Spaghetti

The Reservoir High School Boosters will sponsor a spaghetti dinner from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Oct. 30 in the school cafeteria. Spaghetti and meatballs, salad, bread, drinks and dessert will be served. School groups will entertain after dinner. The cost is $5 a person; children up to age 6 dine free. Proceeds will help pay for extracurricular groups and athletic teams. Information: Stephanie Donnelly, 301-490-3253, or Nancy Huggins, 301-890-9271. English Conversation Club meeting tomorrow morning The Savage branch library, 9525 Durness Lane, will offer an English Conversation Club for non-native speakers of English who want to practice speaking and listening at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow.

Boy Scout Troop 582 will hold a spaghetti dinner from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at St. Luke's (Winter's) Lutheran Church social hall. The menu will include spaghetti, salad, Italian bread, beverage and dessert. The cost is $5; $2.50 for children younger than age 10. Proceeds will benefit the Boy Scout troop. The church is on Route 75 near New Windsor. Information: 410-751-1794 or 410-875-0715. Apple butter boil planned at Piney Creek church Piney Creek Church of the Brethren will hold an apple butter boil from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at the church.

River Hill High School's Homecoming Weekend will start with a family spaghetti dinner from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Friday in the school cafeteria. Everyone is welcome. Tickets, which will be available at the door, are $7 for adults and $5 for students. A bonfire is planned after the dinner. The homecoming football game against Baltimore's Southern High School is scheduled at 2 p.m. Saturday, when the homecoming king, queen and court will be announced. The homecoming parade is to start at noon.

You know something's not quite right when you're at a nice Italian restaurant in New York and the waiter is stumped by a fairly basic question: "What's veal spedini?" He "ums" and looks nervous, his lovely dark lashes fluttering a little, and then says, "You know, I've had it before and it's good. But I don't really know what's in it." It's a pity - because it's one of the appetizers chef/owner Rocco DiSpirito had suggested we try. (And, for the record, it's baked, breaded veal stuffed with fontina cheese.

Jim Arnett typically spends his days working on designs for military radar systems, aircraft navigation equipment, precision weapons and other Defense Department electronics. But the electrical engineer with Northrop Grumman came to Friendship Valley Elementary School on a far different mission: Helping fourth-graders design and build towers from marshmallows and uncooked spaghetti. In 50-minute intervals, children at the Westminster-area elementary school were transformed Friday from quiet pupils, sitting attentively at their desks, into a giggling mass of sticky-fingered inventors running around the classroom with fists full of pasta.

St. Paul's Episcopal Church youth group will hold a spaghetti dinner from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday in the church hall. The menu will include spaghetti, salad, bread, dessert and beverages. Carryouts will be available. An offering will be collected. The church is at 16457 Old Frederick Road in Poplar Springs near Woodbine. Information: 410-489-4411. Volunteer fire company sets country breakfast Mount Airy Volunteer Fire Company will hold a country breakfast from 8 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Sunday at the Firemen's Activities Building.

Growing up in a second-generation Sicilian family had its share of benefits and challenges. What Dad said was law, and Mom just enforced the constitution. I remember vividly having to leave the kickball game at 6 p.m. so I could be in bed no later than 7 p.m., even though we had a couple more hours of sunlight. When all of the other kids wore jeans and sneakers to school, I was most often dressed in some conservative corduroylike outfit that looked as if I were going to Wall Street instead of the first grade.

IN THE ANNALS of human gluttony, Sunday's Pasta Eating Contest at the sixth annual Taste of Little Italy Festival was one for the books. For the first time, two women were among the contestants. One was pregnant. But it was a man, Marco Lafond, who finished his pound of spaghetti with marinara sauce first and another man, Brian Vahle, who finished first in the all-important categories of neatness, theatrics and table manners. Proving what? That men are still incomparable when it comes to overindulgent eating and the ability to digest massive amounts of food?

CINCINNATI - The towering platters arrive on the arm of a chatty waitress named Mary Lou. Atop each heap stands a mound of shredded cheese. Underneath the cheddar lurk equally thick strata of chili and, of course, spaghetti. The two burly mechanics who have driven an hour to eat at Camp Washington Chili dive fork-first into their big breakfasts. "This," declares Tom Freudenberg, coming up for air, "is better than scrambled eggs." Day or night, you can get chili all over this region, from mom-and-pop parlors to chains that have sprouted like McDonald's.

Christopher Kimball and his staff have spent the last 20 years challenging the assumption that every good cook knows how to coddle an egg. His magazine, Cook's Illustrated, and now his PBS cooking show, America's Test Kitchen, are intent on explaining not only the how of good cooking, but also the why. In The America's Test Kitchen Cookbook (Boston Common Press, 2001, $29.95), Kimball and his folks continue their mission. The recipes are not elaborate; this is not a book for gourmet cooking.