Trivial Tagliatelle

Most people know that the best way to cook tagliattelle (or spaghetti) is to follow these simple steps…

1. Fill the pot with water

2. Add olive oil, salt, and other herbs.

3. Wait for the water to boil and then add the pasta

Easypeasy, right?

Now that you’ve done that, you can’t just leave it boiling there ‘til kingdom come, but before you turn the burner off, you have to make sure that it’s cooked and to do that, there are two ways…

1. The simple taste test

2. The fun fling and stick test

Not a lot of people are aware of the fling and stick test. Back in summer camp this is what they taught us. Basically all it is, is you fling a strip of pasta onto the kitchen tile wall or the refrigerator… If it sticks, then it’s done.

Simple enough and frankly a lot more fun than having to taste test half-cooked pasta.

Funny… I sometimes feel like a strip of tagliatelle whenever I try to simmer in the pot of romance. I fling myself onto love thinking I’m done, only to find myself fall to the floor, because I’m half-cooked. …Maybe not even half-cooked, I may just be a quarter or an eighth-cooked. Now, if I were real pasta, I would have gone straight to the trash on the first instance, but thankfully I’m human, and so I have the privilege of being flung over and over and over again, falling to the floor over and over again, and of course going back to simmer over and over again. And with this tagliatelle analogy, I’ve realized that it’s really not them. It’s me.

...But hey, just you wait... One day, I’ll stick. And when I do, they better have that sauce all ready and hot, because then I’ll be done.

All sauced up and done.