Blonde Moment

Last week at Kim and Nathan's house, we decided that we needed to see more of each other and would thus begin having weekly dinners together.  Armed with my new, amazing cookbook, Williams-Sonoma's Essentials of Italian Cooking which I have pledged to cook my way through in a less annoying way (and with far less tears about cooking) than Amy Adams in "Julie and Julia," I invited everyone over to Kasa di Keenan (I'm going Kardashian and spelling everything with K's...) for a three course, entirely Italian meal.  The day before dinner, Tom and I walked all over Vomero, our 'hood, to get the ingredients from local vendors.  Tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, mozzarella di bufala, etc.  I was just missing clams to make my linguine dish.  So I raced home and speed-walked over to the pescheria, or fish shop, to get some.  But it was closed!  So I walked REALLY fast over to the other pescheria.  But it was closed too!  There I was, standing on the street outside of a really expensive shoe store searching on Williams-Sonoma's website to find a new recipe from my cookbook so I wouldn't be a liar.  Well, I couldn't find anything...

I wandered into the little fruit stand and started ordering things that I figured I could make something with.  The trick to Italian produce stands is this: you don't touch anything.  It's kind of strange and makes me feel like a spoiled princess that I'm just telling some old man to get my fruits and veggies, but that's the way of it!  Confident in my purchases, I decided to make my highly un-Italian version of wine braised sausage spaghetti.  With this thought bubble, I paid my produce man, "buona serata!" and smiled to myself as I walked to the meat stand.  And then it happened...

Approaching the meat store, I was deep in thought about how Italian I was becoming, how nice my coat looked in the wind, how I should buy gloves, blah blah blah.  Blonde moment thoughts echoed my blonde moment: I walked forehead first into the glass door of the butcher shop.  Upon later recounting this story to my mom, through wickedly honest laughter, she stated "I bet they thought a bird flew into the door."  Thanks, mom!  The two butchers, entirely alarmed by my stupidity, looked at me in wonder and fear.  The elder gentleman opened the door for me and began rattling off in Italian something about my head and if I felt ok, and I just started awkwardly laughing in this really high, completely ashamed level of loud.  "Surely she's crazed..." they thought.  Overwhelmed and still reeling from my encounter with a glass door, I ordered 5 links of sausage and tried to get out of there as quickly as possible.  After paying, the butcher kindly pointed to the blue sticker above the handle which read "spingere" (push).  "Si, grazie."  Yeah, yeah, open the door next time, idiot!

Nothing makes moments of complete shame, like walking into doors completely sober, more bearable than retelling it over a 5 liter bottle of wine to friends.  The meal was definitely not my best and finishing 5 liters of wine among 6 people is always a bad idea for a Wednesday night, but at least we all had several hearty laughs at my expense.