i lost my cool over pasta

Lots of things can make me angry. But outside of yelling at a customer service rep or maybe the plants, I usually keep cool on the outside. Save the freakouts for the beloved people closest to me like my husband who accepts sympathy at any time (call him!), because outside in the real world anger goes over like soggy cold potatoes.

I mention potatoes because I lost my cool while eating in a restaurant, though somehow I’ve never lost it over frigid fries or icy mashed because spuds always seem to go down the hatch.

On potatoes, I borrow a page from Rocker David Lee Roth who lauded the five basic food groups as sugar, starch, fat, grease and alcohol. Yep, starch was right in there.

But pasta? Now that’s a starch of a whole different stripe and I demand mine piping hot if you please or I think long, juicy worms. Pasta hot and plentiful and curled into a big round bowl or I could lose my cool.

Yes, when the going gets tough the tough get tagliatelle. Or penne, because every pasta lover knows every shape tastes different. Like every person has something in the back of their jeans that’s made of fat and skin and muscle but the final result is quite different in presentation and I would bet delectation too.

So it is with pasta. When God gave out cuisines, it seems Italy was favored at the expense of much of the world. And one of those countries I will name is lovely Panama, where I recently traveled. Every good carnivore can have a grand ole time down there, but we annoying vegetarian folk are bombarded with fried beef empanadas and speaking of Roth maybe enough grease to float ships through the Canal without the whole rigmarole operation.

So we hunt for pasta, my husband and I, and since it’s the kind of food you find everywhere thanks to migration, and that you can top off anyway you like, I order a few veggies, which in Panama means carrots and onions. Where are all the green things? One time I saw a lone bit of broccoli that must have floated over, a refugee.

Despite the wine we ordered first, things did not go well.

The bowls arrived with enough spaghetti to twist singly around a sugar cane, which I mention just to get that fifth basic food group in. For some reason, Panama, quite an expensive country, can sometimes serve small portions for big prices, even when it comes to one of the cheaper foods on the planet. We ate the meager lukewarm strings in less time than it takes to even say Panama Canal, though it could take 8 hours for a ship to get through the passage.

Some things just don’t make sense.

I lost my cool. I asked for the manager, told her how aghast I was at the measly portion, she claimed it was some exact measure of grams, maybe 4 or something. Who measures pasta like medicine?

I don’t recall being as rattled about something else recently, but a tired traveler in a strange land in need of comfort food could be one of the sorriest of creatures.

So be forewarned: When it comes to pasta, this ubiquitous mighty starch, I will strongly suggest five basics of my own: hot, a lot, give me all you got, how about the whole pot, I apparently will give it to you good if not.

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