Latest / Family Tree Food Stories / Pasta History & Italian Food Myths: How it Went From Street Food & Kneaded With Bare Feet to America's Favorite Comfort Food? | Ep. 87"

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Pasta History & Italian Food Myths: How it Went From Street Food & Kneaded With Bare Feet to America's Favorite Comfort Food? | Ep. 87" · Family Tree Food Stories

• 0:05
  Nancy May: Hey, everybody.
• 0:06
  It's Nancy and Sylvia once again with another fabulous episode
• 0:10
  of Family Tree Food and Stories.
• 0:12
  Before we start, please take a moment to go to Podcast.FamilyTreeFoodStories.com,
• 0:19
  and if you haven't already, subscribe to the show so that you get updates
• 0:22
  of when we release every week.
• 0:25
  Just so that you know, it's every Thursday morning that we release, and
• 0:28
  of course you can listen to it any time.
• 0:30
  But there's all sorts of fun information that will be on that page as well.
• 0:34
  And of course, please remember, as we always like to say, every meal is
• 0:38
  a story, and every story is a feast.
• 0:40
  And boy, have we got a feast for you this week.
• 0:43
  Right,
• 0:44
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, yeah.
• 0:45
  We are going to do a crowd favorite, pasta.
• 0:49
  Nancy May: I'm full already.
• 0:50
  Sylvia Lovely: it's only grown in popularity.
• 0:52
  I mean, it's just amazing that people love pasta foods we eat
• 0:56
  without thinking much about also, it shapes who we are in some cases.
• 1:01
  And pasta has always been one of those foods for folks out there,
• 1:04
  Nancy May: Oh, absolutely.
• 1:05
  I have some funny stories about pasta, but we can get along
• 1:08
  those a little bit later on.
• 1:10
  But as it turns out, we have some things that we know about
• 1:13
  pasta that aren't quite true.
• 1:15
  So we're gonna start off with a little bit of myth busters.
• 1:18
  Sylvia Lovely: Mm-hmm.
• 1:19
  Yep.
• 1:20
  It isn't just comfort food.
• 1:21
  Yeah.
• 1:22
  Nancy May: So as I understand, Marco Polo was said to have brought
• 1:26
  pasta back to, well, the Eastern or the European countries from China.
• 1:32
  That's a tidy, little, wrapped-up story, but not exactly correct.
• 1:37
  Sylvia Lovely: Mm-hmm.
• 1:37
  Cause long before Marco, dear Marco, people across the world
• 1:41
  were already working with grain and water, if you think about it.
• 1:44
  Very fundamental, that's kinda how you put things together to
• 1:48
  make bread or, in this case, pasta.
• 1:50
  'Cause in China, you have noodles going back thousands of years, and in the Middle
• 1:54
  East, early dried doughs were designed to last, and that was an important factor.
• 2:00
  Designed to last.
• 2:01
  Because again, you had nomadic tribes, you had all kinds of folks and, you
• 2:06
  It wasn't as simple as us, right?
• 2:08
  Where you can just cook up a meal on an afternoon.
• 2:10
  And so, that's kind of how pasta evolved, I think, probably, to being so important.
• 2:16
  Nancy May: just before we recorded, I did some extra research, and I had a
• 2:20
  question for You know how you always... Well, I wouldn't say always, but I
• 2:24
  always thought at least that eggs were part of the ingredient of pasta always.
• 2:29
  Well, apparently that's not true, so another myth- buster.
• 2:32
  And you mentioned that pasta is an ancient thing, so they didn't use
• 2:36
  eggs back then in the old days.
• 2:38
  It was just flour and water and, their hands.
• 2:41
  talk about feet later.
• 2:43
  That's another story.
• 2:43
  Sylvia Lovely: Mm-hmm.
• 2:44
  Yeah, so And now the egg stuff is pretty good, when you eat pasta
• 2:48
  in a restaurant, it'll usually say it's special kinds of pasta that
• 2:52
  have egg in them, and it's good.
• 2:54
  know, and it just adds to the richness, which is pretty good,
• 2:57
  and so there you have that.
• 2:59
  You know, what's also interesting is I think of pastas being Italian food, right?
• 3:03
  Don't you?
• 3:04
  it's manicotti, it's lasagna, all of those things.
• 3:07
  But it really wasn't owned by any one culture.
• 3:10
  It was shaped by many, and then it was, claimed, perfected,
• 3:13
  and expressed everywhere.
• 3:15
  Nancy May: and What I also thought was fascinating about the egg thing is
• 3:18
  that eggs were expensive, so they were a luxury, and they were considered wasteful
• 3:23
  in many cases to use eggs, and it was rich people's who used eggs in, pasta.
• 3:28
  And I also learned that some pastas were considered so valuable
• 3:33
  that they were locked away.
• 3:34
  But that's part of the history of pasta.
• 3:37
  but we're also wanna talk about the ancient history of pasta, which dates
• 3:40
  back to 2000 BCE, and the oldest noodle dishes discovered were in, I
• 3:46
  think it's pronounced Lajia or la- I'm think- I'm speaking like La Jolla,
• 3:51
  right?
• 3:52
  Probably not.
• 3:52
  Like Spanish.
• 3:54
  But it's L-A-J-I-A, China.
• 3:57
  And it was also found in in the Italian tombs back in fourth century
• 4:03
  BCE, in Etruscan tombs, and it was also called the Tomb of Reliefs.
• 4:08
  So go figure,
• 4:09
  Sylvia Lovely: Mm-hmm.
• 4:10
  Yeah relief.
• 4:11
  I don't know what all that meant.
• 4:13
  That's kind of interesting.
• 4:14
  But they found what they believe to be early pasta-making tools.
• 4:19
  For instance, grinding stones.
• 4:21
  You hear about that a lot with flour and water in ancient days.
• 4:25
  Rolling tools, again, kind of to roll it out, right?
• 4:28
  And dough cutters Now, this is not verified, but they think
• 4:32
  that that was the truth.
• 4:34
  Now, if they found old pasta, I don't know how you'd feel about eating some of that.
• 4:38
  It'd be like Washington's cherries, you know, they found those canned
• 4:41
  cherries, or the 3,000-year-old honey.
• 4:45
  No.
• 4:45
  You know, I'm, I'm not gonna take that chance.
• 4:49
  How about you?
• 4:50
  Nancy May: I'm surprised that it even exi- I mean, you could find it
• 4:53
  because I would think it would sort
• 4:54
  of degrade over time,
• 4:56
  Sylvia Lovely: I would think of either that or it almost foss- fossilized yeah.
• 5:00
  So then, it came forward, and it even became street food.
• 5:04
  Nancy May: Now, there's something that more people don't know or even
• 5:06
  picture about pasta was before it was also very elegant, it was messy.
• 5:11
  In Naples, pasta, as you mentioned, was street food, and it was
• 5:14
  bought hot but it was eaten right there, and often with their hands.
• 5:18
  So apparently, the fork became something or something like a tool that would look,
• 5:22
  I guess, like a fork in the early days, that made it a little easier to twirl,
• 5:28
  Sylvia Lovely: and people gathered to watch.
• 5:29
  It was like the gladiator stuff,
• 5:32
  Nancy May: You went to go watch people eat pasta?
• 5:34
  Sylvia Lovely: know.
• 5:35
  But you know what it also brought to mind to me is that ear- in the early
• 5:39
  days, food in many ways was performance art, I mean, think about being in
• 5:44
  Japan as I was and having to get to used to the idea of slurping my noodles.
• 5:49
  That seemed rude, you know, to do stuff at the dinner table like that, and yet
• 5:53
  slurping is a cultural thing in Japan, as was apparently at one time spaghetti as
• 5:59
  street food, although that's a stretch.
• 6:01
  like, put a glob of it in your hand, and it's, like, dripping all kinds of stuff.
• 6:06
  But I guess that's okay.
• 6:07
  Maybe either lick it off each other as a romantic
• 6:09
  Nancy May: don't know.
• 6:11
  That's a little too... All right.
• 6:13
  So, so speaking of romance, I'm gonna share a quick story because
• 6:16
  I was talking to somebody the other day, and they were... We were
• 6:20
  talking about date foods, right?
• 6:22
  Because you go on a date, and you're gonna eat at some point.
• 6:25
  And she went out to a restaurant with this fellow who invited her out, asked
• 6:29
  her what restaurant she wanted to go to, and he made a reservation there,
• 6:33
  which she thought was very sweet because he put some time into it.
• 6:36
  Which I agree.
• 6:37
  Well, apparently, talking about eating with your hands he kept pushing the food
• 6:43
  on his fork with his fingers, and she didn't like that, and she says she's
• 6:47
  never going back for a second date.
• 6:48
  So
• 6:50
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, They do a
• 6:52
  Nancy May: Ferdinand in her date that we just
• 6:54
  Sylvia Lovely: lot of wild things in Naples.
• 6:58
  right?
• 6:58
  But before pasta became refined, it was public, sort of
• 7:01
  physical, and performance art.
• 7:03
  And the other side of that, whether it's slurping noodles or it's doing that,
• 7:08
  is there is something kind of awesomely authentic about it, too, It's like
• 7:12
  an entire act of your physical being.
• 7:15
  So, yeah, it's kinda
• 7:16
  fun
• 7:17
  Nancy May: there's joy in eating pasta, I have to say,
• 7:19
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, yeah.
• 7:20
  Oh, yeah.
• 7:21
  Nancy May: it's not the kind of food that you just eat without thinking.
• 7:25
  It's comfort food and brings back all sorts of ideas and stories, and we've
• 7:30
  got a few of those along the way too.
• 7:32
  But now let's talk about tomatoes, because I think the, the tomato and
• 7:36
  the pasta is something we always think about, but not always the case
• 7:40
  because there's also sweet pasta.
• 7:42
  But what's surprising about it is that, of course, we know that most
• 7:46
  tomatoes were considered poisonous.
• 7:49
  Sylvia Lovely: know.
• 7:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 7:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 7:50
  Nancy May: But, Tomatoes are not originally Italian.
• 7:52
  They actually come from Mexico and part of South America, and then
• 7:55
  arrived in Europe after the Columbian exchange, which i- i- who knows?
• 8:00
  I mean, how did they... I'm not even sure imagining somebody
• 8:04
  deciding just to chomp into a tomato that they thought was poisonous.
• 8:07
  I wouldn't chomp into
• 8:08
  Sylvia Lovely: have had a
• 8:10
  bad experience from a rotten tomato or something, you know?
• 8:14
  'Cause they are just delicious.
• 8:15
  I do know people that can pick up a tomato and eat it like an apple.
• 8:19
  Nancy May: if it's good, I can do that, but it's gotta be, like, right
• 8:22
  off the... It's gotta be warm and s- sunny and right off the vine.
• 8:25
  Sylvia Lovely: I am impressed.
• 8:27
  people didn't trust them, you know?
• 8:29
  They were grown as decoration.
• 8:31
  And this is another thing that seems so Italian, and yet I think,
• 8:34
  the tomatoes went that direction.
• 8:37
  I mean, not that they didn't grow them in Italy, but, again, they
• 8:39
  had that stigma attached to them.
• 8:42
  And then, here we have tomatoes meet pasta.
• 8:45
  And gosh, we wouldn't know what to do without our lasagna and spaghetti
• 8:49
  and all of that kind of stuff.
• 8:51
  Now, Bernie and I like white pizza, so you know, that's another variation.
• 8:55
  But it's so cool.
• 8:56
  Nancy May: pasta with butter and a, a good salt and pepper garlic
• 9:01
  just alone is really good.
• 9:03
  S- speaking of tomatoes, I have a question for you.
• 9:05
  You may not be able to answer this.
• 9:07
  Do you know if they had tomato worms way back when?
• 9:10
  Sylvia Lovely: No, my uh, my telepathic abilities didn't allow
• 9:14
  me to float backwards in time and find out, so tell me more.
• 9:18
  Nancy May: Well, you know what a tomato worm is, those big
• 9:20
  disgusting gr- oh, you don't?
• 9:21
  Oh, all right.
• 9:22
  So let me ex- if you've never grown tomatoes, you
• 9:25
  are in for an experience because these are, they're probably about as
• 9:31
  thick as your thumb, if not thicker.
• 9:34
  they're long.
• 9:35
  They're probably about four inches long when you see them, when they have
• 9:37
  a, oh, typically have a horn on the top of their little head there, and
• 9:41
  they're fat and they're green, and they will devour your tomato plants
• 9:47
  overnight, If you watch them, you find them.
• 9:49
  So we were growing tomatoes in the backyard in a raised garden last,
• 9:53
  summer, and Bob says, "We've got rabbits." And I said, "We don't
• 9:56
  have rabbits." He says, "No, we've got rabbits." ' Cause the tomato
• 9:58
  plants would be gone, like, literally overnight, like whole stalks of them.
• 10:01
  And so the next day I said, "You gotta come out here and see this."
• 10:04
  They camouflage themselves 'cause they're the exact same color and they
• 10:08
  look, they look like a big stalk.
• 10:09
  And I said, "Look at that. You can see it. It's just e- give it five
• 10:13
  minutes and it's gonna eat your tomato plant right in front of you."
• 10:16
  And sure
• 10:16
  enough, it was a tomato.
• 10:18
  it sucks the thing down like you wouldn't believe it.
• 10:20
  It's magic,
• 10:21
  but disgusting.
• 10:22
  So the only way to get rid of them is to pick them off, and they turn into
• 10:25
  wonderful butterflies, but ugh, no.
• 10:27
  So disgusting.
• 10:29
  But Speaking of growing tomatoes, did you ever hear about the PBS
• 10:33
  joke, the April Fools' joke?
• 10:35
  Sylvia Lovely: me.
• 10:36
  Nancy May: Okay, so this is a pasta joke.
• 10:38
  The BBC pulled off their first ever April Fools', Fools' hoax about pasta in
• 10:44
  1957, where they aired a fake documentary showing women harvesting pasta,
• 10:50
  spaghetti, off the trees in Switzerland.
• 10:53
  And then they aired it in, of course, BBC, British,
• 10:56
  Sylvia Lovely: Mm-hmm.
• 10:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 10:58
  Nancy May: and they believed
• 10:59
  Sylvia Lovely: That's a little scary, isn't it?
• 11:02
  Nancy May: Our, our bright British friends.
• 11:03
  Excuse us.
• 11:04
  Let's move on to macaroni 'cause macaroni doesn't grow on trees.
• 11:07
  Sylvia Lovely: Well, yeah macaroni.
• 11:09
  But this does surprise me a little bit, not as much as that joke.
• 11:11
  But anyway you know, b- from food to fashion insult.
• 11:15
  I mean, wow.
• 11:17
  In 18th century England, macaroni didn't just mean pasta.
• 11:20
  This was fascinating.
• 11:21
  It meant fashion.
• 11:22
  Nancy May: Fashion.
• 11:23
  So Macaroni was a man who traveled to Italy and picked up elaborate
• 11:26
  tastes and came back a wildly dressed, flamboyant character, I'll call him.
• 11:31
  So they thought that this was just a little too much over the
• 11:35
  top, and it was an insult that you were Mr. Macaroni, I guess
• 11:40
  Sylvia Lovely: I wonder how that even began.
• 11:41
  That's so fascinating, I guess, because I don't know things, how things begin.
• 11:45
  Uh, so it, even carried over into the song we all know, Yankee
• 11:48
  Doodle, when they sang, "Stuck a feather in his cap and called it
• 11:52
  macaroni."
• 11:53
  Hey, you were mocking someone.
• 11:55
  I never knew that.
• 11:56
  I never knew that.
• 11:57
  Nancy May: But remember we talked about Thomas Jefferson in a previous
• 12:00
  episode, and, you know, I would've liked to have met old Thomas Jefferson.
• 12:04
  I didn't think he was married, but I just was watching well, re-watching
• 12:07
  the American Revolution, and apparently he was married, and his wife died
• 12:11
  fairly early on, which is always sad.
• 12:14
  But Thomas Jefferson, our dear foodie fellow, was largely credited
• 12:18
  for popularizing pasta here in the States because he brought back
• 12:21
  the first macaroni maker machine,
• 12:24
  the original gadget, and He brought it back from France in 1789,
• 12:27
  and then he tried to perfect it.
• 12:29
  He was always doing interesting things and making
• 12:31
  Sylvia Lovely: He was.
• 12:32
  He was a curious man.
• 12:34
  Nancy May: So he designed his own macaroni-making machine and
• 12:38
  frequently served pasta to his guests, cementing his place in early American
• 12:43
  high society as, yes, Mr. Pasta.
• 12:46
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, he he was fascinating and as was Ben Franklin,
• 12:50
  who did interesting things as well.
• 12:52
  I mean, those guys were really on things.
• 12:54
  I mean, just creating new things.
• 12:56
  So yeah, pasta went from food to fashion statement to cultural
• 12:59
  commentary, and how cool that was.
• 13:02
  Nancy May: That's quite a journey for just a bunch of flour and water and an
• 13:05
  occasional egg or two, as we said before.
• 13:08
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 13:09
  But there's something also I wanna, I always wanna cover this 'cause I think
• 13:13
  our listeners would love to know it.
• 13:15
  At least I figure if I do, then there's some people out there
• 13:18
  who do, and it's about nutrition.
• 13:20
  We're all nutrition crazed right now and looking at how food, what it's made
• 13:25
  out of what our forefathers and mothers ate, and all of that kind of stuff.
• 13:31
  But here's something how pasta became a whole thing.
• 13:35
  Because it's incomplete nutritionally by itself.
• 13:38
  if you have eggs in it, then, you know, that's protein.
• 13:41
  You know, it gives energy, but not everything your body needs,
• 13:44
  thus, you're running a marathon.
• 13:45
  People would famously eat pasta before you know, carb loading.
• 13:50
  And yet people figured something out.
• 13:51
  They didn't eat it by itself, they paired it.
• 13:55
  Nancy May: With beans and cheese and vegetables.
• 13:57
  You know, one of my favorite... I, I have a personal passion, so of course
• 14:01
  I like pasta, but I have been on this constant hunt for I don't know how
• 14:05
  many years for the best bolognese.
• 14:07
  So every time I see a bolognese on a Or bolognese, I guess, if
• 14:12
  you prefer to call it that way, on a menu, I'm drawn to order
• 14:17
  Sylvia Lovely: you
• 14:18
  Nancy May: still hunting for the best.
• 14:19
  I'm
• 14:20
  still
• 14:20
  hunting for the best.
• 14:21
  Sylvia Lovely: I had a friend and we went on a quest to find the best
• 14:24
  fried banana peppers, and that ended when he was in a treadmill accident.
• 14:29
  He
• 14:29
  couldn't go anymore.
• 14:30
  Oh, no.
• 14:31
  Well, he recovered, but anyway, so that ended that quest,
• 14:34
  and we never found the best.
• 14:36
  But, those are kind of fun to do, Let's find the best fill in the blank.
• 14:40
  But at the, at the restaurant, one of our most popular dishes
• 14:44
  is cacio e pepe, and it's noodles with I think they are egg noodles.
• 14:49
  I think so.
• 14:50
  And they have Parmesan on them.
• 14:53
  So you have just this very plain dish, and people will usually pair it with
• 14:58
  some kind of a green vegetable or something on the side, which we do have.
• 15:02
  But people just love it, and it's just a plain and ordinary pasta with
• 15:07
  pepper and, just all the good stuff.
• 15:10
  Nancy May: I'm not sure it's an egg noodle because if it's got sauce and
• 15:13
  it needs to stick to it, I learned that the egg noodles don't hold the pasta
• 15:18
  sauce as well as the non-egg noodles.
• 15:20
  So that's
• 15:20
  Sylvia Lovely: I'll have to check that out.
• 15:22
  It's good.
• 15:23
  That's all I know.
• 15:24
  It's one of our top sellers, yeah.
• 15:26
  Nancy May: so you add a small amount of meat, like with a ragu or a bolognese,
• 15:30
  as I said before, which is my, thing.
• 15:32
  And, and bolognese, so p- I've read recipes where it's got the pork and the
• 15:37
  beef, but I'm kind of a, beefy person, so,
• 15:40
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, I'm, I tend to be a beefy person too.
• 15:43
  I ate so much at lunch today, I feel real beefy or cheesy or something.
• 15:49
  But I keep looking for the nutrition value in Velveeta.
• 15:52
  You know those little Velveeta.
• 15:55
  Or maybe you don't even notice, I have a 10-year-old that loves them,
• 15:59
  and when he comes in from school, I have to make him a Velveeta.
• 16:02
  I mean, it's so instant, which means, I don't know, I
• 16:06
  think ultra-processed, right?
• 16:08
  And Velveeta is very ultra-processed.
• 16:10
  But anyway, I guess they survive.
• 16:11
  We did.
• 16:12
  And you know, just kids love mac and cheese.
• 16:15
  mean, just
• 16:16
  Nancy May: Yeah, I've
• 16:16
  never been a mac and cheese fan.
• 16:18
  Bob's a big fan of it, so it's just, not my thing.
• 16:21
  But adding meat, I wanna give a, a little shout-out quickly to somebody
• 16:25
  who I met recently, a gentleman by the name of John Wood, and he's actually
• 16:29
  up in, I think it's Missouri, and runs a company called Wellness Meats,
• 16:35
  and they're all grass-fed meat.
• 16:36
  So if you want healthy pasta with good meat, consider grass-fed meats, he's
• 16:42
  just sent me a whole bunch of stuff, so I'm gonna go try them because that's...
• 16:46
  We have to do a show on, on grass-fed meat because I think it's rather...
• 16:49
  The whole subject is interesting on
• 16:51
  Sylvia Lovely: know, now typically we people don't like our grass-fed steaks.
• 16:56
  They're not as fatty.
• 16:57
  They don't have that marbled fat.
• 16:59
  Now, that's just the consumer.
• 17:00
  They go out to eat, and they want a good, juicy steak.
• 17:03
  So I don't know.
• 17:03
  I've just heard that for years.
• 17:04
  We'll
• 17:05
  Nancy May: I'm gonna have to find out about, that.
• 17:06
  I'll call John
• 17:07
  and find out and But he explained to me, and I know we're getting off of the
• 17:10
  pasta thing a little bit here, but he explained when... 'Cause this is a co-op
• 17:15
  type of thing, like Ocean Spray is a
• 17:16
  co-op, and said that they looked at grass-fed beef and meats in Florida,
• 17:22
  and they weren't as good as they were in other areas because of the poor
• 17:27
  nutrition of the, the soil and the, the grass that grows here in, Florida.
• 17:31
  It's just, notoriously bad nutritional grass, so a lot
• 17:35
  of people have to supplement.
• 17:36
  Sylvia Lovely: Interesting.
• 17:37
  Well,
• 17:37
  Nancy May: But the
• 17:37
  taste of...
• 17:38
  Sylvia Lovely: Nancy.
• 17:39
  Nancy May: Yeah, right?
• 17:39
  No, I s- cows are, eating the grass and they could be smoking the
• 17:43
  grass, but that's... Not for me.
• 17:45
  Anyway, speaking of grass and beef and cows and pasta, we're gonna take a
• 17:51
  quick break and be right back, 'cause we've got lots more to talk about.
• 17:55
  Pasta.
• 18:00
  . So Sylvia, you told me just a funny story about
• 18:03
  a fellow that you knew, and I, I, I think it's something we have to share
• 18:06
  because we were talking about cows and grass and pasta, and I guess you can
• 18:10
  add grass clippings into pasta as well.
• 18:13
  But tell me the story about the gentleman that you
• 18:15
  Sylvia Lovely: had a friend who was blind, and he took
• 18:19
  his service dog everywhere.
• 18:20
  He's made speeches all over the country.
• 18:22
  And when he stepped onto the tarmac, he would always look up at his handlers
• 18:25
  and say, "Can you get me some grass?"
• 18:28
  Nancy May: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:28
  Sylvia Lovely: the dog to relieve himself.
• 18:30
  But they would be like, "Sir, I, you know, what do you mean?"
• 18:34
  So he had great fun with that.
• 18:35
  He would tell the story at every speech.
• 18:37
  Get him a little grass.
• 18:41
  Nancy May: Father Sisco would probably say something like that.
• 18:44
  Sylvia Lovely: Hey speaking of Father Cisco, I have to
• 18:46
  interject this little comment.
• 18:47
  We did a cooking class with him once.
• 18:50
  he was, conducting a some kind of camp or something for kids, a cooking camp.
• 18:54
  And this was a chef ago.
• 18:56
  Not this chef, but another one that I, we took to this, to a small town
• 19:00
  near here where the camp was, and we disguised vegetables in the lasagna.
• 19:07
  'Cause the kids wouldn't eat vegetables by themselves, right?
• 19:10
  So we put the, all of the veggies in the pasta.
• 19:13
  Nancy May: Mm. Well, and Father Sisco is known for his own
• 19:17
  mama's pasta sauce that he sells,
• 19:19
  Sylvia Lovely: He is.
• 19:20
  He is.
• 19:20
  He goes all over.
• 19:21
  Delta Airlines flies him everywhere to talk about
• 19:24
  Nancy May: We'll have to put that in the show notes as well.
• 19:26
  But anyway, so let's settle the big comment or let's settle the debate on is
• 19:31
  it fresh or dried pasta that's better?
• 19:34
  What do you think?
• 19:35
  Sylvia Lovely: Well, the answer is fresh isn't better, it's just different.
• 19:39
  It's just different.
• 19:41
  Fresh pasta is soft and delicate, and best with lighter sauces.
• 19:45
  I guess not meat, right?
• 19:46
  No meat So dried pasta is firmer and perfect for holding up.
• 19:51
  Now, I don't know mechan- scientifically what that difference is.
• 19:55
  You know, I don't know.
• 19:56
  I can't figure that out.
• 19:57
  But hold up to stronger sauces, which is probably meat
• 20:00
  sauces and that sort of thing.
• 20:02
  I know if you get manicotti- Which we did the other night.
• 20:06
  We went out for our anniversary to a local Italian place.
• 20:09
  We also were surveilling, trying to figure out how they do their stuff, you know?
• 20:14
  You always gotta surveil, I was a spy.
• 20:17
  It was interesting.
• 20:18
  But we always get manicotti there, and it's without meat sauce, but
• 20:22
  you can get it with meat sauce, which I think is kinda interesting.
• 20:24
  It's probably some sort of violation of the pasta laws for
• 20:27
  manicotti, mean, seriously.
• 20:30
  But it was good, I will have to say.
• 20:32
  Nancy May: Oh, right, so you're gonna have to, reverse
• 20:34
  engineer that recipe maybe, huh?
• 20:36
  Sylvia Lovely: yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 20:37
  Kinda got the guy, though, my waiter.
• 20:39
  I was trying to find a fault with this place, right?
• 20:41
  Because I own a restaurant.
• 20:43
  Well, I had told OpenTable and the wait- the hostess.
• 20:48
  When I walked in she said, "Now, it's your anniversary, right?"
• 20:50
  And I said, "Yeah." And so, Well, good." So we sit down, and Tom...
• 20:55
  Th- and this is a big restaurant, and very popular.
• 20:58
  It had become a thing.
• 21:00
  Our friend Jen Hardy loves to use that phrase,
• 21:02
  a thing.
• 21:03
  Well, this restaurant's a thing.
• 21:05
  I mean, it's just a thing, you know?
• 21:07
  And you can make mistakes when you become a thing, but not when
• 21:10
  you're starting a restaurant.
• 21:11
  You can't make mistakes.
• 21:12
  But we're sitting there, and at the end he just kinda throws the bill down.
• 21:16
  It had gotten busy.
• 21:17
  It was real busy, 'cause there's graduations going on up here.
• 21:20
  And so it was clear he was gonna forget the anniversary.
• 21:23
  So as Tom was walking away I said, " it's our anniversary." " Oh." And
• 21:27
  so he ran back, and in a styrofoam thing he just kinda put the cake down.
• 21:32
  It was a little tiny piece of red velvet cake, and just walked away.
• 21:36
  Oh, mistake.
• 21:38
  Nancy May: Yeah.
• 21:39
  Sylvia Lovely: And so I talked to the hostess on the way out and I
• 21:41
  said, "Next time you might wanna tell your waitstaff when there's an
• 21:46
  anniversary or a birthday or something," 'cause it means a lot to people.
• 21:49
  They chose a place based on that, right?
• 21:52
  Anyway, a little bit of restaurant intel, okay?
• 21:55
  For those who care.
• 21:57
  Nancy May: I totally agree.
• 21:58
  Totally agree.
• 21:59
  But speaking of pasta,
• 22:01
  Sylvia Lovely: Well, we got kinda off
• 22:02
  Nancy May: You did the manicotti thing, so I think that's, that's very interesting,
• 22:05
  a little surveillance or I call them super
• 22:07
  sleuth spy work, but I get it.
• 22:10
  But there are hundreds ... I think there's ... I read somewhere there's,
• 22:13
  like, 300 different shapes of pasta.
• 22:15
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, it's mind-boggling when you're looking at the shelves
• 22:17
  and you're like, "Oh, Oh, I tell you what I do like, though.
• 22:21
  I like the kind of pasta strips that you buy, and you can buy all kinds of them.
• 22:26
  And they even have, like, I don't, what, what are some, like, spinach ones?
• 22:31
  green ones that are, like, vegetable-based.
• 22:34
  But I like the ones that you don't have to boil the pasta strips.
• 22:38
  Before you do.
• 22:39
  Well, you know the big flat pasta that you put in a l- a layer with the lasagna?
• 22:45
  Nancy May: Oh, before you cook it.
• 22:46
  Before
• 22:46
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 22:46
  Nancy May: before it's cooked.
• 22:47
  I got it.
• 22:48
  Sylvia Lovely: And you put it in, and you don't... You just add extra water.
• 22:51
  It used to be you had to boil all the noodles lay
• 22:54
  Nancy May: in pa- in lasagna.
• 22:56
  Never.
• 22:57
  I know
• 22:57
  Sylvia Lovely: you nuts.
• 22:59
  Yeah, my story.
• 23:00
  I forgot.
• 23:00
  See, I'm taking care of myself here, 'cause I can't apparently
• 23:03
  keep up with lasagna making and the, all the ingredients, and I
• 23:07
  ended up making pasta or lasagna without having put in the noodles.
• 23:12
  Nancy May: My mom always made it without cooking the noodles
• 23:15
  first, so that's how I do it.
• 23:16
  And the last time I made lasagna was for a holiday party here with some
• 23:21
  friends, and you had to bring, a dish, so I brought pas- the, the lasagna.
• 23:25
  Lots of red wine in the sauce, so there was lots of juicy
• 23:27
  Sylvia Lovely: That's what you told me.
• 23:28
  That was the key.
• 23:29
  Nancy May: And people said, Is there wine in this?"
• 23:32
  I said, "You think?"
• 23:33
  Sylvia Lovely: And lots of that.
• 23:35
  What kind of wine?
• 23:37
  Nancy May: Oh, it... No, it's just, it's usually a, a Cabernet, like a, a really
• 23:42
  deep,
• 23:42
  rich red wine that will, will go with it.
• 23:45
  Nothing too light and delicate, but it's, something that the meat will hold up
• 23:48
  with, and all the tomatoes and stuff, so.
• 23:51
  And lots of cheese.
• 23:52
  But you know what?
• 23:52
  there's a pasta, I don't know what they call it.
• 23:54
  They're like the little ears.
• 23:55
  There's a particular name for it.
• 23:57
  They're, they call them elephant ears or something.
• 24:00
  I don't... I'm a f- I'm a snob.
• 24:02
  I don't like those little things, or the curly ones.
• 24:06
  You know, it's gotta be tagliatelle or regular angel hair spaghetti
• 24:10
  or something like that.
• 24:11
  I just, I don't
• 24:13
  like it.
• 24:13
  Yeah.
• 24:14
  Sylvia Lovely: a snob.
• 24:15
  Nancy May: a I'm a noodle
• 24:16
  Sylvia Lovely: Heaven sakes.
• 24:17
  Yep, but all of them have a purpose at least if you wanna follow the purposes.
• 24:22
  The only thing I use is lasagna.
• 24:24
  That's about the limit of what I do.
• 24:26
  But long strands are for smooth sauces, I guess for spaghetti, And
• 24:30
  then tubes, those little tubes, tiny tubes, are for holding sauce inside.
• 24:35
  Duh, I mean, that makes sense, right?
• 24:37
  Ridges are for gritting gripping.
• 24:39
  I'm not quite sure what you... I, I guess it grips the sauce.
• 24:42
  I
• 24:43
  I don't know.
• 24:43
  Nancy May: in the ridges, so
• 24:45
  Sylvia Lovely: I would think small shapes for soups.
• 24:47
  That makes sense, 'cause you might get a cup of soup, and you need
• 24:50
  just tiny little pastas f- to be swimming around in there, right?
• 24:55
  Nancy May: and there's a fairly new pasta shape that is, like, a long one
• 25:00
  with a hole in it, almost like a straw,
• 25:03
  and that was created by the guy, I can't think of his name.
• 25:06
  I'll have to dig it out.
• 25:08
  But he created the... He's got a podcast called Sporkful
• 25:11
  and he created this design.
• 25:13
  So I, you know, I
• 25:14
  Sylvia Lovely: What for?
• 25:15
  Nancy May: Yeah,
• 25:15
  it's...
• 25:16
  Sylvia Lovely: he uses it for?
• 25:17
  Nancy May: Well, it's supposed to, I guess, suck in, suck
• 25:19
  in... I'll say suck in.
• 25:20
  Suck in the sauce, you know, like a
• 25:21
  straw.
• 25:22
  Sylvia Lovely: get that, yeah.
• 25:23
  Nancy May: But yeah, I'm... It's too chewy for me.
• 25:26
  I, I'm not
• 25:27
  a, no.
• 25:28
  I'm just still not a, a, fan.
• 25:29
  I like traditional flat tagliatelle, thick...
• 25:33
  Sylvia Lovely: think I would too.
• 25:34
  Nancy May: know, wide.
• 25:35
  The wide,
• 25:35
  flat kinda noodle.
• 25:37
  Or egg noodles are really good too, but
• 25:38
  that's, that's for another s-
• 25:40
  Sylvia Lovely: pas- pasta story, I
• 25:41
  Nancy May: I do have a family pasta story.
• 25:43
  So we are not Italian, I will, warn you a, well up front.
• 25:46
  In fact, my mom's side of the family is very English, so they believe that the
• 25:52
  spaghetti was being picked off the trees.
• 25:54
  Sylvia Lovely: Mm-hmm.
• 25:55
  Nancy May: But growing up, my mom would always use this Italian, I guess,
• 25:59
  seasoning called Spatini Now, Spatini is made by the Canadian company Lawry's,
• 26:05
  Sylvia Lovely: Mm-hmm.
• 26:06
  Yeah,
• 26:06
  Nancy May: You know, it makes all
• 26:06
  the spices and what- yep, all sorts of stuff.
• 26:09
  Anyway, so Spatini was always this little pack, like you would buy packets of the
• 26:14
  powdered, powdered stuff for making tacos and chili and things like that.
• 26:17
  So it was always that, right?
• 26:19
  And one day, my, my mom had stopped cooking a long time ago and, and she
• 26:23
  had, I'd say moderate to mid-level dementia, and I was visiting my aunt
• 26:28
  on the other side of the state and she said, " Do you still make spaghetti the
• 26:32
  way, like meat sauce spaghetti, like the way your, your mom mades, makes it?"
• 26:36
  And I said, "Like how?" She says, "Well, she used Spatini"
• 26:40
  I said, "Well, of course.
• 26:41
  What, what else would you use?" And she laughed.
• 26:44
  But I can't leave well enough alone.
• 26:45
  So you put that in, and I have to doctor it with, with all sorts of stuff.
• 26:49
  I w- I would like the red wine, which mom didn't do, but I did the red wine.
• 26:53
  Lots of garlic, and I'll add some other things to it
• 26:56
  depending upon how I, how I feel.
• 26:58
  But yeah, and everybody loves it.
• 27:00
  So but
• 27:01
  you can't get
• 27:01
  Sylvia Lovely: delicious.
• 27:03
  Nancy May: You can't get it in the store.
• 27:04
  Nope.
• 27:04
  Other... We have to actually do a show on things that you can't get anymore,
• 27:08
  which I think would be interesting.
• 27:10
  But you can get it online, and the only way you can buy it
• 27:13
  is not in the small packets.
• 27:15
  I have to buy it by, like, the pound and a half
• 27:17
  Sylvia Lovely: well, you have to
• 27:18
  Nancy May: So
• 27:19
  Sylvia Lovely: then, yeah.
• 27:19
  Nancy May: I buy two bags at a time, and it's packed up, being
• 27:22
  put in the freezer in a plastic bag, and the other one is always
• 27:25
  Sylvia Lovely: You know, you do a lot of dinner parties, but I don't because
• 27:29
  I go to the restaurant, and that's where we pal around with people and stuff.
• 27:33
  And it's just interesting.
• 27:34
  I wanna start a grocery store chain called Empty Nesters.
• 27:38
  I,
• 27:39
  it doesn't even matter that they would have to charge more
• 27:42
  for tiny packets of brown sugar
• 27:45
  Nancy May: One-offs,
• 27:45
  right?
• 27:46
  Sylvia Lovely: if, ' cause I make homemade chocolate chip cookies.
• 27:49
  I do that because I don't want my grandkids to eat all
• 27:51
  that junk that comes in the
• 27:54
  pre-processed kinda ultra-processed stuff.
• 27:56
  And then they don't like it with nuts.
• 27:58
  I do, and my husband does, and that's kind of our evening snack.
• 28:01
  So I make 'em homemade,
• 28:03
  and you have to buy...
• 28:05
  No, not on chocolate chip.
• 28:06
  No.
• 28:06
  But you have to buy an entire giant brown sugar thing, and then I try to
• 28:12
  freeze packets of it, but it's still not as good as if they had sealed packets.
• 28:17
  So Empty Nesters Inc.,
• 28:19
  Nancy May: Well, you know what I found very interesting down, here, which I
• 28:22
  didn't see up north, is that they're selling pasta in smaller boxes now.
• 28:28
  You can buy them
• 28:29
  in smaller
• 28:29
  boxes.
• 28:30
  Sylvia Lovely: that's good, too.
• 28:31
  Nancy May: Right, where they're... The, instead of the long skinny noodles,
• 28:33
  they're cut in half so it's like half size
• 28:36
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 28:36
  And, and I'll tell you another thing.
• 28:38
  restaurants.
• 28:39
  I'm really into small plates.
• 28:41
  I'll even pay more to not bring home leftovers every night and
• 28:45
  have to freeze everything, 'cause my freezer just starts filling up.
• 28:48
  So, I'm fine with that 'cause I just have this thing about not wasting food and
• 28:53
  leaving it on the restaurant f- trash bin.
• 28:55
  But it's just interesting.
• 28:57
  you just have different tastes in different eras in our
• 29:01
  lives and... Anyway,
• 29:02
  Nancy May: a main course
• 29:05
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, we do that, too.
• 29:06
  Anyway, I know restaurants have to survive, i.e., I know that very well.
• 29:11
  But, you know, it's just, I wish we could find innovative ways to kind of
• 29:15
  up the tastes and downsize the portions,
• 29:18
  but.
• 29:19
  Nancy May: that's an American thing.
• 29:20
  I think bigger is better, but not always the case.
• 29:23
  a little bit of, little bit of love and a little bit of pasta goes a
• 29:26
  long way than of everything that
• 29:29
  Sylvia Lovely: Or you can go to, what's one of those big steak
• 29:32
  houses, those kinda mid-level,
• 29:35
  um... A Texas Roadhouse.
• 29:36
  Nancy May: Right.
• 29:37
  Sylvia Lovely: Those people need to have a cattle farm next door to them.
• 29:40
  I mean, the parking lots are filled all the time.
• 29:43
  But that's a whole 'nother topic.
• 29:44
  We're getting off of our... And here we go.
• 29:47
  Okay.
• 29:47
  This is some stuff.
• 29:48
  Nancy May: Okay.
• 29:49
  Sylvia Lovely: So here we go.
• 29:50
  pasta's lasted because it adapts.
• 29:52
  It doesn't insist on being everything, and in some ways it kind of is.
• 29:56
  You can pair it with everything.
• 29:57
  You can put stuff in it, just like at Father Cisco.
• 30:01
  You can fool your kids.
• 30:03
  So, it's kind of a cool dish that's evolved over these years
• 30:06
  Nancy May: you've made pasta, you've made like pasta or
• 30:09
  spaghetti yourself at home, right?
• 30:12
  Sylvia Lovely: That's my thing
• 30:13
  Nancy May: Oh, so you've never made like
• 30:15
  spaghetti with...
• 30:16
  Sylvia Lovely: No.
• 30:17
  Nancy May: Okay.
• 30:18
  Sylvia Lovely: Nancy, how long have you known me?
• 30:21
  Nancy May: Well, long enough to at least try to guess?
• 30:25
  Do you know the college kid... Yeah, well, t- do you know the trick
• 30:30
  that, well, at least I was taught in college, how you just, how you find
• 30:34
  out whether your spaghetti noodles are done when they're boiling?
• 30:37
  Sylvia Lovely: I would love to know.
• 30:38
  It's like rice, how do you ever know?
• 30:41
  Nancy May: Well, rice is a little different.
• 30:42
  You take out a strand.
• 30:44
  This is... Now, this is a roommate told me this when we were rooming in college,
• 30:48
  and you throw it against the wall.
• 30:50
  Sylvia Lovely: Yay.
• 30:51
  That
• 30:51
  could be fun.
• 30:52
  Nancy May: if it sticks, it's done.
• 30:54
  Of course, you better make sure there's no sauce on it, so, 'cause it'll slide down.
• 30:59
  But
• 30:59
  Sylvia Lovely: Well,
• 31:00
  Nancy May: you gotta clean the wall or the landlord says something.
• 31:04
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, I love it.
• 31:05
  I love it.
• 31:05
  That probably goes on a lot.
• 31:07
  Nancy May: But speaking of pasta, right?
• 31:09
  Noodle fights.
• 31:10
  One more thing, because I have to laugh at this.
• 31:12
  When Bob and I first got married we were both commuting into the city.
• 31:16
  And I was working, he was working.
• 31:18
  We get home and he expects me to make dinner.
• 31:20
  I was like, "Mm, okay, let's share this one, bud."
• 31:24
  But not a very good wife.
• 31:27
  Well, I was not a trad wife ever,
• 31:30
  let me put it that way.
• 31:31
  Sylvia Lovely: Mm-hmm.
• 31:31
  Yeah,
• 31:31
  Nancy May: not me.
• 31:33
  So I would just put on a pot of water, boil the noodles, and we'd put whatever
• 31:38
  sauce we had on it, butter, tomato sauce, whatever we had, whatever it was.
• 31:42
  It's like pasta in a bowl, right?
• 31:44
  One day he says, "You know, this is good, but do you think you can
• 31:47
  make something else besides pasta?"
• 31:49
  And we were, like, packing it on, by the way, too.
• 31:51
  The clothes were getting a little hard to zipper.
• 31:55
  And I said, "Absolutely, I'm happy to do so. What would you like to make?"
• 32:00
  Sylvia Lovely: love that.
• 32:01
  Yeah.
• 32:03
  Nancy May: And from that point on, we shared.
• 32:05
  So
• 32:05
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 32:07
  Oh, that is
• 32:07
  great.
• 32:08
  That's a great story.
• 32:10
  Or you could be like Bernie and I. Of course, this wasn't when we were
• 32:12
  commuting anywhere for big jobs, it was when graduate school and law school.
• 32:16
  We would pool our money and, and look through the jars and see if we could
• 32:20
  find any coins, and sell our bottles.
• 32:22
  At the time, you could sell bottles and get money,
• 32:24
  Nancy May: I was gonna say you're gonna sell
• 32:25
  Sylvia Lovely: that,
• 32:26
  Nancy May: but I'm
• 32:27
  Sylvia Lovely: that...
• 32:27
  Oh, yeah.
• 32:27
  Well, if anybody, if we had any buyers, we probably were that
• 32:31
  desperate from time to time.
• 32:32
  But we would eat at Long John Silver's, which is
• 32:35
  a fish place.
• 32:36
  Nancy May: I
• 32:37
  Sylvia Lovely: It was a big deal
• 32:38
  Nancy May: ever, so
• 32:39
  Sylvia Lovely: It was a big deal.
• 32:41
  Nancy May: yeah.
• 32:42
  Sylvia Lovely: ha, all right.
• 32:43
  So when you look at pasta, there you got flour, you got water, and
• 32:47
  then we have, as so many things, we've built something around it and
• 32:51
  paired it and balanced it, shared it.
• 32:53
  but, I mean,
• 32:56
  Nancy May: could
• 33:09
  Sylvia Lovely: of pasta.
• 33:11
  Nancy May: Speesy spicy pasta, pista masta, pasta masta.
• 33:15
  It is a pasta story that certainly has many stories in every family.
• 33:21
  In fact, my sister used to call it pasghetti, and to this
• 33:25
  day, every time... Yeah, right?
• 33:26
  Pasghetti s- try and pronounce-- get a three-year-old or a
• 33:30
  five-year-old to pronounce spaghetti.
• 33:33
  But perhaps that's food pronunciations for another show of five-year-olds.
• 33:38
  Pasta, it has got history, it's got stories, and it's a lot older than you
• 33:43
  might think, or any of us, thankfully.
• 33:45
  But it brings back family together in so many ways, because it's comfort food.
• 33:51
  And we're kind of a comfort show, we hope.
• 33:54
  Because every meal has a story, and every story is a feast.
• 33:57
  please remember to share, like, and tell us your stories.
• 34:00
  Pasta ones, of course, because we wanna know what you're
• 34:04
  cooking up in your household.
• 34:06
  Something that might be different in that water pot.
• 34:09
  So we'll see you soon, and we'll hear you soon.
• 34:11
  Take care, and mangia.
• 34:13
  Bye-bye.
• 34:14
  Sylvia Lovely: Bye.