What Kind of Noodler Are You?

One of the sticky issues we love to tackle here at P-CPPP central is food. Well, not sticky foods. No, that’s not right. Controversial foods, maybe. No...that’s stuff like veal and fois gras. Ah, shit...we just like to talk and argue about trivial stuff, and sometimes that stuff is food. And the food I want to talk about is noodles. Pasta, specifically. Thus the title.*

(Psst!  Christian--you usually start these things off, and now I see why. It’s hard. Hat’s off to you man!)

Pat:  Hey buddy. I’ve been struggling with something really important lately. If you could only have one kind of noodle for the rest of your life, what would it be? I’m curious, because in all of this talk of influenza and zombies and Justin Bieber, I kinda’ wanna’ stock up, and I want to make sure I get the right one.

Which would Bieber do?

Christian: Why? Are you planning on having me over if/when the apocalypse happens? If so, to be honest, I don’t know how much of a mood I will be in for pasta. Seems kind of heavy for an end of the world type meal. Is there something else I could order instead?

Pat:  Nope, you nailed it. I’m calling it the A-pasta-lypse! I’m gunning for orrechiette. Did you know it means “little ear”? How cool is that? I think I wanna’ serve it to my vegetarian friends and freak them out.

Them: “What?! I’m eating little ears?!”

Me: “No...that’s just the name of the pasta”

(But what they don’t know is that the sauce is simply pureéd steak. Hah hah! Suckers!)

Christian: Well, isn’t the reason why there are different pasta shapes is because of the different kinds of sauces and whatnot that goes along with them? For example, your more curly type pastas were designed to hold onto more sauce and flavor while the long skinny ones were designed to drive you mad with frustration while you try to wrap some around your fork.

So for me to chose just one pasta I’ll need to know what you will be putting on them. Apocalypse or no apocalypse I’m not going to be caught dead eating cappelletti noodles with a clam based sauce.

Pat:  Right. Again, you’re spot on, buddy. See...I think in the apocalypse, sauces are going to be kind of hard to come by, what with the unclean water and such. So which shape do you think makes the best UNIVERSAL noodle, good with any sauce or even--gasp!--sans sauce?

Christian: Wait, you’re not suggesting we are going to eat noodles without anything on them are you? Just because it’s the apocalypse doesn’t mean we have to start living like hyenas.

Pat:  Well, I certainly HOPE not. I AM one sixteenth Italian, remember. And in keeping with that hope, I’m just curious which noodle has the best potential for pairing well with the greatest number of sauces or sauteés. And...in the unfortunate event of a sauceless world, it might behoove us to spend a moment considering a noodle whose shape is so delightful that it does not need a sauce to bring about a small amount of joy.

Christian: To be honest all the noodles taste the same to me when they are sauceless. I think the real question here is, would we really want to go on living in a sauceless world? I think the obvious answer to that is no.

So with that settled, let’s assume there are still sauces in the post-apocalyptic world. Although at this point I would imagine sauces would be the new currency.

“Be still my dog of war. I understand your pain. We've all lost someone we love. But we do it my way!

We do it my way. Fear is our ally. The sauces will be ours. Then you shall have your revenge.” - Humongous

Thus since we would now be living in a violent world with day to day power struggles over who would rule supreme over all the sauces, and I can only choose one noodle, I would probably pick whichever noodle has the most square area of scooping ability so that it could hold as much sauce as possible. So I don’t know, I guess cannelloni?

You should stock up on cannelloni.

Pat:  But cannelloni is usually filled with stuff, isn’t it? That kinda’ makes the sauce irrelevant. Right? So listen, little buddy, I’m nothing if not amenable to new ideas. What say we turn this into a discussion of the ideal sauce, then? Hmm?

What say you to that? And I defy you to come up with a better all around sauce than the Argentinian chimichurri. Done. There...see? That was a nice discussion.

*Not to be confused with Okie Noodling. Honestly, I didn’t even know that shit existed. Is it real?

Git yer hands outta' there, Cletus!