And on a more personal note...

We're getting married!!!

He asked me at the Italian deli where we had our first real date. I didn't take any pictures of the food and wine, because I was too busy being, um, teary-eyed.

But I can describe.

Now I understand why people order pasta when they go out to eat. See, I grew up with dried pasta and jarred sauce, sometimes with the green can of shelf-stable Parm. Pasta, especially in tomato sauce, has always been poor food to me.

Oh, glorious simple carbs! The hand-made cavatelli were tender and full of flavor -- not at all like the bland boxed pastas of my childhood, the ones that had to be doused in tomato sauce to be edible. Not. At. All. I would gladly have eaten them with a simple garlic butter. But no! They came with a deliciously fresh meat sauce that made a mockery of the sauces I grew up with.

The wine was a Moscato D'Asti whose name I can't remember. We loved it so much that we took another bottle home with us. I'll rave about it when we drink it, because memory just won't do it justice.

I really think that it's impossible to plug that restaurant too much. It's so terrific that I'm almost afraid to try cooking Italian food at home!