yustyoking

Pasta fazoola!  

Happy Columbus Day!

Growing up, when things went sideways on the soccer field or in the house, we bitched. “Pasta fazoola,” we swore, meaning “everything is all messed up.” America in the 1960’s, even Polish-Russian-Swedish brats like us luxuriated in this fake molto italiano expression. 

After two days and nights— 48 hours— of rain, the sun has returned and everything is slowly drying out.

Pasta fazoola!  

Here in Oxburg, Maryland, I am sharing my two-story house with an insect, a hussyrsa in Swedish, a house cricket, which is all right when it’s in the basement, but I don’t like it in my kitchen where I am eating.

Pasta fazoola!

Trash collection in our neighborhood is on Mondays, whether it’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day or not. Of the two black plastic garbage bags, the trashmen have taken one and left the other. Half the garbage is still in the can, where it will sit and rot for a week until, hopefully, the truck collects it next Monday.

Pasta fazoola!

Normally, I would telephone and complain, but the last time I did that, behold, the company got pissed off enough to change the collection time curbside from 8 a.m. to 5 a.m. They now collect the garbage at five o’clock in the morning!

P-P-Pasta fazoooola!

Pasta fazool is the same dish as pasta e fagioli, which translates literally to “pasta and beans.” Popular in southern Italy, in Naples dialect it is called pasta e fasule.

Presto! Pasta fazoola!

While pasta e fagioli is served as a brothy, rustic soup, Italian-American pasta fazool is a thicker, marinara style stew.

Yummy! As we used to say, “Good at half the price.”

Kids. Go figure.

Mutte Fjutt in Uppsala, Sweden is going to telephone the ICA grocery store chain and complain that the cooking time for pasta is always included on the package in teeny-tiny print. “Why is cooking time in the smallest print on the box?” he gripes over Microsoft Teams, wearing a snazzy sportscoat and looking terrific. “Why do Putin and Trump make war when something truly importante like the cooking time for pasta is practically kept top secret?”

I love De Cecco, but when Mutte is right, he is right.

We feel this course correction in human evolution will render Mutte eligible for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

As an online influencer, I should be able to nominate Mutte for this award. Otherwise, pasta fazoola!