Pasta

Donald E. Goerke, the Campbell Soup Co. executive who hit the bull's-eye of prepared foods by overseeing the creation of the kid-friendly circular pasta called SpaghettiOs, has died. He was 83. Gorke died Sunday of heart failure at his home in Delran, N.J., a Campbell spokeswoman confirmed. In the mid-1960s, Goerke -- pronounced GUHR-kee -- was dubbed "the Daddy-O of SpaghettiOs" for leading the team charged with creating an easy-to-eat canned pasta. Hundreds of shapes were proposed during the yearlong debate, but Goerke ended the chatter by saying, "Enough already!

McDonald's has had a difficult time in Italy, reports Elena Kostioukovitch in "Why Italians Love to Talk About Food." Some boycotts led to closures, franchises were forced to conform with local architecture and -- instead of hamburgers -- the restaurants serve "brioches, and slices of panettone, and . . . an excellent espresso." No wonder the chain had to adapt to survive. As demonstrated during her delightful culinary wanderings, good food is fundamental. Italy is the birthplace of the Slow Food movement and the Mediterranean Diet, recent results of Italians' long love affair with their country's rich and varied bounty.

Collective memory in El Salvador has long been a fragile commodity. An infamous 1932 government massacre of mainly Indian peasants was officially purged from history books for decades afterward. The country's brutal 12-year civil war of 1980-92 not only claimed tens of thousands of lives and razed entire villages. It also ravaged the country's heritage, fostering widespread amnesia about Salvadoran literature, music, indigenous culture and the performing arts. Over the next week, an ambitious multimedia happening with the umbrella title "Preservación de la Memoria Histórica Salvadoreña" (Salvadoran Preservation of Historic Memory)

For 25 years, the Lucky K.T. Noodle Factory in El Monte has been making fresh rice noodles for hundreds of Asian restaurants and supermarkets in Los Angeles and around the country. But a state law requiring manufacturers to refrigerate the pasta instead of allowing it to be stored at room temperature threatens to alter a long-held Asian tradition, said factory owner Tom Thong. "The health inspectors don't understand our culture," said Thong, 53. "We've been eating it this way for thousands of years and we've never had a problem.

Re: "How I Made It: Mario Batali," Sept. 20: It's appalling for celebrity chef Batali to say, "Our check averages are under $100 . . . and you can always get a bowl of pasta for $15 to $18." He is obviously clueless about what the rest of the nation is experiencing during this recession. Vicky Hoffman Los Angeles

Duck confit, pancetta-wrapped quail, butter-poached lobster tails, fried zucchini blossoms -- not exactly how most collegians are expecting to dine when they head back to their school dormitories this fall. But those are some of the dishes that may again delight the denizens of Norris Hall at Occidental College in Eagle Rock come this semester. Occidental junior Saul Sutcher is heading back to school with his '87 Volvo packed full of his cooking equipment and dishes. Without objection from the school administration, he'll again be setting up for Café Norris, preparing three-course gourmet meals served in the dormitory's common room most Saturday nights.

Nutrition Action Healthletter, the newsletter published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, calls the Domino's Pizza chain's 1,340- to 1,480-calorie BreadBowl Pastas "food porn." The carb-laden dish is made from white-flour penne pasta, sauce, cheese and other toppings doled out in "Frisbee-sized white-bread crusts." The offerings contain 22 to 28 grams of saturated fat and 1,820 to 2,840 milligrams of sodium. The pasta bowls have 186 to 194 grams of carbohydrates. The nutritional chart published by the pizza chain says each bowl contains two servings, which allows it to report calorie, fat, sodium and carb levels as half of what is listed above.

Puck really knows how to pick them. Locations, that is. Wolfgang Puck, who burst onto the scene in 1982 with a little place called Spago, has just opened a new restaurant downtown at L.A. Live. Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill sits center stage, right on the L.A. Live square next door to Nokia Theatre and directly across from the Los Angeles Convention Center. Not one to play it coy, he's emblazoned the name Wolfgang Puck across the front, with tall turquoise lacquer doors to mark the entrance.

It was an exciting moment: I was in the Library of Congress, watching as a cart approached packed with dozens of dull gray boxes. I was about to open what amounted to a time capsule and plunge into the 1940s, an America most of us today can barely conjure. A good way to understand our own times is to examine the past. Our entry into World War II started a process of inexorable change in America.