14 BOXES

In yesterday's article I referenced that I had 14 boxes of different pasta in my cupboard.

The following is from Sue's News 2010:

                        ORECCHIETTE

When I was telling Agnes, a fellow Water Aerobics member, that I wanted orecchiette but could not find any locally, she told me that she had some at home and she would bring it to me.  At the next class, she gave me an unopened package of orecchiette.   Agnes is of Italian descent and she told me that orecchiette means "little ears" in Italian.

I told Agnes that I had quite a number of different  pastas in my cupboard and I counted them:  spaghetti; macaroni, farfalle, penne rigate, rigatoni, mostaccioli, fettuccine, canneloni, rotini, rainbow rotini, trucioli, ditalini, pasta rings, and stars.  

She asked why I had so many and I told her I make a pasta dish once a week because cooked tomatoes are heart-healthy products and although all the pastas made from semolina, the taste is different because of the absorbency of the different shapes of the different pastas. 

I realized that I have all those pastas because I could remember my mother telling, how, during the Depression, she had gotten some macaroni and she had to pick out the "weevils" to be able to cook it and that's all that she and my brother Bode had to eat for the day.  I oftentimes say that although I hadn't actually lived during the Depression, I felt as if I did because I heard about it every day.

I do tend to go overboard;  Les will make a list of what NOT to buy until we have room for it.  When I brought the orecchiette home, he wailed, "ENOUGH ALREADY;  we have enough pasta for 10 years!"