I too enjoy the scent of Mulberry Street during a feast. Of course, to get to those events one had to pass the the fish buckets and rotten vegetables being hawked on Mott Street -- something I remember as a kid being dragged along through crowds. The stink. And when we got there we never seemed to partake in any of the mobbed-up games of chance. Instead we'd go upstairs and listen to the festivities from above Hester Street. As a kid you wanted to be down in the middle of it. Then they'd say, "C'mon, let's go say hello to Aunt Anna." To get to her apartment in the building around the block we'd take the stairs up, to the roof, cross the urban rooftops like a young Vito Corleone fleeing the Don Fanucci assassination, then walk down another tenement stairwell to her place. In other words, still going nowhere near the zepolle, the cotton candy, the little wax-paper packets of dried garbanzo they sold off carts that for some reason I liked.

Anyway, today's stink is neither eel-bucket nor sausage-and-pepper. Being Sunday, today's enchanting scent is meatball. Got a big cauldron bubbling on the stove as we await the return of Mojo Jojo who spent the weekend traveling with his friend's family. Cookie is downstairs playing Halo.

Is it too early to open the wine?