Do you know ... about pasta?

> Oct 25 is World Pasta Day. It began as an annual event after the first World Pasta Congress was held in Italy in 1995.

Sao Paolo, Brazil, is the host this year. Industry experts will address issues on economic, nutritional and cultural values of pasta.

> There are at least 600 pasta shapes throughout the world. > There is a pasta shape to complement every pasta dish.

For example, anelli are small rings of pasta that can be used in soups.

Cavatelli look like tiny hot dog buns, usually served with thick sauces or in pasta salads.

Pastina is very tiny pasta, and is suitable for children.

Filindeu or “threads of God” is the rarest pasta in the world. Apparently, only a handful of women in Sardinia, Italy, can make it. Filindeu is a lace-like pasta eaten with soup during the Feast of San Francesco . > Thomas Jefferson, the e third preside nt of the Unitedd States, is sai d to have brought past ta to the countr ry in 1789. Apparently, he liked a dish while serving as the US representative to France and ordered crates of it home, along with a pasta-making machine.

> On April 1, 1957, a BBC current affairs programme pulled off an April Fool’s joke about “spaghetti farms” where farmers picked spaghetti from trees and laid the strands out to dry, This “spaghetti tree” is considered one of the biggest food hoaxes ever.

> Two years ago, the popular Miss Manners advice column in The Washington Post noted that the correct way to eat spaghetti does not involve a spoon.

“Bracing the tines of the fork against a spoon is considered rather crude in Italy. Rather, the fork should be planted, tines down, against the plate, and rotated so that the spaghetti is wound around it. Those pesky strands that refuse to wind can be cut with the side of the fork.”