ORECCHIETTE

I always say that although I wasn't born during the Great Depression, I feel that I lived through it because not one day passed that my mother failed to remind us of it!

Last night, I served baked ziti for dinner. When I was telling a friend about all the different pastas in my cupboard (3 kinds of spaghetti; macaroni, farfalle, penne rigate, rigatoni, mostaccioli, fettuccine, canneloni, rotini, rainbow rotini, trucioli, ditalini, orzo, pasta rings and stars) I realized that I had all those pastas because I could remember my mother telling the story of how, during the Depression, she had gotten some macaroni and she had to pick out the "weevils" to be able to cook it for my brother Bode and herself and that's all they had to eat that day!

I do tend to go overboard and my brother Les will make a list of what NOT to buy until we have room for it. I use all of the different pastas because I make a pasta dish once a week since cooked tomatoes are heart-healthy products! When I brought home the stars (with "authentic Italian soup pasta" written right on the package!) Les wailed, "ENOUGH ALREADY; we have enough pasta for ten years!"

In e-mailing my friend Patty, what did she write in return? About ORECCHIETTE! I had never heard of orecchiette; how could I not have known about oriecchiette? I asked Les and he said, "Oh, yeah, I saw it on the Food Network; it means "little ears" in Italian!" I must have orecchiette! I haven't been able to find any locally, but my sister-in-law Jean and niece Norma have accepted the mission to find it!