I’m sick today. I came down with a dreadful head cold on Monday (probably passed on to me by one of those kids I hung out with at school last week) so I’ve spent the last two days in bed sniffling and coughing and sipping tea, and the only thing I’ve wanted to eat besides navel oranges is….pasta. Yep, pasta. I’m totally bummed, and a little bit vexed, that real Italian ladies (see Gina’s post) don’t imbibe in the stuff from time to time like I do (i.e. often). They must have a stash in their cupboards, no? That they boil up and devour when nobody’s home?
I’ve already written about my family’s fondness for using food (particularly cheese) as a salve to cure all ills and being stuffy and sick is no exception. When I was a child my mother would whip up a batch of chicken soup with pasta whenever one of us kids got sick. There were other pasta-based treats she cooked up when we were under the weather, too. Tiny, star-shaped pastina that she’d toss with olive oil and parmesan, spiral-shaped rotini with tomato sauce that she’d ladle out of the the bottomless pot of leftovers that sat sentry in our fridge (next to the cheese) and, of course, the most famous pasta-based comfort food of all: macaroni and cheese.
I cannot imagine life without pasta and I’m glad I don’t have to.
I’ll be back with more clarity and deeper thoughts about living here and there as soon as I’m feeling better but for now, I’m going go have some medicine: a bowl of linguine and fresh garlic that Ray just whipped up for me. Yum.