Italian meals are popular all over the world, and in the U.S. we eat all sorts of Italian food! For example, pizza, pasta and many cheeses and deli meats we enjoy originally come from Italy. I love going grocery shopping in Italy and getting to see all of the fresh tomatoes, spicy peppers and fancy olive oil, but my favorite part? The pasta aisle. Picture it: rows and rows of different pasta shapes and brands!
Pasta is very important in Italian food culture. Many people have pasta for their primo piatto (first plate, or first course) at dinner or at lunch, then a meat dish for their secondo piatto (second plate, or main course.) I was so excited to learn that in Italy, spaghetti refers to a pasta shape, not the whole dish! A single one of those noodles would be called a spaghetto. Spaghetti means more than one of the long skinny noodles! You can have spaghetti with all sorts of sauces, not just with the tomato sauce that is popular in the United States. There are hundreds of different noodle shapes, and they can be used in all sorts of meals.
