The last weekend in October Dave and I went to Norwich, Vermont
to attend a pasta making class at King Arthur Flour’s baking school. In the
three-hour class we learned the fine art of making fresh pasta—weighing the
flour, incorporating the eggs, kneading the dough, and cutting it into common shapes.
We invited friends to join us—Dave’s college roommate and
his wife. The fun started before class when we got together to enjoy a beer and
glass of wine while catching up on what’s happening in our lives. The laughter carried
on as we worked to form the perfect shaped fettuccine, ravioli and tortellini, followed
with a pasta meal after class.
Even though two weeks have passed since our class, positive
emotion lingers as we reflect on our time together and the shared practice of
pasta making. Actually, this isn’t surprising considering this experience has
all the ingredients for creating a psychological state called savoring.
According
to Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff, authors of Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience, people have
“capacities to attend to, appreciate and enhance positive experiences in their
lives.” Strategies that boost this capacity include sharing an experience with
others, having pictures or a memento to remember the event, celebrating the
event, engaging all our senses in the experience, and being completely absorbed
in the activity. As I said, all these “ingredients” were present in our pasta-making
weekend.
If we wanted pasta for dinner, we could have saved $170 by
going to the grocery store and paying $1.00 for a pound of fettuccine. We could
have avoided driving three hours from Saratoga to Norwich, and back. But if we
had done this, I wouldn’t be writing about the experience. It would not have
contributed to an ongoing sense of happiness and positive emotion.
Now that we’re “expert” pasta makers, our plan is to host pasta-making
parties with friends. And in doing so, we’ll create more opportunities for
positive experiences.
Copyright 2019. All Rights Reserved. Patrice Jenkins.
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