The afternoon didn't start out that well for me. The visited Lakeview Lutheran Church for its annual lutefisk and Swedish meatball feast. There, I was seated with some other nice folks and given the "welcome aboard" treatment pretty much right away. But on Saturday, February 28 at the Club, as its annual sauce tasting contest and pasta dinner kicked off, it was taking longer for me to get comfortable.
Turns out you can become Lutheran -- Italian, not so much. So all the welcoming embraces, loud shouts of joy, and of course that mother tongue, did not feel like they were meant for me, the interloper. I just sat there, and wanted to start eating spoonfuls of the parmesan cheese gracing every table.
But then I saw something, or rather someone that heartened me -- As the evening pressed upon us and the crowd in the homey gathering room of the Club swelled, the community spirit finally soaked in. The empty chairs around me filled up, including a 72-year member and two very friendly couples who were there together. Paul and Ross, the respective husbands, sat closest to me, and we chatted about the Club and my very disparate but completely non-Italian heritage. As it happened, Ross was the chef responsible for Sauce No. 8, to which I gave the following commentary: "Savory, spice-y. Could grow on me." He's a meticulous home cook, and I was happy to see that my silver medal went to a guy who clearly "gets it." In addition to the impending pasta dinner, a fantastic olive salad was available for $2 per precariously-heaped serving. I was silently wishing I liked olives enough to buy a whole tray for myself, when Ross and Paul offered up some of theirs to lonely little me. While clearly not paesan, I finally felt like I was being welcomed to the event as if I was a potential member. As is always the case with shared tables, it's as much the people around it as the food on it that makes the experience great. When we all filed up to get our plates, bowed and hot under all that spaghetti, sauce, and meatball, I knew that I could have been sitting in the broom closet and still felt a little happy. The meatballs were the genuine Italian-American ideal, massive and delicious. The pasta was cooked a little beyond al dente, but that only made it easier to dive into. I don't know if we were eating a competition sauce, or the usual recipe for this event, but it did its job with gusto. During the meal, we learned the results of the official vote. A tie for third place featured my personal favorite, and one that I'm told tasted similar to an oxtail-flavored sauce from last year. Second place went to an herbal, sweet sauce that I thought was better than other sauces like it in the competition. First place went to a spicy
