Wine and spookghetti

123RF

Vampire Vineyards recommends serving my wine with 'rich red pasta dishes'. So, keeping with the wine's vampire theme, I thought I'd find a recipe for an appropriate pasta dish to go with it.

The 'net being—well, the 'net—I found one. It's called 'Anti-vampire spaghetti.' Why 'anti-vampire'? You're supposed to add a staggering '10 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped'.

I was once asked why vampires fear garlic. According to Paul Barber, 'strong-smelling substances are typical apotropaics in the lore of the vampire: garlic, incense, perfume, green nutshells, cow dung, human feces, and juniper. The idea here seems to be to "fight fire with fire"'¹, i.e. to counteract the vampire's stench with another one. But he also notes 'Garlic . . . is often stuffed into the mouth of the putative vampire at burials, and it is difficult to see how this can be anything but a charm intended to thwart his evil purpose.'²

He also suggests it might be put in a vampire's mouth 'to give the revenant something to chew on or to prevent chewing or blood-sucking entirely.'³ I'd say it's little from column A and a little from column B.

Anyway, the recipe says 'There will be no fear of vampires bothering you after this dinner!' I doubt anyone else will, either.

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^{1. P Barber, Vampires, burial, and death: folklore and reality, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 1988, p. 131.↩}

^{2. ibid., p. 132.↩}

^{3. ibid., p. 157.↩}