Today is (was) Fat Tuesday. In my family it is a longstanding tradition to celebrate the day with baked goods and sweets. As a child, I can remember my extended family coming over and bringing the most delicious desserts - my favorite, of course, being cannoli. In a way, Fat Tuesday was almost better than Halloween because my mother permitted a no-holds-barred sugar feast unlike any other. We could eat an entire package of cookies, if we so desired (the effect of which was punishment enough, but I digress)
As an adult I now try to inspire a bit of sloth and gluttony amongst my friends and cook lasagna every year (with strict promises from all involved that if they are going to adopt this Catholic tradition, they will also not eat the entire next day nor enjoy life for the following 40) While this seems like an easy task, in actuality, the concept of never-ending dessert is foreign to most people. In recent years it seems I have been attempting to re-create the favorite memories of my sweet tooth (which now has a crown) with little success. People are all for dinner, and wine, but to convince them to each bring a dessert that results in a glucose schmorgasborg isn't as easy as it sounds.
Due to the difficulty of finding cannoli - especially good cannoli - in the fair city of Seattle I decided to have a cannoli contest for the first few years here. I figured that rather than spending (more*) massive amounts of time trying to track down cannoli, why not use the brains of my friends to assist me in my quest?! The unfortunate result was the unpredicted lack of valor for the task...rather than hunting down cannoli as I had anticipated, people quite easily threw in the towel and showed up without any sweets at all...which defeats the whole point. *original cannoli search story for another time
Last year I really emphasized the cannoli aspect and had a few entries of home-made cannoli, which was delicious.
This year I neglected to check how early Easter was and had a more low-key dinner due to inviting people mere days and hours before chow time. (he he -oops...) So I decided to forgo the cannoli contest completely for several reasons:
1 - Homemade cannoli, while amazingly good, never really satiated my curiosity...is it possible to get a good cannoli in this town? And where? Even the seemingly obvious answers hold no bounty. The offerings at the Italian Festival (Seattle's pathetic version of the San Gennaro Festival to you NYC types) is absolutely pitiful. When I have attended in search of that crispy shell and that distinctive-tasting filling I have repeatedly found only one booth sells cannoli - with soggy shells and maraschino cherries on the ends (if anything, I prefer a few small chocolate chips).
2 - People seemed to be getting too caught up in the contest as an all-or-nothing participation in dessert
3 - it's not fair to ask people to track down something last-minute that is only acquired through difficulty (whether that difficulty is actually undertaking the adventure of finding good pre-made cannoli or making the effort to create them yourself)
To keep it easy, when telling people to come over, I just asked them to bring wine and/or dessert.
So this time we had at least 3 different tiramisu...which I don't even really like...maybe next year I'll make individual assignments.
Song of the Day: Too Much by Dave Matthews Band
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