mixed, moves it on down the digestive line. Under the microscope we can see that even the microvilli help it along! They move up and down like tiny trampling feet.

Do you know what always runs out first in my supermarket whenever there’s a crisis? Toilet paper! Do you know why? Because it gives us a feeling of being in control of the chaos. When the world doesn’t feel safe, people go and do a big shop, because it makes them feel like they’re DOING something. But they don’t know what they should buy. Milk? You can’t buy a hundred gallons of milk, it’ll just go bad. Cans? Pasta? People rush around like headless chickens buying thousands of different things, but do you know what every single one of them buys? Toilet paper! Because that’s the sort of thing you buy every time you go shopping, and the whole family uses it every day. Can we live without it? Of course we can! But it has been imprinted on us as an everyday item, as normality, so when we get scared we drag great bundles of the stuff home with us, not because we need it but because it feels like we’re taking control of the situation. Do you get what I mean? People need normality in a crisis.

But in those first hours after you take it, your brain is tuned in like nothing you can imagine. Eyes like the Hubble telescope, sensing light that's not even on the spectrum. You might be able to read minds, make time stop, cook pasta that's exactly right every time.

It was haunting to be entangled in this obnoxious cycle. I want to get out of this viciousness. That pizza is staring at me. I think that slice of pie might hurt me. Thirty-five calories for an Oreo cookie; 75caloriesfor a slice of bread; 285 for a slice of pizza; 350for a plate of pasta. You know, maybe I’ll just study the digits of eggs, wheat, vegetables, apples, oranges. Ugh! Stop. It all hurts so much. That’s it. Make it stop. Please, I beg you. Just make it stop. I felt like the walking and living encyclopedia of numbers and digits.

Sloane Sutherland, my beautiful Blackbird. From the moment I met you, you changed the course of my life. I can’t remember anything being fun or exciting or new without you. I can’t remember feeling anything but numb until you burst into my world in your smelly little cage of orzo pastas … I can’t envision the future without you in it. And I don’t want to, not ever. So marry me, Sloane, and we’ll go on crazy adventures forever and fuck shit up, and be best friends and do karate in the garage and make love every day and grow old together. Because I can’t imagine anyone I’d rather spend all those moments with than you.

For my part, I’d come for the textbook and was glad to have it. Betta’s tortellini are now in my head and my hands. I follow her formula for the dough—an egg for every etto of flour, sneaking in an extra yolk if the mix doesn’t look wet enough. I’ve learned to roll out a sheet until I see the grain of the wood underneath. I let it dry if I’m making tagliatelle; I keep it damp if I’m making tortellini. I make a small batch, roll out a sheet, then another, the rhythm of pasta, each movement like the last one. My mind empties. I think only of the task. Is the dough too sticky? Will it tear? Does the sheet, held between my fingers, feel right? But often I wonder what Betta would think, and, like that, I’m back in that valley with its broken-combed mountain tops and the wolves at night and the ever-present feeling that the world is so much bigger than you, and my mind becomes a jumble of associations, of aunts and a round table and laughter you can’t hear anymore, and I am overcome by a feeling of loss. It is, I concluded, a side effect of this kind of food, one that’s handed down from one generation to another, often in conditions of adversity, that you end up thinking of the dead, that the very stuff that sustains you tastes somehow of mortality.

In Scappi's cookbook we see the first Italian recipes ever published that rely heavily on dairy, particularly butter and cheeses. There are also numerous recipes for pasta. Turkey makes its first appearance in an Italian cookbook. And many of us today are familiar with a recipe first found in L'Opera: zabaglione. The flavors that are prevalent in the cookbook are a little cloying to modern audiences, relying heavily on rosewater, sugar, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon. These flavors make sense in the variety of flaky pastries that are described in the book, but can be a little more off-putting when incorporated into a savory pasta dish.

This is one of the worst things about being a working mother. Oh, the work’s all right. You can make arrangements for the work. It’s all the other stuff. The drinks after work, the leaving dos, the Friday nights when someone suggests a curry. All the times, in fact, when the important bonding gets done. Ruth has to miss all that, and she’s lost count of the times when she’s been the last to hear about a dig because ‘we discussed it last night in the pub.’ Phil is a great one for networking, he’s always skulking off with a few cronies to plot over pasta but, then again, Phil is only a working father. Having children doesn’t seem to impinge on his professional life at all.

It's macaroni soup. Curls of pasta swim in steaming, fragrant broth, and pieces of boiled chicken are all tangled up with them, the meat nearly fallen off the bones. It's comfort food, the kind my parents brought over the ocean with them twenty-five years ago, and the kind that doesn't fit westernized Chinese restaurant menus. My mother used to make it for us for breakfast, before we got older and told her we had no time to eat in the morning if we wanted to make the school bus. For years now it's been only the occasional snack, a rare treat. But I still like it best made with sugar, and so does my brother Lei. Only our older sister Yun asks for it this way, savory and salty.

Dream House as an Exercise in Point of View You were not always just a You. I was whole—a symbiotic relationship between my best and worst parts—and then, in one sense of the definition, I was cleaved: a neat lop that took first person—that assured, confident woman, the girl detective, the adventurer—away from second, who was always anxious and vibrating like a too-small breed of dog. I left, and then lived: moved to the East Coast, wrote a book, moved in with a beautiful woman, got married, bought a rambling Victorian in Philadelphia. Learned things: how to make Manhattans and use starchy pasta water to create sauces and keep succulents alive. But you. You took a job as a standardized-test grader. You drove seven hours to Indiana every other week for a year. You churned out mostly garbage for the second half of your MFA. You cried in front of many people. You missed readings, parties, the supermoon. You tried to tell your story to people who didn’t know how to listen. You made a fool of yourself, in more ways than one. I thought you died, but writing this, I’m not sure you did.

Since the 1970s, we have successfully increased our fruits and vegetables by 17 percent, our grains by 29 percent, and reduced the amount of fat we eat from 43 percent to 33 percent of calories or less. The share of those fats that are saturated has also declined, according to the government’s own data. (In these years, Americans also began exercising more.) Cutting back on fat has clearly meant eating more carbohydrates such as grains, rice, pasta, and fruit. A breakfast without eggs and bacon, for instance, is usually one of cereal or oatmeal; low-fat yogurt, a common breakfast choice, is higher in carbohydrates than the whole-fat version, because removing fat from foods nearly always requires adding carbohydrate-based “fat replacers” to make up for lost texture.

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.

Evil has an ordinary face. It laughs, it cries, it deflects, it rationalizes, it makes great pasta. These [Mafia] killers were people who had crossed an indelible line in human experience by intentionally taking another life. They all constructed their own narrative to explain and justify their own killing. None of them saw themselves as bad people. To a person, they all said the same thing: The first time was really, really hard. After that, not so much.

We start our meal in the kitchen, right beside the blazing oven, where one of Franco's cooks chops a filet of local grass-fed beef into rough cubes and dresses it with olive oil and wisps of lemon rind. A puffy disc of dough emerges from the oven, which Franco cuts into wedges before heaping it with mounds of this restrained tartare. The union of warm, smoky bread and cool, grassy beef is enough to make me want to camp out in the kitchen for the rest of the night.

Josh and Rashmi are making out-I can actually see tongue-so I turn to my bread and grapes.How biblical of me. The grapes are smaller than I'm used to, and the skin is slightly textured. Is that dirt? I dip my napkin in water and dab at the tiny purple globes. It helps, but they're still sort of rough. Hmm. St. Clair and Meredith stop talking. I glance up to find them staring at me in matching bemusement. "What?" "Nothing," he says. "Continue your grape bath." "They were dirty." "Have you tried one?" she asks. "No,they've still got these little mud flecks." I hold one up to show them. St. Clair plucks it from my fingers and pops it into his mouth.I'm hypnotized by his lips, his throat, as he swallows. I hesitate. Would I rather have clean food or his good opinion? He picks up another and smiles. "Open up." I open up. The grape brushes my lower lip as he slides it in. It explodes in my mouth, and I'm so startled by the juice that I nearly spit it out. The flavor is intense, more like grape candy than actual fruit. To say I've tasted nothing like it before is an understatement. Meredith and St. Clair laugh. "Wait until you try them as wine," she says. St. Clair twirls a forkful of pasta. "So. How was French class?" The abrupt subject change makes me shudder. "Professeur Gillet is scary. She's all frown lines." I tear off a piece of baguette. The crust crackles, and the inside is light and springy. Oh,man. I shove another hunk into my mouth.

Words, rolling on. Sometimes the Harbinger of Death hears these words, words of house prices and commutes and the price of pasta and the new washing machine and the difficulty of finding a place to dry your wet clothes, and they make him indescribably sad. Tonight, for some reason, as he listens to a story of a life still being built, and speaks of the ending of all things, he is not afraid, and this world, which seemed to be only ashes, begins again to give him an extraordinary joy.

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.

Salt can take a while to dissolve in foods that are low in water, so add it to bread dough early. Leave it out of Italian pasta dough altogether, allowing the salted water to do the work of seasoning as it cooks. Add it early to ramen and udon doughs to strengthen its gluten, as this will result in the desired chewiness. Add salt later to batters and doughs for cakes, pancakes, and delicate pastries to keep them tender, but make sure to whisk these mixes thoroughly so that the salt is evenly distributed before cooking.

The crowds were thick and loud, riddled with feasting, yelling adults, and screaming, overstimulated children. A ride before them was made to look like a jousting ring, while a pavilion to the side boasted a sign: PRINCESS MAKEOVERS. Everything was gendered to the hilt, as if the pasta hardcore misogyny was just a nostalgic throwback that had been transformed into wholesome family fun. Not to mention that the park was teeming with Mercer associates. No wonder the Ketchan elders had referred to it as a fortress. “This place makes me sick.

Despite the challenges, S'Apposentu slowly bloomed into one of Cagliari's most important restaurants. Roberto brought with him the hundreds of little lessons he had learned on the road and transposed them onto Sardinian tradition and terreno. He turned roasted onions into ice cream and peppered it with wild flowers and herbs. He reimagined porceddu, Sardinia's heroic roast pig, as a dense terrine punctuated with local fruits. He made himself into a master: of bread baking, cheese making, meat curing. In 2006, Michelin rewarded him with a star, one of the first ever awarded in Sardinia.

I take 1 gram (1,000 mg) of NMN every morning, along with 1 gram of resveratrol (shaken into my homemade yogurt) and 1 gram of metformin.7 • I take a daily dose of vitamin D, vitamin K2, and 83 mg of aspirin. • I strive to keep my sugar, bread, and pasta intake as low as possible. I gave up desserts at age 40, though I do steal tastes. • I try to skip one meal a day or at least make it really small. My busy schedule almost always means that I miss lunch most days of the week. • Every few months, a phlebotomist comes to my home to draw my blood, which I have analyzed for dozens of biomarkers. When my levels of various markers are not optimal, I moderate them with food or exercise. • I try to take a lot of steps each day and walk upstairs, and I go to the gym most weekends with my son, Ben; we lift weights, jog a bit, and hang out in the sauna before dunking in an ice-cold pool. • I eat a lot of plants and try to avoid eating other mammals, even though they do taste good. If I work out, I will eat meat. • I don’t smoke. I try to avoid microwaved plastic, excessive UV exposure, X-rays, and CT scans. • I try to stay on the cool side during the day and when I sleep at night. • I aim to keep my body weight or BMI in the optimal range for healthspan, which for me is 23 to 25.

That night I make my special pasta carbonara. You fry fresh rosemary in olive oil, with a pinch of salt and insane amounts of finely chopped garlic. Add a little chopped pancetta, then make the sauce by adding a pint of whole milk and curdling it with a tablespoon of vinegar. Boil it down for ten minutes, and mix in a couple of beaten eggs right at the end. Sprinkle on some finely shaved fresh parmesan—never the pre-grated stuff—and coarsely ground black pepper. Good stuff. When I ask Dad the significance of Nineveh, he’s so excited that he can’t stop talking even with long thin worms of sauce-flecked spaghettini burrowing greedily into his mouth. “Ashurbanipal. Assyrian

Still, there will be a connection with the long past--a reference to forgotten events and personages, and to manners, feelings, and opinions, almost or wholly obsolete --which, if adequately translated to the reader, would serve to illustrate how much of old material goes to make up the freshest novelty of human life. Hence, too, might be drawn a weighty lesson from the little-regarded truth, that the act of the passing generation is the germ which may and must produce good or evil fruit in a far-distant time; that, together with the seed of the merely temporary crop, which mortals term expediency, they inevitably sow the acorns of a more enduring growth, which may darkly overshadow their posterity.

She could not tell Jenny that she stands and looks out the window of her kitchen in the morning and the tasks of the day unfurl themselves before her like a roll of celluloid and she thinks, Okay, tick spray and change of clothes and skating lesson and refill the toilet paper and need milk, onions, lemons and order more printer paper and get oil changed in car one and order food for the dog and wax bikini and make pasta with butternut squash and ricotta and wait do we have a fucking dog and get sixty-watt bulbs for the bar and restock Grey Goose and get clothes out of dryer and pluck single black hair from chin and clean car two before extended family comes and bring garbage bins inside and get new plunger and fuck my husband and walk the dog if we have one.

Livia had burnt the onions. And not just any onions, but the ones in her famous sugo alla genovese, that wonderful sauce of reduced onions, flavored with beef stock, celery and chopped parsley, that together with pummarola and ragù form the holy trinity of Neapolitan pasta sauces. To make a true genovese the onions have to be cooked for around five hours over the gentlest heat, stirring occasionally to prevent them from sticking to the bottom of the pan and splashing them with water whenever they look like they are drying out. Onions are remarkable things, for cooked like this they lose almost all their familiar oniony taste and become an intensely sweet, aromatic jam, yet if a single piece happens to burn in the cooking, the acrid taste will permeate the whole dish.

What sort of pasta are you making?" "Pasta con funghi." He watched as she took a bowl of strange, round, reddish brown mushrooms out of the larder. The air immediately filled with their rich, earthy scent. Ripe as a well-cellared cheese, but tinged with the odors of leaf mold and decay, it reminded him a little of the smell of offal in his native Roman dishes. "How many kinds of funghi do you cook with?" he asked. "Oh, hundreds. It just depends on what I find in the woods." "You pick these yourself?" "Of course." As the smell of funghi combined with the scent of hot butter and garlic in the frying pan, Bruno felt his nostrils flare. And not just his nostrils. The smell was stirring up his blood, awakening sensation in a part of him that had been quiescent for a long time.

For the primo piatto, the chef had chosen to serve a dish he called gnocchi- small dumplings made with potato flour. It was an unusual dish as potatoes were a rarity from the New World and largely unknown. The gnocchi were simply dressed in browned butter and sage and then dusted with freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. It was a plain presentation with no garnish, and it was accompanied by a white table wine of no special distinction. My mouth watered as I carried the gnocchi up to the dining room. I'd tasted one dumpling in the kitchen, and I loved the earthy flavor as well as the way it resisted when I sank my teeth in. The butter and sage coated my mouth so that the taste lasted even after I swallowed. I liked the way it felt in my stomach, solid and nourishing, and I looked forward to learning how to make it.

Create a Meal Matrix A meal matrix is a way to decide once what you’ll eat on certain days of the week. Meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday, and Instant Pot Wednesday are all forms of deciding once. At my house, we always have Pasta Monday, Pizza Friday, and Leftovers Saturday. My choices within those categories are open, but I’ve already made a helpful choice. The nice thing about a meal matrix is that it’s completely customizable. You don’t need me to tell you what to decide once; you can make your own choices and plug them in where they make sense. You don’t have to be overly specific with any day or even have every day filled. Three days are enough for me; fewer or more might work better for you. Regardless, deciding your meal matrix once creates an easy, actionable meal planning system that’s the perfect combination of lazy and genius.

Indeed, the very cost of the flag makes the ritual more effective. Of all rituals, sacrifice is the most potent, because of all the things in the world, suffering is the most real. You can never ignore it or doubt it. If you want to make people really believe in some fiction, entice them to make a sacrifice on its behalf. Once you suffer for a story, it is usually enough to convince you that the story is real. If you fast because God commanded you to do so, the tangible feeling of hunger makes God present more than any statue or icon. If you lose your legs in a patriotic war, your stumps and wheelchair make the nation more real than any poem or anthem. On a less grandiose level, by preferring to buy inferior local pasta to imported high-quality Italian pasta you might make a small daily sacrifice that makes the nation feel real even in the supermarket.

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.

Sometimes Sarah would be up and about and when she saw Pete she would let something slip.He would walk into the kitchen to say hello and she would say, ‘Do you think whoever has him knows that he likes to read about space? Do you think they know he loves pasta but hates corn?’They were random questions. Pete tried to answer at first but then he realised that Sarah wasn’t really talking to him. She was simply voicing out loud the questions that went through her head every day, all day, tormenting her. 'Do they know he likes Vegemite toast for breakfast?’ ‘Do they know how he likes his scrambled eggs?’ ‘Are they making sure he has his milk every day?’ ‘Are they keeping him warm?’ ‘Are they being kind to him?’ ‘Is he going to school?’ ‘Do they know he hates to be tickled?’ ‘Are they hurting him? Are they hurting my little boy?’ What could he say to that? Pete said nothing. He hung his head and waited for her to stop asking questions.

But a day later, it was ‘Prof Tim says low fat is a fraud,’ when he was eating a tub of yoghurt at his desk for breakfast. He let that slide too. Until the following morning, when he and a packet of Simba salt-and-vinegar crisps walked out of the morning parade, and Mbali said, ‘Prof Tim says it’s the carbs that make you fat, you know,’ and he couldn’t take it any more and snapped: ‘Prof Tim who?’ And so she told him. Everything. About this Prof Tim Noakes who once got the whole fokken world eating pasta, and then he did an about face and said, no, carbs are what’s making everyone obese, and he wrote a book of recipes, and now he was Mbali’s big hero, ‘Because it takes a great man to admit that he was wrong’, and she had already lost so much weight and she had so much more energy, and it wasn’t all that hard, she didn’t miss the carbs because now she ate cauliflower rice and cauliflower mash and flax seed bread. Flax seed bread, for fuck’s sake.

FETTUCCINI “PORCINI” (Australian Fettuccini) Trudi’s 1st Note: We just returned from a trip to Australia. This is my version of a recipe we experienced in Sydney. It’s easy to make and a wonderful flavor. For the Pasta: Prepare a package of your favorite brand fettuccini pasta as instructed on the package. Use the size that serves 4. When the pasta is cooked, drain it, give it a stir to keep it from sticking together, cover it loosely with foil and set it aside on a cold burner to wait for its yummy sauce. For the Sauce: ¼ pound bacon (regular sliced, not thick) ½ pound (8 ounces) fresh mushrooms sliced, or chopped ½ cup chopped onions (regular yellow onions or green onions—if you use green onions, you can use up to 2 inches of the stem) 4-inch square of fresh salmon filet 15-ounce (approximate—if it’s a bit more, that’s okay) jar of prepared Alfredo sauce Pan fry the bacon until it’s crispy and lift it out of the fat with a slotted spoon to drain it on paper towels. Use the remaining bacon fat in the pan to fry the mushrooms until they are very well done. Add the onions to the pan and continue to fry until the onions are translucent and fully cooked. Cut the raw salmon into cubes and add it to the pan. Fry it until the salmon is fully cooked. Add the drained bacon pieces to the pan and add the Alfredo sauce. Stir everything together until it’s well-combined and heated through. Arrange the pasta you’ve cooked on 4 plates. Ladle the delicious mixture in the frying pan over the pasta and serve to rave reviews! Trudi’s 2nd Note: The porcini is in quotes because I’m sure the restaurant used them, but regular mushrooms work just as well and are easier on the budget. Fresh salmon works great but since it sort of falls apart in the cooking anyway, you probably could use canned or packaged salmon and get the same results. If you prefer, you could also use packaged Alfredo sauce mix and prepare it yourself.

Let’s say we are making bread dough. We add a bit of yeast to the flour to make the bread rise. The yeast causes many tiny air pockets to form, which is what makes bread different from, say, a shingle. Now, as you eat the baked bread, your stomach acid and digestive enzymes enter those air pockets and rapidly break the molecules of flour into individual sugar molecules that then pass from your digestive tract into your bloodstream. Even whole wheat bread, with shreds of fiber remaining, is easy pickings for digestive enzymes—they have no difficulty entering the air pockets and digesting the starch in the bread. Pasta is different. It is not made with yeast, so it has no air pockets. If bread is like a pile of tiny twigs, ready to ignite with a single spark, pasta is like a cord of logs—it is much more compacted and “catches fire” more slowly. Even if you chew pasta thoroughly, there is no way it can digest as rapidly as bread—and that’s why it has a lower GI.

It's eight, and it's time to prepare the filet mignons encrusted with pepper, sliced and served with an Israeli couscous salad with almonds, feta cheese, cherry tomatoes, roasted red peppers, preserved lemons, braised fennel, and artichoke bottoms. Funny, when I'd first made this meal for Caro, she didn't believe me when I'd presented the fine or medium grains at Moroccan or Algerian restaurants. Regardless of the name, Israeli couscous is more pasta-like and not crushed, but delicious all the same, and I love the texture---especially when making a Mediterranean-infused creation that celebrates the flavors of both spring and summer. While Oded preps the salad, I sear the steaks, and an aroma hits my nostrils---more potent than pepper---with a hint of floral notes, hazelnut, and citrus. I don't think anything of it, because my recipe is made up from a mix of many varieties of peppercorns---black, green, white, red, and pink. Maybe I'd added in a fruitier green?

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.

After a lineup of stellar secondi- braised tripe, fried lamb chops, veal braciola simmered in tomato sauce- Andrea and I wander into the kitchen to talk with Leonardo Vignoli, the man behind the near-perfect meal. Cesare al Casaletto had been a neighborhood anchor since the 1950's, but when Leonardo and his wife, Maria Pia Cicconi, bought it in 2009, they began implementing small changes to modernize the food. Eleven years working in Michelin-starred restaurants in France gave Leonardo a perspective and a set of skills to bring back to Rome. "I wanted to bring my technical base to the flavors and aromas I grew up on." From the look of the menu, Cesare could be any other trattoria in Rome; it's not until you twirl that otherworldly cacio e pepe (which Leonardo makes using ice in the pan to form a thicker, more stable emulsion) and attack his antipasti- polpette di bollito, crunchy croquettes made from luscious strands of long-simmered veal; a paper cone filled with fried squid, sweet and supple, light and greaseless- that you understand what makes this place special.

What Dr. Price's work teaches us is that the absolute fundamental requirement of healthy diets cannot be found in pasta, nor vegetable juices, nor oat bran, nor olive oil, but only in certain types of animal fats. These fats come from animals who consume green, growing organisms (such as grass and plankton), or who consume other animals that have consumed green, growing organisms (such as insects). What is tragic is the difficulty in finding such foods today. Most of our dairy cows spend their entire lives in confinement and never see green grass; chickens are kept in pens and fed mostly grains; pigs are raised in factories and never see sunlight; even fish are now raised in fish farms and given inappropriate feed, like soy pellets. Even worse, most people avoid these foods today because medical spokesmen claim they cause cancer, heart disease or weight gain, even though a number of highly qualified scientists have admirably refuted these charges. Suffice it to say that the patient who is afraid of consuming foods containing animal fats and cholesterol will make no headway in his efforts to improve his diet as these foods are absolutely vital for good health.

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.

He had in his head a scrapbook of the tastes that had impacted him the most during his travels: goat cheese and olive oil in California, the tropical fruits and chilies of South America, everything that had touched his lips in Japan. When Angelo and Paolo talk about their travels, they turn to the memories- the parties, the people, the crazy times had, always with the metronome of mozzarella beating in the background. But what followed Vito were the flavors- the dishes, the ingredients, and techniques unknown to most of Italy. "When I came back from Japan, there were six kilos of matcha, two kilos of coconut powder, and twelve bottles of Nikka whiskey in my bag. In Rome they stopped me and opened the bag. They thought they had caught me with cocaine. I told the guy to open up the bag and taste." Vito didn't drink Nikka (he and his brothers rarely drink alcohol); instead, he emptied all twelve bottles into a wooden bucket, where he now soaks blue cheese made from sheep's milk to make what he calls formaggio clandestino. He stirs up a spoon of high-grade matcha powder into Dicecca's fresh goat yogurt and sells it in clear plastic tubs, anxious for anyone- a loyal client, a stranger, a disheveled writer- to taste something new.

Eat either three regular-size meals a day or four or five smaller meals. Do not skip meals or go more than six waking hours without eating. 2. Eat liberally of combinations of fat and protein in the form of poultry, fish, shellfish, eggs and red meat, as well as of pure, natural fat in the form of butter, mayonnaise, olive oil, safflower, sunflower and other vegetable oils (preferably expeller-pressed or cold-pressed). 3. Eat no more than 20 grams a day of carbohydrate, most of which must come in the form of salad greens and other vegetables. You can eat approximately three cups-loosely packed-of salad, or two cups of salad plus one cup of other vegetables (see the list of acceptable vegetables on page 110). 4. Eat absolutely no fruit, bread, pasta, grains, starchy vegetables or dairy products other than cheese, cream or butter. Do not eat nuts or seeds in the first two weeks. Foods that combine protein and carbohydrates, such as chickpeas, kidney beans and other legumes, are not permitted at this time. 5. Eat nothing that is not on the acceptable foods list. And that means absolutely nothing! Your "just this one taste won't hurt" rationalization is the kiss of failure during this phase of Atkins. 6. Adjust the quantity you eat to suit your appetite, especially as it decreases. When hungry, eat the amount that makes you feel satisfied but not stuffed. When not hungry, eat a small controlled carbohydrate snack to accompany your nutritional supplements. 7. Don't assume any food is low in carbohydrate-instead read labels! Check the carb count (it's on every package) or use the carbohydrate gram counter in this book. 8. Eat out as often as you wish but be on guard for hidden carbs in gravies, sauces and dressings. Gravy is often made with flour or cornstarch, and sugar is sometimes an ingredient in salad dressing. 9. Avoid foods or drinks sweetened with aspartame. Instead, use sucralose or saccharin. Be sure to count each packet of any of these as 1 gram of carbs. 10. Avoid coffee, tea and soft drinks that contain caffeine. Excessive caffeine has been shown to cause low blood sugar, which can make you crave sugar. 11. Drink at least eight 8-ounce glasses of water each day to hydrate your body, avoid constipation and flush out the by-products of burning fat. 12. If you are constipated, mix a tablespoon or more of psyllium husks in a cup or more of water and drink daily. Or mix ground flaxseed into a shake or sprinkle wheat bran on a salad or vegetables.

Italian cuisine is the most famous and beloved cuisine in the world for a reason. Accessible, comforting, seemingly simple but endlessly delicious, it never disappoints, just as it seems to never change. It would be easy to give you, dear reader, a book filled with the al dente images of the Italy of your imagination. To pretend as if everything in this country is encased in amber. But Italian cuisine is not frozen in time. It's exposed to the same winds that blow food traditions in new directions every day. And now, more than at any time in recent or distant memory, those forces are stirring up change across the country that will forever alter the way Italy eats. That change starts here, in Rome, the capital of Italy, the cradle of Western civilization, a city that has been reinventing itself for three millennia- since, as legend has it, Romulus murdered his brother Remus and built the foundations of Rome atop the Palatine Hill. Here you'll find a legion of chefs and artisans working to redefine the pillars of Italian cuisine: pasta, pizza, espresso, gelato, the food that makes us non-Italians dream so ravenously of this country, that makes us wish we were Italians, and that stirs in the people of Italy no small amount of pride and pleasure.

Load the sailboat with bottles of white wine, olive oil, fishing rods, and yeasty, dark-crusted bread. Work your way carefully out of the narrow channels of the Cabras port on the western shore of Sardinia. Set sail for the open seas. Navigate carefully around the archipelago of small boats fishing for sea bass, bream, squid. Steer clear of the lines of mussel nets swooping in long black arcs off the coastline. When you spot the crumbling stone tower, turn the boat north and nuzzle it gently into the electric blue-green waters along ancient Tharros. Drop anchor. Strip down to your bathing suit. Load into the transport boat and head for shore. After a swim, make for the highest point on the peninsula, the one with the view of land and sea and history that will make your knees buckle. Stay focused. You're not here to admire the sun-baked ruins of one of Sardinia's oldest civilizations, a five-thousand-year-old settlement that wears the footprints of its inhabitants- Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans- like the layers of a cake. You're here to pick herbs growing wildly among the ancient tombs and temples, under shards of broken vases once holding humans' earliest attempts at inebriation. Taste this! Like peppermint, but spicy. And this! A version of wild lemon thyme, perfect with seafood. Pluck a handful of finocchio marino,sea fennel, a bright burst of anise with an undertow of salt. Withfinocchioin fist, reboard the transport vessel and navigate toward the closest buoy. Grab the bright orange plastic, roll it over, and scrape off the thicket of mussels growing beneath. Repeat with the other buoys until you have enough mussels to fill a pot. In the belly of the boat, bring the dish together: Scrub the mussels. Bring a pot of seawater to a raucous boil and drop in the spaghetti- cento grammi a testa. While the pasta cooks, blanch a few handfuls of the wild fennel to take away some of the sting. Remove the mussels from their shells and combine with sliced garlic, a glass of seawater, and a deluge of peppery local olive oil in a pan. Take the pasta constantly, checking for doneness. (Don't you dare overcook it!) When only the faintest resistance remains in the middle, drain and add to the pan of mussels. Move the pasta fast and frequently with a pair of tongs, emulsifying the water and mussel juice with the oil. Keep stirring and drizzling in oil until a glistening sheen forms on the surface of the pasta. This is called la mantecatura, the key to all great seafood pastas, so take the time to do it right.

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.

Despite the raised voices and the wild gesticulations, nobody here is wrong. The beauty of ragù is that it's an idea as much as it is a recipe, a slow-simmered distillation of what means and circumstances have gifted you: If Zia Peppe's ragù is made with nothing but pork scraps, that's because her neighbor raises pigs. When Maria cooks her vegetables in a mix of oil and butter, it's because her family comes from a long line of dairy farmers. When Nonna Anna slips a few laurel leaves into the pot, she plucks them from the tree outside her back door. There is no need for a decree from the Chamber of Commerce to tell these women what qualifies as the authentic ragù; what's authentic is whatever is simmering under the lid. Eventually the women agree to disagree and the rolling boil of the debate calms to a gentle simmer. Alessandro opens a few bottles of pignoletto he's brought to make the peace. We drink and take photos and make small talk about tangential ragù issues such as the proper age of Parmesan and the troubled state of the prosciutto industry in the region. On my way out, Anna no. 1 grabs me by the arm. She pulls me close and looks up into my eyes with an earnestness that drowns out the rest of the chatter in the room. "Forget about these arguments. Forget about the small details. Just remember that the most important ingredient for making ragù, the one thing you can never forget, is love." Lisetta overhears from across the room and quickly adds, "And pancetta!

It is surely absurd to seek God in terms of a preconceived idea of what God is. To seek thus is only to find what we know already, which is why it is so easy to deceive oneself into all manner of “supernatural” experiences and visions. To believe in God and to look for the God you believe in is simply to seek confirmation of an opinion. To ask for a revelation of God’s will, and then to “test” it by reference to your preconceived moral standards is to make a mockery of asking. You knew the answer already. Seeking for “God” in this way is no more than asking for the stamp of absolute authority and certainty on what you believe in any case, for a guarantee that the unknown and the future will be a continuation of what you want to retain from the past—a bigger and better fortress for “I.” Ein feste Burg! If we are open only to discoveries which will accord with what we know already, we may as well stay shut. This is why the marvelous achievements of science and technology are of so little real use to us. It is in vain that we can predict and control the course of events in the future, unless we know how to live in the present. It is in vain that doctors prolong life if we spend the extra time being anxious to live still longer. It is in vain that engineers devise faster and easier means of travel if the new sights that we see are merely sorted and understood in terms of old prejudices. It is in vain that we get the power of the atom if we are just to continue in the rut of blowing people up.

He took a napkin-wrapped package out of the bag and offered it to her. “Also,” he added, “I make a mean cheese sandwich. Try one.” Clary smiled reluctantly and sat down across from him. The stone floor of the greenhouse was cold against her skin, but it was pleasant after so many days of relentless heat. Out of the paper bag Jace drew some apples, a bar of fruit and nut chocolate, and a bottle of water. “Not a bad haul,” she said admiringly. The cheese sandwich was warm and a little limp, but it tasted fine. From one of the innumerable pockets inside his jacket, Jace produced a bone-handled knife that looked capable of disemboweling a grizzly. He set to work on the apples, carving them into meticulous eighths. “Well, it’s not birthday cake,” he said, handing her a section, “but hopefully it’s better than nothing.” “Nothing is what I was expecting, so thanks.” She took a bite. The apple tasted green and cool. “Nobody should get nothing on their birthday.” He was peeling the second apple, the skin coming away in long curling strips. “Birthdays should be special. My birthday was always the one day my father said I could do or have anything I wanted.” “Anything?” She laughed. “Like what kind of anything did you want?” “Well, when I was five, I wanted to take a bath in spaghetti.” “But he didn’t let you, right?” “No, that’s the thing. He did. He said it wasn’t expensive, and why not if that was what I wanted? He had the servants fill a bath with boiling water and pasta, and when it cooled down …” He shrugged. “I took a bath in it.” Servants? Clary thought. Out loud she said, “How was it?” “Slippery.

Hey beautiful,” Trey answers, sounding exhausted. “Hey you.” My heart clenches in my chest from the sound of his voice. He breathes heavily. “I’m sitting here, shirt off, beer in hand, TV on, and I feel so fucking empty.” The image of him lying on the couch we bought together, his beautiful body stretched out across the cushions, makes me ache in places I haven’t ached in a long time. I want him so bad. “I’m missing my girl tucked against my chest.” “I would give anything to be there right now,” I answer honestly. Sighing, he asks, “Remember that piece of spaghetti I threw on the ceiling the night before you left?” “Yeah.” I smile to myself, thinking about that night. Trey insisted upon making spaghetti and meatballs for me. He came home with a grocery bag full of pasta, spaghetti sauce, and pre-made meatballs. When cooking the noodles, he told me an “old wives’ tale.” He said if you throw the noodles to the ceiling and it sticks, then the pasta is done. What he didn’t realize is if that pasta never comes down, you overcooked it. “It fell this morning. Scared the shit out of me. I thought it was a spider trying to bury itself in my hair while I was making eggs.” A laugh bursts out of me as I think about Trey bouncing around the apartment, spaghetti in hair thinking it was a spider. “Oh no. Miss Pasta-relli finally fell?” “She did and that squirrely bitch knew exactly what she was doing, too. Trying to scare the crap right out of me.” “Seems like she did.” I chuckle. “But I got the last laugh when I turned the trash compactor on. Her little pasta self squiggled down the drain. Revenge never felt so sweet.” Still laughing, I shake my head. “Is this what your life has come to? Fighting with old, overcooked pasta?” “I’m telling you, Amelia, with you gone, I’ve lost my damn mind.” “Sounds like it

The only point that everyone I spoke with in Rome agrees upon is that Armando al Pantheon is one of the city's last true trattorie. Given the location, Claudio and his family could have gone the way of the rest of the neighborhood a long time ago and mailed it in with a handful of fresh mozzarella and prosciutto. But he's chosen the opposite path, an unwavering dedication to the details- the extra steps that make the oxtail more succulent, the pasta more perfectly toothsome, the artichokes and favas and squash blossoms more poetic in their expression of the Roman seasons. "I experiment in my own small ways. I want to make something new, but I also want my guests to think of their mothers and grandmothers. I want them to taste their infancy, to taste their memories. Like that great scene in Ratatouille." I didn't grow up on amatriciana and offal, but when I eat them here, they taste like a memory I never knew I had. I keep coming back. For the cacio e pepe, which sings that salty-spicy duet with unrivaled clarity, thanks to the depth charge of toasted Malaysian peppercorns Claudio employs. For his coda alla vaccinara, as Roman as the Colosseum, a masterpiece of quinto quarto cookery: the oxtail cooked to the point of collapse, bathed in a tomato sauce with a gentle green undertow of celery, one of Rome's unsung heroes. For the vegetables: one day a crostini of stewed favas and pork cheek, the next a tumble of bitter puntarelle greens bound in a bracing anchovy vinaigrette. And always the artichokes. If Roman artichokes are drugs, Claudio's are pure poppy, a vegetable so deeply addictive that I find myself thinking about it at the most inappropriate times. Whether fried into a crisp, juicy flower or braised into tender, melting submission, it makes you wonder what the rest of the world is doing with their thistles.

Pizzoccheri — SERVES 4 TO 6 — 1 medium Savoy cabbage A big, sexy slab of Valtellina cheese, or something similar, like fontina 3 large yellow potatoes A fuck of a lot of butter 4 large garlic cloves 1 pound pizzoccheri Extra-virgin olive oil 2 handfuls grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, or Bitto (if available and you can afford it) Salt Remove and discard any tough outer leaves from the cabbage and roughly chop it into long pieces. Thinly cut about 15 pieces of Valtellina cheese and also grate about 3 cups. Set aside. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Peel and dice the potatoes and boil until cooked but still firm, about 15 minutes or so. Halfway through boiling, add the cabbage to the potatoes. When the potatoes and cabbage are cooked, drain them and set them aside. In a large, deep frying pan over low heat, melt the fuckload of butter. Gently crush (if that’s even possible) the garlic cloves, place them in the pan, and cook until they soften and the butter has melted but not turned brown. Boil the pizzoccheri until al dente and drain, reserving about 2 cups of the water. Return the pizzoccheri to the pot and drizzle them with a little olive oil or some butter so they don’t stick together. Pour a little of the garlic butter into a baking dish and begin to layer the ingredients, starting with the pizzoccheri, then the cabbage, then the potatoes, then both cheeses, drizzling more garlic butter over the whole mixture after each layer, adding a bit of the reserved pasta water to ensure it doesn’t get too thick but making sure it doesn’t get too watery. You may need only a cup. Top the final layer with a drizzle of olive oil and more grated cheese. Cover with foil and bake for about 15 minutes or so. Remove the foil and return to the oven until the top has a slight crisp. Salt to taste. Serve it and eat it and drink a lot of wine with it and think about how much you deserve it after you burned off so many

Spaghetti alla puttanesca is typically made with tomatoes, olives, anchovies, capers, and garlic. It means, literally, "spaghetti in the style of a prostitute." It is a sloppy dish, the tomatoes and oil making the spaghetti lubricated and slippery. It is the sort of sauce that demands you slurp the noodles Goodfellas style, staining your cheeks with flecks of orange and red. It is very salty and very tangy and altogether very strong; after a small plate, you feel like you've had a visceral and significant experience. There are varying accounts as to when and how the dish originated- but the most likely explanation is that it became popular in the mid-twentieth century. The first documented mention of it is in Raffaele La Capria's 1961 novel, Ferito a Morte. According to the Italian Pasta Makers Union, spaghetti alla puttanesca was a very popular dish throughout the sixties, but its exact genesis is not quite known. Sandro Petti, a famous Napoli chef and co-owner of Ischian restaurant Rangio Fellone, claims to be its creator. Near closing time one evening, a group of customers sat at one of his tables and demanded to be served a meal. Running low on ingredients, Petti told them he didn't have enough to make anything, but they insisted. They were tired, and they were hungry, and they wanted pasta. "Facci una puttanata qualsiasi!" they cried. "Make any kind of garbage!" The late-night eater is not usually the most discerning. Petti raided the kitchen, finding four tomatoes, two olives, and a jar of capers, the base of the now-famous spaghetti dish; he included it on his menu the next day under the name spaghetti alla puttanesca. Others have their own origin myths. But the most common theory is that it was a quick, satisfying dish that the working girls of Naples could knock up with just a few key ingredients found at the back of the fridge- after a long and unforgiving night. As with all dishes containing tomatoes, there are lots of variations in technique. Some use a combination of tinned and fresh tomatoes, while others opt for a squirt of puree. Some require specifically cherry or plum tomatoes, while others go for a smooth, premade pasta. Many suggest that a teaspoon of sugar will "open up the flavor," though that has never really worked for me. I prefer fresh, chopped, and very ripe, cooked for a really long time. Tomatoes always take longer to cook than you think they will- I rarely go for anything less than an hour. This will make the sauce stronger, thicker, and less watery. Most recipes include onions, but I prefer to infuse the oil with onions, frying them until brown, then chucking them out. I like a little kick in most things, but especially in pasta, so I usually go for a generous dousing of chili flakes. I crush three or four cloves of garlic into the oil, then add any extras. The classic is olives, anchovies, and capers, though sometimes I add a handful of fresh spinach, which nicely soaks up any excess water- and the strange, metallic taste of cooked spinach adds an interesting extra dimension. The sauce is naturally quite salty, but I like to add a pinch of sea or Himalayan salt, too, which gives it a slightly more buttery taste, as opposed to the sharp, acrid salt of olives and anchovies. I once made this for a vegetarian friend, substituting braised tofu for anchovies. Usually a solid fish replacement, braised tofu is more like tuna than anchovy, so it was a mistake for puttanesca. It gave the dish an unpleasant solidity and heft. You want a fish that slips and melts into the pasta, not one that dominates it. In terms of garnishing, I go for dried oregano or fresh basil (never fresh oregano or dried basil) and a modest sprinkle of cheese. Oh, and I always use spaghetti. Not fettuccine. Not penne. Not farfalle. Not rigatoni. Not even linguine. Always spaghetti.

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.

It's basty!" "There's definitely a soup underneath the crust. I see carrots. Gingko nuts. Mushrooms. And... Shark fin! Simmered until it's falling apart!" Aah! It's all too much! I-I don't care if I burn my mouth... I want to dive in right now! Mm! Mmmm! UWAAAAH! "Incredible! The shark fin melts into a soft wave of warm umami goodness on the tongue... ...with the crispy piecrust providing a delectably crunchy contrast!" "Mmm... this piecrust shows all the signs of the swordsmanship he stole from Eishi Tsukasa too." Instead of melting warm butter to mix into the flour, he grated cold butter into granules and blended them... ... to form small lumps that then became airy layers during the baking, making the crust crispier and lighter. A light, airy crust like that soaks up the broth, making it the perfect complement to this dish! "Judge Ohizumi, what's that "basty" thing you were talking about?" "It's a dish in a certain style of cooking that's preserved for centuries in Nagasaki- Shippoku cuisine." "Shippoku cuisine?" Centuries ago, when Japan was still closed off from the rest of the world, only the island of Dejima in Nagasaki was permitted to trade with the West. There, a new style of cooking that fused Japanese, Chinese and Western foods was born- Shippoku cuisine! One of its signature dishes is Basty, which is a soup covered with a lattice piecrust. *It's widely assumed that Basty originated from the Portuguese word "Pasta."* "Shippoku cuisine is already a hybrid of many vastly different cooking styles, making it a perfect choice for this theme!" "The lattice piecrust is French. Under it is a wonderfully savory Chinese shark fin soup. And the soup's rich chicken broth and the vegetables in it have all been thoroughly infused with powerfully aromatic spices... ... using distinctively Indian spice blends and techniques!" "Hm? Wait a minute. There's more than just shark fin and vegetables in this soup. This looks just like an Italian ravioli! I wonder what's in it? ?!" "Holy crap, look at it stretch!" "What is that?! Mozzarella?! A mochi pouch?!" "Nope! Neither! That's Dondurma. Or as some people call it... ... Turkish ice cream. A major ingredient in Dondurma is salep, a flour made from the root of certain orchids. It gives the dish a thick, sticky texture. The moist chewiness of ravioli pasta melds together with the sticky gumminess of the Dondurma... ... making for an addictively thick and chewy texture!

Load the sailboat with bottles of white wine, olive oil, fishing rods, and yeasty, dark-crusted bread. Work your way carefully out of the narrow channels of the Cabras port on the western shore of Sardinia. Set sail for the open seas. Navigate carefully around the archipelago of small boats fishing for sea bass, bream, squid. Steer clear of the lines of mussel nets swooping in long black arcs off the coastline. When you spot the crumbling stone tower, turn the boat north and nuzzle it gently into the electric blue-green waters along ancient Tharros. Drop anchor. Strip down to your bathing suit. Load into the transport boat and head for shore. After a swim, make for the highest point on the peninsula, the one with the view of land and sea and history that will make your knees buckle. Stay focused. You're not here to admire the sun-baked ruins of one of Sardinia's oldest civilizations, a five-thousand-year-old settlement that wears the footprints of its inhabitants- Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans- like the layers of a cake. You're here to pick herbs growing wildly among the ancient tombs and temples, under shards of broken vases once holding humans' earliest attempts at inebriation. Taste this! Like peppermint, but spicy. And this! A version of wild lemon thyme, perfect with seafood. Pluck a handful of finocchio marino,sea fennel, a bright burst of anise with an undertow of salt. With finocchio in fist, reboard the transport vessel and navigate toward the closest buoy. Grab the bright orange plastic, roll it over, and scrape off the thicket of mussels growing beneath. Repeat with the other buoys until you have enough mussels to fill a pot. In the belly of the boat, bring the dish together: Scrub the mussels. Bring a pot of seawater to a raucous boil and drop in the spaghetti- cento grammi a testa. While the pasta cooks, blanch a few handfuls of the wild fennel to take away some of the sting. Remove the mussels from their shells and combine with sliced garlic, a glass of seawater, and a deluge of peppery local olive oil in a pan. Take the pasta constantly, checking for doneness. (Don't you dare overcook it!) When only the faintest resistance remains in the middle, drain and add to the pan of mussels. Move the pasta fast and frequently with a pair of tongs, emulsifying the water and mussel juice with the oil. Keep stirring and drizzling in oil until a glistening sheen forms on the surface of the pasta. This is called la mantecatura, the key to all great seafood pastas, so take the time to do it right.

cheese danish cups Makes 8 1 tube refrigerated crescent roll dough (8 pieces) 8 ounces light cream cheese ¼ cup powdered sugar ½ teaspoon vanilla 1 egg yolk 4−6 tablespoons strawberry jam Regular 1. Preheat oven to 400°F, and prepare 8 regular muffin cups. 2. Place one crescent roll in each cup, with the thin pointy side of the triangle coming out of the cup and the opposite side in the bottom of the cup. Then wrap and tuck the long pointy end around the sides of the cup, pressing it and the bottom edge so the entire cup is lined. 3. Mix cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, and egg yolk, until completely combined. 4. Divide cream cheese mixture among cups and use your thumb or a spoon to create a big indent in the middle of each. 5. Place about ½ to ¾ tablespoon strawberry jam in each indentation. 6. Bake for 10−12 minutes, until filling is set and roll is golden brown. Who knew making Danish could be so incredibly simple? Try it with different flavors of jams. CALORIES 213 calories FAT 10.5 grams PROTEIN 4.6 grams SODIUM 358 mg

The sun rose at 7 A.M. each day, and that’s when the SpaceX team got to work. A series of meetings would take place with people listing what needed to get done, and debating solutions to lingering problems. As the large structures arrived, the workers placed the body of the rocket horizontally in a makeshift hangar and spent hours melding together all of its parts. “There was always something to do,” Hollman said. “If the engine wasn’t a problem, then there was an avionics problem or a software problem.” By 7 P.M., the engineers wound down their work. “One or two people would decide it was their night to cook, and they would make steak and potatoes and pasta,” Hollman said. “We had a bunch of movies and a DVD player, and some of us did a lot of fishing off the docks.” For many of the engineers, this was both a torturous and magical experience. “At Boeing you could be comfortable, but that wasn’t going to happen at SpaceX,” said Walter Sims, a SpaceX tech expert who found time to get certified to dive while on Kwaj. “Every person on that island was a fucking star, and they were always holding seminars on radios or the engine. It was such an invigorating place.

One night, mid–ragù finto making, I suddenly turned Thai-ward,” he writes, “inspired, for some reason, to leave the pasta for another time.

make sure to get whole-grains, veggies, and beans. For simple and delicious dishes, I would recommend: Kale Tomatoes Bell peppers Mushroom Squashes Garlic Peas Whole grain pastas Rice Corn Bagels Sweet potatoes Firm Tofu

contemporary Indonesian cultural/historical memory is in fact quite short.14 Thus the New Order discourse of channeling the “ancient” Javanese artistic past—a realm of tradition claimed to have been barely touched by the long ravages of history—of course fails to “remember” that artistic change has consistently followed the diverse cultural, economic, and religious exchange that Java has always engaged in. The exploiting, colonizing Europeans (whose full-to-bursting museums provide much of the contemporary evidence of historical Indonesian contact with outsiders) were relative latecomers to this process, following millennia of local trade with other parts of Asia as well as the entrance of Hinduism from India, bringing with it, among many other things, the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics that continue to figure hugely into what is now referred to as “traditional Indonesian dance.

Activities to Develop the Tactile Sense Rub-a-Dub-Dub—Encourage the child to rub a variety of textures against her skin. Offer different kinds of soap (oatmeal soap, shaving cream, lotion soap) and scrubbers (loofah sponges, thick washcloths, foam pot-scrubbers, plastic brushes). Water Play—Fill the kitchen sink with sudsy water and unbreakable pitchers and bottles, turkey basters, sponges, eggbeaters, and toy water pumps. Or, fill a washtub with water and toys and set it on the grass. Pouring and measuring are educational and therapeutic, as well as high forms of entertainment. Water Painting—Give the child a bucket of water and paintbrush to paint the porch steps, the sidewalk, the fence, or her own body. Or, provide a squirt bottle filled with clean water (because the squirts often go in the child’s mouth). Finger Painting—Let the sensory craver wallow in this literally “sensational” activity. Encourage (but don’t force) the sensory avoider to stick a finger into the goop. For different tactile experiences, mix sand into the paint, or place a blob of shaving cream, peanut butter, or pudding on a plastic tray. Encourage him to draw shapes, letters, and numbers. If he “messes up,” he can erase the error with his hand and begin again. Finger Drawing—With your finger, “draw” a shape, letter, number, or design on the child’s back or hand. Ask the child to guess what it is and then to pass the design on to another person. Sand Play—In a sandbox, add small toys (cars, trucks, people, and dinosaurs), which the child can rearrange, bury, and rediscover. Instead of sand, use dried beans, rice, pasta, cornmeal, popcorn, and mud. Making mud pies and getting messy are therapeutic, too.

Keep going! You can do it!” I was going to kill this bitch. “Everyone starts somewhere. Keep it up!” I was going to make her suffer. “Just ten more seconds!” I was going to rip her heart out and eat it on top of a giant plate of pasta.

The grilled calamari and spinach antipasto has been a mainstay since we opened, so paying a premium to keep it on the menu is a no-brainer, providing the quality is sufficiently high. I get one of the line guys to pull the lunch menus and type a new one that I dictate while pulling stuff from the walk-in and freezer. Today, our prix fixe menu will feature cucina poverta: polpettone alla napoletana, an Italian meat loaf; pappa al pomodoro; a ragout with sausages and peppers; and braciole (providing Rob, the meat guy, comes through in time). When the meat still has not shown up by ten I'm on the phone yelling at some hapless office person, although it's just about hopeless, because, unless the meat shows up in the next five minutes, there will not be enough time to make the braciole. To cover for the fact that we were only able to buy fifteen pounds of calamari from Dean and Deluca (at an exorbitant price), Tony and I devise an additional antipasto, a ricotta and Pecorino torta flavored with hot pepper and prosciutto.