1. Let's get one thing straight.
I love pasta.
I love it in all of its shapes, sizes, and textures and I love the countless ways to turn pasta into meals.
If I were sentenced to life with pasta every day, I could happily live with that.
Knowing this, it follows that I've been keenly anticipating this year's annual Mostaccioli Feed at St. Rita's Catholic Church in Kellogg.
We decided this year, just like last year, to make the Mostaccioli Feed the site of our weekly family dinner.
Donnie Rinaldi (KHS, Class of '48 and lifelong best friend of my dad) served each of us a generous helping of mostaccioli (a pasta similar to penne, but smoother, without the ends cut at an angle) and the guy next to him plopped two meatballs and a thick red sauce on top of the pasta.
Our meal also included a small iceberg lettuce salad dressed with vinaigrette, slices of garlic bread, and Chianti wine.
I think, but I'm not sure, that the Chianti wine came from mass produced jugs made by Carlo Rossi.
It was perfect.
I'm not at well-versed in the language of wine, but there's something about the body and flavor of the Chianti wine they serve annually at this feed that makes it the BEST glass(es) of wine I drink all year.
Maybe it's because it pairs so well with the mostaccioli.
Maybe it's because it takes me back to when I loved drinking cheap red wine over dinners 40 to 45 or so years ago.
Something about that Chianti wine, beyond its alcohol content, and in concert with the mostaccioli and meatballs and sauce, lifts me into a mild euphoria, a blend of flavor, mouth feel, and nostalgia that makes me feel open, joyful, in love with life.
I relished my dinner, drank a moderate amount of wine, not wanting to ruin the euphoria by getting sloppy, and enjoyed the fellowship of family and talking with people at the feed I've known for decades.
2. Upon returning home, Debbie said she was in the mood for Columbo and, having just enjoyed a memorable Italian dinner, Columbo sounded great to me, too.
I wanted to see if I could maintain the mild euphoria I had achieved at St. Rita's Catholic Church and decided that if I sipped on it slowly, a pour of Stein's 9 year Straight Ram Rye Whiskey over ice might do the trick.
It did.
Debbie finds this particular rye whiskey too harsh, but I love the complex of flavors in this whiskey that developed over its nine years in a barrel. I'm not astute enough to identify those flavors, but I can say that something about this whiskey connects me with what's old and enduring in life, with things that last, but that a writer more intimate with whiskey and with more command of whiskey language would have to write just what I experience on my behalf.
But whether I can nail down this pleasure precisely in words is not very relevant when I'm slowly sipping on this spirit and feel my spirits rise and feel myself transported to a place of warmth and comfort.
3. Columbo worked insistently and intelligently on the homicide featured in tonight's episode. He was up against a music composer and conductor (played by the great Billy Connolly) whose work has begun to slip and who decides to rid himself of the young composer who is destined to replace him.
Columbo wasn't the only hard-working detective we watched this evening.
We also watched Adrian Monk investigate the murder of the wife of the former commissioner of the San Francisco Police Department. The victim's body was discovered by a psychic who claims the deceased woman was calling out to her. Monk didn't buy this story and he methodically works to piece together what really happened.
It's brilliant.
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