Pep Talk: "Anything But Arrabbiata!"

Your knucklehead scribe nearly flunked basic Italian during his freshman year at Mizzou. I can recall vividly begging the considerate professor to please allow safe passage. I don’t know if it’s still true 40 years later but at the time, taking a foreign language was required of freshmen in the College of Arts and Science. I was not the best student.

So most of my Italian proficiency, or lack thereof, has come from two sources: Former Denver Post reporter John Henderson. One of the most interesting men in the world was a fellow “beat reporter” for many memorable, for success, CU football seasons. Two goofballs covered the team and hung out together, home and away. “Hindu” now lives in Rome and serves as our European tour guide.

The other mentor of Italiano is Vinanzio Momo, owner of Cucina Colore in Denver’s Cherry Creek North. We’ve known each other for quite some time. He’s a great guy who is passionate about family, sports, friends and creating delicious food and comfy atmosphere at his long-standing and successful restaurant. Luck would have it, the fun spot is just a few blocks from where I’m blessed to lay my weary head each evening snuggled up to, when she’s not traveling, one of the world’s amazing ladies, my darling wife.

Anyway, I digress. The other day I popped into Cucina for lunch and ordered the usual with a loud, “Vinanzio, pasta arriabiata!” For whatever reason my feeble brain raced back to those freshmen days of cluelessness in Italian class. I asked Vinanzio what exactly “Arrabbiata” means. The proud Italian from New York City didn’t hesitate, “It means angry.” In the culinary world it’s the spicy red sauce turbocharged by the heat of the chili pepper and one's reaction to it. Stomach, beware.

What burrowed into marrow was “The heat of the chili pepper and one’s reaction to it.”  My mind then wandered - it does often - back to earlier in the day. At the weekly meeting of dudes sarcastically cajoling one another to strengthen our spiritual walks, a buddy was talking about a buddy. Apparently this guy, as a way of keeping mind, body and spirit sharply focused, climbs Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks in winter. Most climb in summer and worry about getting down the mountain before prevalent afternoon thunderstorms and lightning threaten their well being. This wack job climbs in winter’s deep mountain snows knowing, with one slip, “I’ll vanish.” Humm. Apparently that keeps this intense man locked in on what’s important because, in his words, “I would just disappear.”

The heat of the chili pepper and one’s reaction to it.

Life can certainly get spicy when we least desire it, right? There are moments making us angry, roiling our tummies and leaving us muttering, “What the heck is going on?” Whether muttered in Italian, English or your language of choice does not matter. The bottom line becomes, “We got the chili pepper, how we gonna react to it?”

This week let’s focus, keep a firm foothold and make sure our reaction is anything but “arrabbiata!”