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Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details. How to eat Italian and influence people. By J. G. Fabiano I always make the same mistake! Coming from an Italian family I should know better, but once again I decided to wear a white shirt on the day we invited our friends over for an Italian banquet. For once my wife didn't notice either but then she was in the process of creating the entire feast. Our friends arrived early in the afternoon and the first thing I did was open a nice bottle of Banfi Chianti. Under normal circumstances this would have been an easy task. For non-Italians I have to explain that a bottle of Chianti is always wrapped in a wicker basket. The basket is held to the bottle by two small bands of wicker. When one opens the bottle one should never hold the bottle by the wicker but by the stem of the bottle. After I cleaned up the mess I correctly opened up the second bottle of Chianti! We then sat down for the first course of a truly exceptional meal. The course consisted of a wonderful antipasto. As I took my place at the table I noticed that we were using cloth napkins instead of the more practical paper napkins. I also noticed that the dining room table was entirely concealed beneath a tablecloth. In all honesty even paper napkins are too fussy for me, a folded paper towel would have done the trick but there was this exquisitely ironed and folded green cloth napkin next to a plate. The plate was filled with a wonderful mixture of Romaine lettuce, meats and cheeses, black and green olives, and other items that I know taste great but, even though I am Italian, I have no idea what they are! My next mistake was to try and impress everybody by using a fork to put an olive in my mouth. As soon as it came within an inch of my lips the olive succumbed to forces of gravity, bounced off my lap and rolled to within an inch of my wife's foot. It was hard to conceal because everybody heard it bounce off the floor. Deb took it away, muttering under her breath. The rest of the antipasto I captured cleanly with my fork and got into my mouth; except for the salami! Like the olive it was very slippery, but unlike the olive it did not roll on the floor, it simply stuck to the floor. I attempted to peel it off without anyone noticing but after the olive incident everybody was watching me. The salad was finally done and, I am proud to report, I did not have to use my napkin once. My wife then served a large bowl of spaghetti covered with an incredibly rich sauce made from scratch. This sauce wasn't just any spaghetti sauce, it was the Michelangelo of sauces; filled with meatballs, sausages, pork, and something called brijole. Brijole is a type of steak hammered into fine sheets then spiced and rolled into small tubes. A string holds the tubes of meat together. I contemplated it eagerly, before digging in, a huge and luscious serving of fine Italian cuisine. Somebody then passed me a piece of Italian bread. As even non-Italians know, you can't eat Italian without plenty of bread to soak up the sauce. This was typical Italian bread, soft, warm and delectable on the inside but a crust that can cut your gums like a razor. I broke it open with an expert flourish, intending to deposit all the crumbs neatly on my plate and succeeded! I then buttered the soft and fluffy inside, folded it over and dropped it face down on my pants. With me there is never a 50-50 chance that the buttered side will land face up. I resisted the temptation to grab my clean new napkin. No, I was not going to be the first to soil its pristine perfection. I then realized that neither my wife nor our guests had noticed because they were too preoccupied now with the food, so I decided to leave the mess on my lap and figure out how to dispose of it later on in the meal. I then turned my attention to the main event, determined not to wear anymore of my wife's wonderful meal. The meatballs were not a problem; all I had to do was cut them in half, spear them with a fork and pop them in my mouth. I was doing well until I accidentally knocked one of the halves off my plate and onto the tablecloth. I caught my wife's warning glance and smiled reassuringly back. Hey, at least I had missed my napkin! The sausages were a bit more difficult to cut without sliding them around my plate and spilling yet more sauce onto the tablecloth. My side of the table was now starting to look as though I had no plate under the food, but the mood of the dinner party was happy and light. Oe by one, I had my guests pass me the salt, pepper, cheese and oil, so I could surround my plate with all these condiments in order to conceal the mess I had made. The brijole was my favorite part of the meal. It was compact enough for me to spear with a fork and put in my mouth without leaving any spillage behind. The only problem was that I forgot to take off the string that held it together. Once I had it in my mouth I didn't think it would be polite to take it out again and untie it so I kept on chewing and smiling, like a cow blissfully chewing the cud. I didn't mind in the least because the string was so impregnated with sauce that it really tasted very good. I also thought of secreting the well-chewed string into my napkin but opted to swallow it instead. My napkin remained clean. The spaghetti was easily the greatest challenge of the afternoon. I've had some experience at this and I really thought I could masterfully use the spoon to roll the spaghetti onto my fork and then transfer it neatly into my mouth. As I was attempting to do this I noticed that all conversation around the table had quieted down and I had become the center of attraction. I smiled around at all of them as they watched a master at work and I continued to roll the fork deftly in my hand, convinced that I must have one very long strand of spaghetti on my plate because the rolling seemed to take forever. After a few minutes more my wrist began to tire and I decided to put whatever I had accumulated into my mouth, only to see that I had created a tightly rolled ball of spaghetti the size of a basketball. Undaunted I sucked at the loose strand, intending to bite off a small section but sucked a little too forcefully and the free flowing spaghetti snapped loose like a tugboat line, wrapping itself tightly around my head and spraying the table widely with tomato sauce and flecks of sausage meat. I looked around at our stunned, tomato-spattered guests and my eyes came to rest on my wife who now had a bright red line running diagonally across her face. Discreetly, I offered her my unsoiled napkin! The End
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