When you sign up for a trip to Italia, there’s about a 100% chance you have visions of mouthwatering, perfectly al dente, simple yet decadent pasta weaving their way through your itinerary. If you don’t, go somewhere else. You don’t deserve it.
I’ve often thought, as Gabri makes a fat joke at my expense (I know, what a d*ck?!), how lucky is he that I’m a girl that loves to eat? I mean, truly and deeply LOVES to eat. I think I’ve mentioned before that I find food to be one of life’s greatest pleasures. To all of you modelizers out there, it’s time for some introspection. Do you really believe in your heart of hearts, belly of bellies, that enjoying some of the best dishes in among the best restaurants in one of the most delicious countries in the world would be as fun with someone starving themselves across from you? If you can’t indulge over an Italian meal side by side, what are you even doing together? Restraint has it’s place but it isn’t always sexy.
Still though, after great effort to redefine my pre-pregnancy abs, this recent trip to Italia confronted me with a daily predicament. This week, I was faced with copious amounts of Pici, a pasta typical of Toscana that’s so thick it seems as if it were intentionally designed with more real estate for the artful delivery of delicate Pesto di Salvia, cacio e pepe and porcini con tartufo. I felt my pancia (stomach) softening with each waking morning. Why, after months and months of sweating my ass (and layers of post partum blubber) off, would I sacrifice it all for the fleeting joy of a piatto di pici?
After some not so serious contemplation, I’ve arrived at a conclusion: the pici, the pasta … it’s soulfood in its simplest form. Unadulterated ingredients expertly woven together in an effort to maintain their integrity while bolstering their unique flavors. It’s food laced with happiness and at the end of the day, wouldn’t you rather be fat and happy than skinny and sad? I won’t deny seeing a six pack reflected back at me fills me with a joy that’s probably more made of pride and satisfaction than anything else. But maybe it’s there, hanging in the balance, that my happiness lies. A stateside six pack waiting to be ravaged and emulsified into more of a one-pack-o-pasta.
If I could make three humans with this ol’ pancia and then, despite some weird and unwelcome diastasis ab-splitting situation and an unrecognizable belly button, again find some semblance of abs, I could certainly manage to find my way back to chiseled post-pici. Or I could certainly try. (Ashli Katz, creative mover and heated bar instructor extraordinaire, I’m lookin at you girl.)
Among the tidbits of brilliant advice I plan to bestow upon my children, here’s an important one: My loves, when in Italy, and perhaps only there, that moment on the lips is truly worth that lifetime on the hips.