Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 10:46:28 +0100
From: Stefano Moretti <S.Moretti@agora.stm.it>
To: baidarka@lists.intelenet.net
Subject: Re: baidarka offside: Stone Soup and sense of humour
Gene Smith wrote:
>
> Yes Please! If no one else is interested, and/or if there is crankiness
> about putting it on the list, please send it along privately. I'm half
> Italian meself, love to cook, but have never heard of this soup before. I
> want to try it! Always loved the stone soup story since I was a kid, and
> always felt it was one of those stories that have been around since humans
> first developed a sense of humor.
Gene, due to a recent law, if any of your italian ancestors got another
nationality WITHOUT GICING UP HIS ORIGINAL ONE, you're intitled to file
a request for italian nationality with a very high degree of success.
This in case you make a few more steps into the direction of turning
completely nuts ... We want no half-step reasonable people.
As for the sense of humor, I beleive there was very little of this in
the stunning hunger that struck in turn all european countries. Think of
peronospora (potato disease) in Ireland: over one million starved out of
a population of 8, about 5 migrated and teh population never recoverd
from that in spite of Irish inclination towards child-making.
Think of the german, swedish, italian, greek, spanish, polish,
portuguese migration to the States. They where surely bent in two with
laughter thinking they were about to melt into the pot.
Another short - true - history about begging friars: they would knock
at doors and ask for money. Since it was indeed very scarce, people
would sit them at their table. In a tipical italian meal you get pasta
or soup, then a second course with meat cheese or fish and then fruit or
dessert. So the poor people developed a new kind of pasta. It was made
of only wheat flour and water, no eggs to bind it or make it richer.
A huge plate of this pasta would fill the friars/priests (much less
digestible than pasta with eggs) so they would not go on to the second
course of costly protein.
This pasta (#91) was and is called "strozzapreti" , literally "Priest
strangler".
Stefano, from Rome, the Holy Seat...