Spaghetti for Christmas (recipe)

I grew up in a typical small town that through my growing up years had a population between 5-10 thousand.  If you didn’t know everyone’s name it was still likely that you would know of the family.  My neighborhood consisted of ranch style houses sitting on ⅙ of an acre plot.  When I was very young we, my mom’s sister’s family and Mom’s parents all lived within 2-3 blocks of each other.  Most holidays would find us at my Grandparents house.  That would be 6 adults and five kids in a house with 1 bathroom and only 900 sq feet of space.  

Across the street from my Grandparents lived a very nice family of Italian descent.  The father of the house was a postman and had white (grey) hair, but everyone called him Red (rumor had it that when he was younger he had red hair).  The mother, Dolores, was a small compact woman with a smile that made you feel as if you were home.  Mom once told me that when she was little she would go over to their house to watch TV.  To my young mind, it was difficult to fathom a house that didn’t have a TV.  But more importantly, it was the niceness of the family that made one of my family’s traditions happen.

Family lore says that there was a time when Dolores’ Italian father came to visit. One day he was cooking red sauce and offered to teach Grandma how to make it properly.  So here was this large midwest woman and this Italian gentleman together in a kitchen.  Language of food surpassing the need for common language. 

Afterwards Grandma would occasionally make the red sauce for the family and then call everyone that she had made it, because it took at least 4 hours to make and the amount made fed all of us for days.  

As we grandchildren got older we would beg her to make it more frequently, but it took a lot of effort. I’m also quite sure that with the amount she had to make it must have been difficult to consume all of the leftovers.    So one year just before Christmas we were once again begging and she agreed to make it for Christmas when we would all be at her house and therefore she could be assured that she would not be left an overabundance of leftovers.  (Mom and my aunt made sure to take their tupperware bowls to Granny’s so that they didn’t have to cook for a couple of days.)  Afterwards it became a family tradition that one of the main items on our midwest holiday dinner table, next to the turkey, ham, deep fried oysters, green beans, lima beans, baked beans, corn, potato salad, macaroni salad, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, chicken and dumplings, devilled eggs, dinner rolls, would be this huge pot of spaghetti (that I later realized really wasn’t spaghetti).  

Christmas Morning at Grandma's House.

So when is spaghetti not spaghetti?  When you grow up in a small town in the 60s and 70s where no one ever said the word pasta.  Spaghetti was the word we used instead of saying pasta.  To go with the red sauce grandma would buy a couple of boxes of rigatoni, which of course we called twirly noodles.  On rare occasions we might see macaroni.  In my house macaroni was used for macaroni and cheese, macaroni salad, and something we called tomato noodles.  Which reminds me we also used egg noodles for tuna noodle casserole and beef and noodles.  So basically until I was a teenager the only pastas I saw were spaghetti, macaroni, and egg noodles.  Except at Granny’s house we would see these fancy twirly noodles.

Spaghetti dinner, in my house, when I was a young child,  was literally boiled spaghetti, a jar of Ragu (not even the fancy kind they offer today, but their simple red sauce) enhanced with some hamburger browned with onion and green pepper and garnished with some Kraft parmesan cheese.  The difference in tasting experience between that and a homemade sauce with pepperoni (something we normally only saw on pizza) and twirly noodles (which made it seem fancy), it made a meal seem special.  

Because most people we knew lived life in the same way, most ate spaghetti like we did.  So when our school friends would ask what we had for holiday dinners and we would say spaghetti with such emotion that they would look at us as if we were from a different planet.  To someone who had never experienced my Granny’s spaghetti, the experience could not be explained and for anyone who had tasted her spaghetti no explanation was necessary.  So thank you Mr. who taught my Granny.  You gave my family more than you could ever know.  Thank you Granny for making it.

GRANNY’S SPAGHETTI SAUCE

Granny learned from the family who lived across the street.   

Homemade Italian Red Sauce flavored with pork steak and pepperoni.

INGREDIENTS

Pork Steaks - 6 large (or 8 boneless country ribs)

Tomato Paste - 1 small can

Tomato Sauce - 1 large can

Canned Crushed Tomatoes - 3 large cans

Garlic 4-6 cloves

Hormel Sliced Pepperoni - 2 packages

Parsley - 1 TBS

Oregano - 1 TBS

Basil - 1 TBS

Salt - to taste

Pepper - to taste

Parmesan Cheese Grated - to taste.

Rigatoni - 2 lbs (if you use all the sauce at once) 

NOTES 

• This sauce freezes well.  

• Top with grated parmesan cheese.

• Serve w/ garlic bread and green salad.

• Any uneaten pasta can be saved in the refrigerator and consumed for three days.  We often thought it tasted better the 2nd day.  

• Pasta will absorb a lot of sauce, so keep some of the sauce separate if you like your pasta saucy. 

METHOD

• Cut pork into 1 inch cubes

• Place pork, garlic, and pepper, in a large pan (at least 6 ltrs) and stir until the pork is slightly brown.  

• Add in tomato paste + ½ can of water.  Stir well and cook for 6-7 minutes.

• Add Pepperoni and stir well.

• Add sauce and crushed tomatoes +½ can water each can.  

• Add Parsley, oregano, and basil.

• Bring to a low boil stirring occasionally.  Don’t allow anything to stick to the bottom of the pan.

• Cook for 4 hours.

• In a separate pan cook rigatoni to al dente. 

• Mix sauce w/ rigatoni.

• Garnish w/ grated Parmesan Cheese

• Serve Hot.