Mother-in-Law's Tongues

The RI Department of Transportation must have run out of type when they got to our town. You can tell because all the letters in the highway sign are a mix of upper and lower case and varying sizes and different typefaces. It's enough to distract and thereby endanger the life of any graphic designer driving north on highway 99. I try to warn all my graphic designer friends when they come to my house. Beware!! I guess we're too far from headquarters to get our share of funds for proper signage. My guess is the governor's highway exit sign doesn't look this bad! Or maybe graphic design should be a requirement for government officials.

Speaking of government I've had way too many political robots leaving messages on my answering machine. I know the election is Tuesday but I need peace of mind so I'm spending this moment thinking about how many pasta shapes there are on the planet. The genius of the noodle! In the NYC subway stations, the school for the deaf used to give out easy-reference wallet-sized cards of the alphabet printed in sign language. I would love to have a similar card with all of the pasta shapes and names in Italian and English, printed wallet-size for easy reference. Maybe it could be a tourist thing whenever you go to little Italy. Nonetheless I want to get to know all the shapes: radiatori, fettuccini, mostaccioli, fusilli, ziti, ditalini, rigatoni, conchiglie, cavatelli, tubettini, penne. Did you know there was a pasta called lingue di suocera, or mother-in-law's tongues? Pretty creepy. Strozzapreti means "priest strangler." It makes me think of the Jewish hamentashen - eating Hamen's hat! What really fascinates me is that eating capellini (angel hair - wouldn't that give you a fur ball?) is a whole different dining experience than eating linguini fini, or vermicelli (little worms!) You could eat pasta every night of the week and just change the diameter of your noodle! But how come rotini and farfalle (bowties) and other macaroni shapes can taste so different? The sauce falls on the shapes differently making the sauce-to-pasta ratio varied, changing the experience, like the way lighting variations change a face.