Pasta waits for no one
Father Dominic Grassi is pastor of St. Gertrude's Parish in Chicago. He recounted in his homily last Sunday that at his first parish assignment, he gave a real fire-and-brimstone sermon telling people how they ought to act more like people of faith. He admitted using the expression, "You people" a lot. After the service he was hurrying home to his parents' house for Sunday night pasta. "Because pasta waits for no one," said Grassi, he was zipping through traffic until he got stuck behind some slow poke. After several minutes, Grassi honked at the guy to get the lead out. Then he tried to pass him. As the priest's car got in position along side the slow driver, Grassi did something he confessed he is not proud of: "I flipped him the international sign for displeasure." And worse yet, as he caught a glimpse of the driver, he realized it was one of his parishioners who he had just spent the last hour haranguing about needing to being more Christlike!

Grassi was featured recently in the Chicago Sun Times series on men who like to cook by Maureen Jenkins (http://suntimes.com/output/lifestyles/cst-ftr-kitman10.html). Grassi didn't start cooking until he was well into his 30s, but he says the art of cooking and eating well are in his blood.

"With Italians, that's how we share our love," says Grassi, who recently took an all-day Tuscan cooking class in a 700-year-old Italian villa."It's much more fun to do cooking for others," says Grassi, a new arrival at St. Gertrude who has planned intimate, once-a-month "Sunday Evening Pastas With the Pastor" as a way to get acquainted with his new parishioners. "When you're a priest, you don't see a lot of outcome of what you do. When you cook a meal, they either eat it or they don't, they like it or they don't."