Catch Up 1-12-11

There are lots of great myths as to where food came from, and they are all great.  One of my favorite ones ever reminds us to always look around for inspiration.  The story goes that there was this horrible chef from Italy that had been banished to a small tavern in the middle of this great forest on a road connecting many small towns to Paris from France.  One evening a French acting troupe came through his small tavern and inn he was employed in need of a blacksmith to fix a busted wagon wheel.  As luck would have it for this chef, and his masterful creation the blacksmith was quit a drunk and was already far from being able to do any work on the wagon wheel, so the troupe was forced to stay at the Inn for the night.  As the troupe came into the inn, the chef noticed they had a woman with them, the lead in the troupe; she was the most strikingly attractive woman he had ever seen.  After the group of travelers had checked in, the chef crept up stairs to the woman’s room and peered through the key hole into her room.  All the chef could see was the most stunning navel he had ever seen.  This chef, so horrible he was banished to afar away isolated community to toil away, so bad at his craft he spent far more time with the blacksmith in the tavern than in the kitchen perfecting his craft, but yet so inspired he ran downstairs and started making pasta.  Upon completion he called for the actress, who he had fallen full into lust with by now, he served her the first dish ever of tortellini, she of course fell in love, and based on the success of this dish he became re-inspired and eventually became one of the best chefs in Italy.