When I was a kid, both my mother and my grandmother made a variety of pasta meals. My grandmother had a few signature dishes. One in particular was Quick Spaghetti which was just spaghetti with canned Hunt’s sauce. Her more time consuming recipes often involved ground beef (or ground round as she referred to it) and an onion. Not having to chop the onion or brown the beef gave this spaghetti dish its name, I suppose.  Sometimes she even had a small bowl of sauce already in the fridge covered in a piece of Saran Wrap, presumably from when she made Quick Spaghetti earlier in the week.

I guess not wanting to cook exactly like her mother, my mother did not make Quick Spaghetti. She made three small changes to the meal to make it her own. First, she made elbows or shells or twists.  Second, she used jarred sauce, but only the store brand or maybe Ragu if it was on sale. Third, and quite possibly the thing that truly set her apart from my grandmother, she didn’t heat the sauce. She just opened the jar and poured it on the hot pasta. Her rationale for this culinary short cut was that the macaroni was already hot, why bother dirtying a pot to heat the sauce? She saved time, money on the gas bill not turning on another burner for 3 minutes, and water by not having to wash the pot after. She was a trailblazer for frugal living and saving the environment.

Now, before you go saying that I’m just an ungrateful daughter who didn’t appreciate the love and tenderness that went into pouring that sauce on that pasta, let me reassure you this is not the case. I’ve got my issues with my family, but they did the best they could. My grandmother fed us every single Saturday night for most of my childhood. My mother tried, through illness, depression, and a terrible marriage that ended in divorce. I give these women credit, I honestly do. Their cooking skills though? Well, um…

Tonight my husband is not home and my kid has already eaten. I’m not sure if it’s to keep tradition alive or pay tribute to those women who are no longer here with me, but tonight I will be combining both of their recipes and making my own version of Quick Spaghetti, complete with canned Hunt’s sauce that I will not heat up. And it will be fine, because the spaghetti will make it all lukewarm, just the way I like it.

This is NaBloPoMo Day 14.