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Who isn't happy slurping a string of spagetti?The next time you’ve had a less-than-great day, or your mood dips, or you listen to two or more Lewis Capaldi songs in a row, apparently, there’s one simple way to make yourself feel better: by eating a bowl of pasta. That’s the word, according to a study conducted by the Behavioral and Brain Lab at the Free University of Languages and Communication IULM in Milan, Italy. For this study, IULM researchers recruited 40 participants between the ages of 25 and 55 years old, measured their physical and neurological changes as they ate...

NATIONAL SPAGHETTI DAY National Spaghetti Day on January 4th offers an opportunity to pick your sauce and add it to that long, thin cylindrical pasta of Italian and Sicilian origin. Usually made from semolina flour, this pasta has been a worldwide favorite for ages and loved by millions. #NationalSpaghettiDay There are various pasta dishes based on spaghetti, and the sauce determines most of them. Some examples include spaghetti ala Carbonara, garlic and oil, tomato sauce, meat sauce, bolognese, Alfredo sauce, clam sauce, or other sauces. In addition, we traditionally serve spaghetti dishes topped with grated hard cheeses such as Pecorino...

10 Cincinnati Chile Coming from the most chili-mad city in the United States after Texas, Cincinnati chili is a popular dish made with ground meat, stock, and unusual spices such as cinnamon, allspice, Worcestershire sauce, and chocolate or cocoa. The chili is usually served over pasta such as spaghetti, then topped with a flavorful combination of shredded Cheddar, fried beans, onions, and crushed oyster crackers. With more than 180 chili joints in the city, Cincinnati takes great pride in being a chili capital. The dish was invented in 1922 by a Macedonian immigrant called Tom Kiradjieff. He opened a Greek...

When it comes to skyrocketing pasta prices, Italians are crying: Basta! They have had enough after the cost of the staple of every Italian table soared by twice the rate of inflation. One consumer advocate group is calling for a weeklong national pasta strike starting June 22 after the Rome government held a crisis meeting last month and decided not to intervene on prices. “The macaroni strike is to see if keeping pasta on the shelves will bring down the prices, in the great Anglo-Saxon tradition of boycotting goods,” said Furio Truzzi, president of the group, Assoutenti. “The price of...

Old Bridge Mayor Owen Henry wasn't pleased with the scene but said he'll gladly pick up discarded spaghetti instead of a dumped tire or mattress.Pasta al fresco was served in a New Jersey town last week, much to the chagrin of city workers-turned-busboys who had to clear mounds of macaroni dumped in the woods. A public works crew picked up 500 pounds of noodles discarded into a wooded area of Old Bridge, on the banks of the Iresick Brook, Mayor Owen Henry told NBC News on Friday. “No sauce, no gravy, no cheese, it was was just piles of macaroni"...

Sunday gravy may be the most indelible image of Italian-American culture. Sunday gravy – also called Sunday sauce — is a meat and tomato sauce served over pasta and a staple of home cooking in American cities with a large Italian immigrant population. A vat of sauce overflowing with sausage, meatballs, ribs, or whatever else your family told you was essential to making it, it's not a subtle dish. Instead, it's a weekly celebration, an embrace of bounty, and a tribute to the joy of food in one pot. Sunday gravy is also a classic family dish, not only because...

In a new TikTok video, actor Stanley Tucci shared a recipe for a pasta casserole using leftovers, and didn’t hold back as he ate it for breakfast at a ripe 10 a.m. Tucci, 62, filmed the video from his eclectic kitchen, explaining that he had leftover Farfalle pasta and had decided to repurpose it. “I sautéed garlic, onion, panchetta, and some peas, and then put them into a little casserole dish, baking dish, with the pasta and then Besciamella – Besciamella sauce – and mixed it all up with little things of butter on top and parmigiano,” he said in...

(Last Updated On: March 17, 2023) NATIONAL RAVIOLI DAY March 20th celebrates a fun-filled and versatile pasta. National Ravioli Day is a food holiday for pasta lovers! So pick your favorite filling and sauce and cook up a meal everyone will love! #NationalRavioliDay Ravioli are a traditional Italian-filled pasta. Pasta makers fill two layers of thin egg pasta dough with various ingredients. Imagine a small meatball tucked, snug inside two cozy layers of delicious dough. That’s what ravioli is. Some of the fillings include, cheese, meat, vegetables and seasonings. They also usually serve the ravioli in either a broth or...

Iodized salt helps prevent iodine-deficiency disorders, including goiters and certain birth defects. Yet it's unclear how this seasoning interacts with chloramine-treated drinking water if some of the disinfectant is left behind. Now, researchers have demonstrated that cooking pasta in such water with iodized table salt could produce potentially harmful byproducts. But they also report four simple ways that people can reduce or avoid these unwanted compounds. In most countries, drinking water is treated with chlorine or chloramine. But small amounts of these disinfectants can end up in water used for cooking. Previous experiments showed that when wheat flour was heated...

(Last Updated On: February 6, 2023) NATIONAL FETTUCCINE ALFREDO DAY On February 7th, National Fettuccine Alfredo Day celebrates one of the world’s favorite ways to enjoy a plate of fettuccine. #FettuccineAlfredoDay Fettuccine alfredo enjoys a history as rich as its flavor. Created in 1908, fettuccine was made out of love and concern by an Italian restauranteur. Alfredo di Lelio’s concern for his pregnant wife’s lack of appetite caused him to put his talents to work. The birth of their first son depended on it. His recipe of noodles, cheese, and butter not only encouraged her to eat but she also...

Whose side are you on?Giorgio Parisi, an Italian theoretical physicist and professor at Sapienza University, has studied some of the universe’s most complex problems. He even won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics for his “discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems.” He also happens to be an enthusiastic amateur chef who enjoys the “theoretical and experimental part” of meal prep. So when Parisi explained a more energy-efficient method of cooking pasta on his Facebook page, he may have thought it was just another interesting observation about the world. Instead, Parisi launched a country-wide controversy and...

NATIONAL SPAGHETTI DAY National Spaghetti Day on January 4th offers an opportunity to pick your sauce and add it to that long, thin cylindrical pasta of Italian and Sicilian origin. Usually made from semolina flour, this pasta has been a worldwide favorite for ages and loved by millions. #NationalSpaghettiDay There are various pasta dishes based on spaghetti, and the sauce determines most of them. Some examples include spaghetti ala Carbonara, garlic and oil, tomato sauce, meat sauce, bolognese, Alfredo sauce, clam sauce, or other sauces. In addition, we traditionally serve spaghetti dishes topped with grated hard cheeses such as Pecorino...

The Italian-American tradition is alive and well in many households, including Stanley Tucci’s.For people unaccustomed to it, the idea of lasagna at Thanksgiving might seem extreme. When the holiday table is already buckling under the weight of stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, and a giant turkey, the choice to add a tray of bubbling, saucy lasagna may not seem obvious – but that’s what makes it so special. Growing up, Searching for Italy host and actor Stanley Tucci would go to his aunt’s house for Thanksgiving, which tended to kick off with a course of Italian wedding soup, with...

The brand's packaging and website both disclose that many of its products are made in the U.S.A.Everyone knows Barilla pasta's blue box. The company refers to its "Classic Blue Box" on its website, and it has even become such a pasta aisle icon that one designer even based a limited-edition handbag on it. But some of the design elements on that box have gotten Barilla into a bit of a legal jam and, earlier this week, a federal judge in California ruled that a class-action lawsuit against the company could move forward. Two plaintiffs, Matthew Sinatro and Jessica Prost, took...

Olive Garden is known for a few things. Namely, its never-ending offerings, like soup, salad, breadsticks, and pasta. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end—even those that are supposed to be never-ending. Olive Garden's incoming new CEO revealed that the restaurant may never bring back its never-ending pasta bowl promotion. According to Business Insider, the deal, which gets you a bowl of pasta with endless refills for $10.99, was one Olive Garden would roll out periodically. Customers could enjoy as much pasta as they could stomach under the promotion, as well as unlimited breadsticks and salad. For an...

Fruits of the Midi, Renoir, 1881‘Tis the harvest season: eggplant, peppers, tomatoes – all at their peak. Here’s a dinner idea using some of them. It’s a concept more than a recipe and can be modified to taste and ingredients on hand. It’s a bit of a mashup of two of our favorite pasta dishes - garlic sausage linguine and penne with eggplant - from The Earle in Ann Arbor. It’s been our go-to favorite since 1980 and until last year was still headed by the original chef and sommelier. But hey, 40 year years on and I guess you...

If meat is left out on the counter for too long, we all know we need to throw it out. But what about rice or pasta? Although that carby goodness might seem harmless after sitting on the bench for a bit, you'll probably think twice once you hear about the bacterium Bacillus cereus. It's not a particularly rare germ. B. cereus will happily live wherever it can – soil, food, or in the gut. "The known natural habitats of B. cereus are wide-ranging, including soil, animals, insects, dust and plants," Anukriti Mathur, a biotechnology researcher at the Australian National University,...

Pasta makes everything better. This we know. But in the ancient villages of Sardinia, where the art of handmade pasta is practically a sacred ritual, there are ancestral, mouth-watering secrets that even the finest fettuccine can’t hold a candle to. We’re talking about the most beautiful and intricate shapes you’ve never seen; braided, stretched, twisted and crocheted using mesmerising bygone techniques. Did you know there’s only three women who still make one of the rarest pasta on earth? These are the disappearing recipes of Italian elders, passed down for generations by Sardinian and Italian women (and maybe a few men...

The small town of Nuoro, on Italy’s Sardinia island, is home to what many are calling the world’s rarest pasta, an intricate, hand-made treat that only a handful of people can make. Known as su filindeu (in Sardinia’s Sardo dialect), or Fili di Dio (in Italian), and translated as threads of God, this traditional pasta had been linked to La Festa di San Francesco, an ancient religious ritual celebrated every year, in May. For the past two hundred years, the only way to try threads of god pasta was to complete a 33km pilgrimage on foot or horseback from Nuoro...

Pasta is Italy’s staple food, but it’s not only Italians who indulge in platefuls of the doughy concoction every day. People all over the world adore it. It comes in more than 300 shapes: long, as in spaghetti; flat, as in fettuccine; hollow (bucatini); short, as in penne; the butterfly-shaped farfalle and ear-shaped orecchiette; tubular (rigatoni); and stuffed, in varieties such as tortellini and ravioli. It can be bought dry or freshly made from egg-based dough. World Pasta Day, held each October , celebrates the universal love of this staple of the Mediterranean diet. But who invented pasta? Legend has...