On Top Of Spaghetti....All Covered With........ posted 10/17/2009 11:27:23 PM | 2 kudos what's this?     report abuse

tentfire

ALL KINDS OF THINGS! ! ! ! !

When I was a little girl my dad made the BEST spaghetti sauce! An Italian in Pennsylvania had taught him to make it many years before. It was the kind where you slowly saute all those wonderful veggies -- onions, garlic, bell peppers, celery -- in true olive oil. Then he added the various red sauces, seasonings and 'secret' ingredients and set it to simmer for hours and hours. Actually, not everything was added in at once. Ingredients were added throughout the day. It was pure torture smelling it cooking ALL DAY long and having to wait until supper time to eat it.

We always ate it over spaghetti noodles...the regular kind....and topped it off with grated Parmesan cheese...the kind in the green shaker jar. Sometimes we ate it meatless, sometimes we had browned ground beef in it, and sometimes.... on really special occasions....we had meatballs in it. This was one of our biggest 'special occasion meals. We often had it on Christmas Eve with salad and red wine, but it had to be meatless as we were Catholics and we weren't allowed to have meat on that day.

As I got older I watched my dad closely as he made his scrumptious spaghetti sauce because I wanted to be sure and be able to make it myself when I grew up. The recipe wasn't written down anywhere and he wouldn't give it out because it was his special secret recipe, passed down to him by someone special to him, later to be passed down to only we kids (I have written it down. I don't want it lost). When I grew up and had my family, I carried on the tradition and made it for special occasions for my family (and sometimes 'just because'). All throughout my youth this was the only spaghetti I had, until I was a teen and experienced the soggy stuff at the pizza parlor. To me, SPAGHETTI was spaghetti noodles with wonderful red sauce on it and occasionally meat and/or mushrooms.

Then, as I began to coast into my adult years, I discovered that there were other things that could go on spaghetti noodles . First, I discovered fresh grated Parmesan AND Romano cheese! Mmmmmmm!!!! That WAS an improvement on something already great! Next I learned that red sauce wasn't the only sauce that could go on those stringy noodles..... There was a white, Alfredo sauce . And white or red sauce, chicken was good in place of beef, too! Then there were my years of working in the school cafeterias (yes, I use to be a cafeteria lady ). As I served 400+ kids lunch every day, I learned a LOT of different things they liked on those long noodles. Some people actually don't want anything at all! ...just noodles.....I tried that, it WAS good! But I liked it even better when butter was melted over and stirred up in those plain noodles, even better yet with a little garlic added in. And believe it or not, we served CHILI over those spaghetti noodles sometimes . The kids loved it and it was better than I had expected. Shredded cheddar or American cheese went on top.

Recently I have seen people adding sliced black olives to their red spaghetti sauce. It's okay, but I prefer my black olives on the side {or on the ends of my fingers, lol}. Oh, yes, by now I have also learned that there are different thicknesses of spaghetti noodles....and even flat ones, too.....not to mention, green ones, red ones, brown ones, and so on. Just a few weeks ago I tried a Vodka Spaghetti sauce (maybe that's where the expression 'hitting the sauce' comes from, he, he, but probably not). Ohhh, this sauce was Heaven! And now the store is sold out and I can't find any more, gonna have to find a recipe now. It was a cross between a red sauce and a creamy white sauce, and you could definitely taste the Vodka in i, mmmmmmmm. I simmered in fresh mushrooms and chunks of chicken breast. Ate it for several days because I had no special someone to share my special sauce with .

So after spending my youth thinking there was only one kind of spaghetti, and my adult years finding out there are about as many ways to eat spaghetti as there are ways to eat a burger, I aim to try all the variations possible {over much time, of course}....BUT, my dad's special, secret spaghetti sauce will ALWAYS be my favorite.

Thank you for reading my blog! [I]

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