No Sugo For You! Come back, one year!

As seen in the Soup Nazi episode - courtesy of kellimarshall.net

Did you get the Seinfeld Soup Nazi reference? I hate to explain my jokes…but with me being so lame, perhaps it’s necessary :-S

So I was a wee bit disappointed after this weekend when I discovered that the chance of our inaugural Tomato Sugo*-making Wog Day would be slim. Slim as Minnie Driver, slim as Fat Boy Slim, slim as Slim Shady…bahhh…basically unfairly slim 😦

The reason for this being so is due to the excess amount of rain our fair land has seen thus far, meaning that our usual Tomato Supplier (and no, I will NOT hand out his details!) lost about two-thirds of his crop, with the rest contracted to Heinz. Damn the corporates! What about the families who get together to make’a the sauce?! You would leave them without the freshest of sugo base for a whole year?!?!

The Ladies in Sugo Factory mode

I coined this wonderful event Wog Day and it normally takes place every year in sunny March. The last couple of years I admittedly have missed out on because I was doing vintage somewhere in Australia and was busy stomping grapes instead of stomping tomatoes. This year with me being back in Melbourne I was all geared up to go and now it is all going against me!

For starters, I figured that since I’d missed out on two years of summer (2009 and 2010) because I was working in wineries in Italy during the last two Aussie summers, that maybe THIS year, good ol’ 2011, I might get a tan. Maybe THIS year, after I get a tan, I won’t have to keep using the excuse that the reason I am so pale is because my background is Veneta and we have family up in Asiago in the snowy Altopiano Alps where everybody is pale. Alas, I was wrong. I am still pale. Casper would call me his friend 😦

How you make'a the sauce!

Back to the story. My only consolation in not being able to ‘make’a the tomato sauce’ (said in a very woggy Italian Nonna accent) is that I can at least buy the next best thing at my Enoteca work at staff prices. I might have to rename the next event in June ‘Wog Day’ for when I’ll be making salami, prosciutto, capocollo and sausages with my Zio to make up for losing the other one.

Julian watching over the youngsters...notice the masses of tomato in the hair and on clothing. Fun!

I suppose I won’t hold my breathe for the chance that the supplier does eventually have enough tomatoes to sell off extra…

…but I like to live in hope!

* Sugo is Ital for Sauce