National Pasta Day

Pasta is surely one of the top comfort foods in the world. Thomas Jefferson "discovered" macaroni in Paris and brought sacks of it back to the United States. Like an American Marco Polo. The Italians each eat about 60 pounds of pasta a year; Americans average 20 pounds.  

Pasta comes in hundreds of shapes and can be made into thousands of different dishes, so saying you "don't like pasta" is really saying something.  Spaghetti is only 6th on the list of top ten pasta shapes, even though meat sauce is the favorite.

I don't dislike pasta, but I never really crave it either. Perhaps because I've cooked so many thousands of boring pasta and red sauce dinners. I like the thinner shapes if I'm going to splurge on carbs. Good old Barilla has expanded their product line and makes whole-grain along with a vegetable-based greenish spaghetti. Sometimes I'll make that separately for myself because John doesn't consider it real pasta (it isn't.)

Anyway, he never gets tired of plain old dried penne or rigatoni out of the bag, and when I ask him what he wants to eat, pasta is always the answer. Why even ask?  I still cook a big pasta dinner with homemade sauce once a week, so he isn't suffering starch deprivation.  :-)

Forget pasta-- looking at those food pictures this weekend made me hungry for the bangers and mash I had at The Minories Pub in London.  What made that particular meal memorable was the ambience, not to mention, a pint of beer, starvation and exhaustion from walking seven miles that day. Being of the German breed, sausage is always more my idea of comfort food.

I bought some artisan British bangers at our upscale Thriftway grocery store, I don't know how they will compare. The weather is still nice, so maybe I'll make a pasta salad (in honor of National Pasta Day) and cook them on the grill tonight.

We've never had such a dry, warm October in Seattle, and today might break a record at 70 degrees. It is just beautiful with all the fall colors. We took another nice ride yesterday on Vashon Island, what a gift.