Dinner! Gusto eccezionale!

Tuesday night we sat down for dinner and Italian night broke out. Earlier in the day I had a hankering for pasta. With vegetables. But I'm not Italian. My wife is not Italian. We have something like 12 kids who are not Italian. Short of calling the Pope to see what the Popester recommended, I was in a quandary. (Editor's note: What does the Pope have to do with finding an Italian dish? Isn't the Pope German? Were you looking for a German dish? Author's reply: The Pope is German? Is that legal?) So I started trolling the net for suitable dishes and this is what I came up with on allrecipes.com: "Summer Squash Chicken Alfredo." Let me just say it was a selection that was "magnifique." (Editor's note: That's French for magnificent. You meant "magnifico" my love. Author's reply: I knew that. I was just saying that even the French would say this particular Italian dish was magnificent. Editor's exasperated comment: Whatever. My love.)

The thing I really liked about this recipe, besides the yeller squash, zucchini, pasta, alfredo sauce, garlic and chicken breasts, was that it used bacon. I would have to say that if you put bacon in anything, it makes the dish sing. It completes it. The dish has "vitalita" as all my Italian friends would say. (Loosely translated from the Italian, that means the dish has "oomph.") You can't go wrong with bacon. I threw some bacon in a clam chowder a while back and it was off the chart. Bacon on a burger? Need I say more? I make this seafood chowder with bacon in it and if you took out the bacon, it would just be another creamy, seafoody soup. Here's how I know the Summer Squash Chicken Alfredo A La Zesta Porko went over well with the Team Sabo crew: It was so quiet when everybody was chowing down, you could have heard a rigatoni noodle drop.