Planning to dine in on Valentine’s Day? Then you’ve probably got in mind a little soft music, candlelight, wine and an Italian entree.
Since childhood, we’ve absorbed pop culture’s subliminal messages that pasta and romance go together like love and marriage.
Most likely you were introduced to that concept when a shared plate of spaghetti led to a slurpy canine kiss in the Disney classic “Lady and the Tramp.” Did you know that 50 years later, that iconic scene is still parodied in movies and on TV? In a recent “Glee” episode, Brittany fantasized that her dinner with Artie would be as romantic as Lady and Tramp’s spaghetti meal.
Remember the scene in “The Apartment” when Jack Lemmon makes a candlelit dinner for Shirley MacLaine? He boils spaghetti, then strains it through a tennis racquet. Not too conducive to whetting your appetite but, ladies, didn’t you still sigh over his thoughtfulness in trying to please her?
Julia Roberts ate with joyous abandon in her famous pasta-eating scene from “Eat Pray Love.” She relished that guilty pleasure, even moaning at one point. Who knew pasta could be so provocative?