No, not at all. There may be a Japanese restaurant in town. Not sure. And I can’t eat fish, so a lot of Japanese stuff is out of the question. I do love Jasmine, Basmati and Sushi rice though. Use it as a side to ‘Meat on a stick’ 
I cannot “try on” shoes. It’s creepy. I know my size. I grab a shoe I like in my size and buy it. Sometimes I win, other times I buy shoes that absolutely suck, but I still wear them until they wear out.
A chef friend taught me how to make uovo ravioli. It’s impressive and lots of fine work, so I always make my pasta from scratch. But for spaghetti, who cares?
These days, I doubt I could even find anything that fits in an expensive shoe store. Combination last shoes don’t seem to be made anymore.
Medicaid will pay for one pair a year that almost fit. They almost have room for my toes (which are wide and do not taper), and if laced tight enough are only a little sloppy in the heels. They’d be very expensive if I had to buy them; I wouldn’t be able to do it.
I generally just buy the dry stuff. Because my wife doesn’t care. Spaghetti is pasta.
This could change over to how to make proper pierogies. I really don’t anymore. They, are a lot of work.
[ETA: this was meant for @enipla, my tech peasantry messed up the quoting].
Ahem, you were the guy suggesting pistols at dawn.
Fresh pasta is tasty but I agree with @pulykamell, it’s not superior, it’s different. For every day, I also agree with him: store bought “I like Del Cecco, or Barilla’s red label line.” Trader Joe’s also offers some fun pastas, affordable and lots of quirky variety, but always quality (and, yes, usually imported, without the imported price).
A snob about everything, really.
- Music.
- Clothing.
- Manners.
- Pronunciation.
- Spelling.
- Education.
- Literature.
- Polyglotism.
- Elocution.
- Film.
- Sport.
- Food.
- Drink (adult varieties).
Yet I permit myself to diverge when it suits me, which is often. Because, after all, taste is free to those who can afford it, very expensive to those who cannot.
That’s called hyperbole.
I mostly eat the dried stuff of course. Much easier.
Ya know when you have an experience that sticks with you? My wife and I where at an event where the athletes where served spaghetti. Sponsored by Barilla. I don’t know how they did it, but they screwed it up. I really can’t remember the details, perhaps it was over cooked. The sauce was bad too.
I’ve been quite picky about spaghetti ever since. I’m sure Barilla is fine, but I avoid it because of that experience.
This reminds me of the worst meal we ever had in Italy. Our kids were quite young at the time, and wouldn’t eat any ‘weird foreign’ stuff, so dinner HAD to be spaghetti. After searching round Piazza Navrona for a while, we ended up at a place close to the Pantheon.
Breaking Rule One of travel, of course: never eat at a restaurant with a view of a tourist attraction!
The spaghetti was obviously a cheap dried version, and somehow they had actually managed to burn one end of it. The sauce equally obviously was straight from a can. And the wine was, well, vinegar.
Happily very much an exception: almost all the meals we have had in Italy have been very good.
Have you ever had “Australian Black Licorice”? It is to die for! I don’t buy it for the same reason alcoholics in recovery don’t buy booze. Oh, in regards to the snob thing, the only real licorice is black. That cheap red stuff they sell in stores is crap. It shouldn’t even be allowed to be shaped like true licorice. 
Though it’s very easy to cook dried pasta al dente, it’s also easy to fuck them up. Exact timing is the key. If you undercook them by just a minute, they still have too much bite, one minute over they’re too soft, and two minutes over they’re mush. The spaghetti I usually cook need exactly 9 minutes and that always works out. So you can use the best product, if the timing is off you ruin it.
Also, the CEO of Barrilla is a raging bigot, so there are plenty of excuses to go with some other brand.
Yeah, I avoid Barilla too for that reason.
Beer and cheese definitely.
For beer I always say I have Stockholm syndrome from living in California for 15 years, so will generally drink super hoppy IPAs. I won’t turn down a macro brew American lager but IMO that barely qualifies as beer (when I first came to California I said Americans are just overcompensating as they had such terrible beer for so long, that now they will only call it a proper beer if it’s 12% and has a pound of hops in each glass)
Cheese is the opposite I will stand by opinion that the most expensive cheese in a fancy upscale American cheese shop is equivalent to a slightly premium piece of cheese at a regular European supermarket (probably barely that if the supermarket in question is French)
I’m willing to go through with that from this day forward. Thank you for pointing that out. Dle Cecco, preferably that toothsome bucatini or Trader Joe’s exotic pastas for me henceforth! Timed to the minute as well. .
In addition to being a snob about bourbon and coffee, I recently realized that I’m a snob about peaches. It is impossible to get a good one at the grocery store. Fortunately, the farmers market near me has amazing peaches right now.
We eat peaches daily (I grill them for dessert) but only while our neighbors’ trees are being harvested. We have a few weeks of peaches, then a year to recover.
I was hoping the “snob” conversation would come to champagne, so I can share one of my favorite stories. Back in the 80s, I’m in my early 20’s, earning about $20K, so I bring two $6 bottles of sparkling wine to a family holiday gathering. My brother a few years older and probably making 5x my salary shows up with a much “better,” ie more expensive champagne, and states that he “won’t drink the cheap stuff.” So of course I have to taste both. I taste them and I agree “there is a taste difference, but I like this one (gesturing at the cheap champagne) better.” A good hour later, we’re pouring my brother the cheaper one (without him knowing) and I’m raving about how amazing his champagne is, and he’s fully agreeing while unknowingly actually drinking the cheaper one. The whole family had a good laugh about that.
Yeah, I’m almost that way about tomatoes, but I miss them by winter time and buy the plastic red balls they call tomatoes in the grocery store.
Love this. I drink to get a buzz! Don’t need fancy brews, etc… IPA’s are bitter as hell–but they’re stronger, so quicker/better buzz so I’ll indulge.