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A double entendre...
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic which mandated social-distancing and sheltering-in-place, I’ve developed the mindset of an isolationist. I’m hesitant to come out of my shell for venturing into the world. Other than going to the supermarket and appointments, I’ve adapted to battening down the hatches.
One of those adaptations for maintaining a healthy lifestyle involved signing up for a meal-delivery service. Last night I enjoyed dining on Cauliflower-Shell Bolognese: gluten-and-grain free cauliflower pasta shells and high-protein ground beef simmered in an Italian soffrito of carrots, onions, celery, garlic, and parsley. Topped with a blend of Parmesan and Asiago cheese.
While digging my way in with a fork, I began channeling fond memories of my childhood and adolescence grounded in the Sixties. From #76 in my Nonfiction collection of 100 memoirs pertaining to the ‘60s:
Every Easter, or any random Sunday after late mass, my father treated us to a sumptuous meal at the Bocce Club, an Italian stronghold in the predominantly French city of Woonsocket. Back then, the decor of the restaurant side of the banquet hall was Tiki-chic. Painted coconut heads decorated knotty pine walls. Apropos because we ate like pagans, scooping from family-style platters of shells, followed by the tastiest roasted chicken and golden French fries.
Back then I could have never imagined the futuristic new norm of stringent restrictions put in place for restaurant dining. During Phase 2 of reopening in my state, it’s outdoor seating by reservation only—tables must be eight feet apart with no more than five people at each. One must wear a mask when not eating.
At present, I can’t even conceive of patronizing any Italian restaurant I’ve previously associated with celebrating milestones and breaking bread in close quarters alongside others.
Right now, as things stand on the culinary front, I prefer to crawl into my shell. Dining in the comfort of my own home, I’ll fork my way through shells or any other home-cooked meal I didn’t have to prepare.
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good luck and stay safe and well.
budd
But I always like Italian food and Italian restaurants. However, it is interesting that whether it is shells, spaghetti, rigatoni, vermicelli, or whatever they call it, it is just different shapes of the same highly refined wheat pasta. As far as I know, pasta is a carbohydrate with very little nutritional value, like white bread, that underpins all of these delicious Italian dishes. And none of them would be palatable except for the tomato, that Native Americans from Rhode Island showed European settlers that love apples that they thought were poisonous, were actually good to eat.
Thankfully this will be over and we can congregate in restaurants again very soon after a reliable vaccination is produced in quantities so that everyone can have one. You did make me remember those times in the late sixties when I went to the Old Spaghetti Factory in San Francisco where we sat at a large table with a whole bunch of strangers and shared food passed around the table like we did at home on Sunday dinners.
Ron