There are great love affairs that permeate the ages: Anthony and Cleopatra, Rhett and Scarlet, Samson and Delilah…Everyone and Pasta.  There’s something almost magical about digging into a heaping plate of piping hot noodles slathered in tangy red sauce…or pudgy pasta squares bulging with velvety ricotta.  Besides your mother, pasta might actually have been your first love. How many of us began our eating careers gleefully squishing and slurping our way through a bowl of simple spaghetti? 

Long, short, skinny, wide, twisted, curled, pinched, tied – pasta in all its glorious forms is ubiquitous to Italy, a food staple that might rank #1 on a list of “What do you think of f when you think of Italy?” And naturally, one assumes the first plate of pasta was introduced to humanity eons ago on the beautiful Italian peninsula. But in actuality, the origin of pasta as we know and love it today is a bit convoluted…a topic still being noodled over in search of a verifiable timeline.