Is there anything that makes a woman feel guiltier than eating a bowl of pasta?  Fortunate women who choose the food that comes their way are perhaps uniquely subject to this neurosis.    But those women would rather start their day with the dentist and end it with the gynecologist than suffer the guilt of sitting down to the good stuff.   And I'm not talking about a  side dish of whole grain, Omega-3 -fortified, what-passes- for -pasta in Guiltlandia.  

As it turns out, I am not one of those women.  Sometimes a girl just needs the unadulterated embrace of buttered noodles.  It could be a cold day with sideways rain, a day when you kick someone in the shins just for being the next person to ask you a question, or maybe it's Tuesday.  You know what I mean.  After that kind of day, especially if it's one of those rare evenings when no one else is home, I go straight for the scrapolini. 

Scrapolini is remainder pieces of cut-out pasta after making round raviolis.  My kids coined the term and it stuck.   I dry it out and store it for emergency comfort situations.   Did I say store?  I meant stash carefully behind other stuff in the pantry.

I just boil the noodles,  saute  chopped garlic in olive oil  until it's brown and crispy, then throw it all into a bowl with plenty of butter, salt, pepper and  a dash of crushed red pepper.   I can go from soggy-footed entry to comfy couch ( TV remote in one hand,  glass of red wine in the other)  in about 15 minutes.  

Do I feel guilty when found on the couch in al dente flagrante?   Not for a second.