Want

There are not many things I miss about New York. I fell in love with Nashville and middle Tennessee shortly after moving here, and getting over the culture shock. For example, if you are walking on a downtown street in Nashville, and make eye contact with a stranger, said stranger will smile and or say hello to you. My New York friends will think that is some crazy shit, but it is indeed true.

I usually miss New York around this time of year, when the weather gets cold and I think of my Italian extended famliy gathering in Queens, around a big table, with really gorgeous food that I would kill for right now.

I would really like to replicate my Nonno's minestrone, but so far that has proved to be impossible, because I think it was infused with his soul as he stirred the pot over and over until it was ladeled into bowls.

There is another problem with growing up with Northern Italian cuisine and being far removed from a lot of Northern Italians. It is hard as shit to find certain products here in the South.

Perfect example: cappeletti. Oh, you say you are not familiar with this? Well, let me 'splain by all means. Cappelletti is a pasta extremely similar to tortellini, but they are smaller, and mostly consumed in broth as a first course for either a Christmas Day or Christmas Eve dinner. It is by far the most perfect and gorgeous soup I have ever had. I would not even bother asking a grocery store clerk if they carried cappeletti, because they would invariably scratch their noggin and be like "cappawhat?", so I would just be happy finding a good frozen meat tortellini, but alas I have not found any.

Sad y'all, so sad.

So I guess I will have to make the pasta myself, which is the textbook definition of labor intensive. It will be a chore for me, because my cooking style is quick, combine flavors on the fly sort of cooking, and this is more like manufacturing. But I am desparate, so I think this will happen before winter is over. I need a fix.