some spaghetti

I sent Tyler a text that said,

"I just took a bite from the pot and said, 'mmmm'." 

"It was spaghetti sauce!"

To fully appreciate that, you need to understand something.

My mom made delicious spaghetti sauce when I was growing up.

In fact, it's what we had to eat the first time Tyler came over for dinner.

I'm not sure if I made it, or she did.

Either way - it was the same yummy sauce; I made it just like she did.

Tyler wasn't sure he'd like my mom's cooking, so he (unbeknownst to me at the time) grabbed a burger on his way over.

His eyes about popped out of his head when my mom served him up a Miller male sized portion.

He couldn't have eaten that much normally,

but having just had a burger, well, things didn't look good for him....

I don't remember if he ate it all or not

and actually, that part of the story is irrelevant.

When I was pregnant with Lana,

I could not stand the smell of cooked tomatoes.

Which was quite a problem, seeing that tomato based foods were pretty cheap

and we were incredibly poor.

So I cooked with tomato sauce and such anyways

and sometimes, I even managed to get down a few bites.

At some point not long after Lana was born,

we'd discovered that it was cheaper to buy jarred or canned spaghetti sauce than make my own.

Since it was all nasty in my opinion (even though the smell no longer made me sick, there was still a negative association...)

 and Tyler just loved spaghetti, period,

well, it was a no-brainer.

We started buying pre-made spaghetti sauce.

We could have a meal of spaghetti for $2 if we didn't use meat;

$1 for the sauce, and $ .50 each for pasta and a can of diced tomatoes.

As kids grew (and became more plentiful) we just added another jar of sauce and more pasta.

When we switched to whole grains, it was slightly more expensive, since the pasta was $1 a box...

Occasional, we had hamburger  or ground turkey in it,

but Lana preferred it meatless. 

Since she rarely stated preferences,

I choose to fix it the way she liked it.

Once she married, we added meat to the sauce more often than not.

And once I discovered that Tyler really didn't care for ground turkey in it,

I never added it again - only ground beef.

And every single time we ate spaghetti for dinner,

which was probably at least 3x's amonth, since everyone else loved it

and it was a cheap healthy meal - what with all that whole grain pasta,

I hated it.

Whenever possible, I planned to have it when I would be gone at dinner time.

Seeing that I don't really go gallivanting around all that much,

I didn't get to skip out on the sketti very often.

Then came the great food upheaval of 2011

and we re-examined our eating habits again.

Now, even though we ate in a way we thought was healthy, 

and I'd known for years that they put sugar or HFCS in spaghetti sauce,

I overlooked it.

It was cheap and easy.

But with knowledge comes responsibility, so as we learned more,

we adjusted more.

The cheap Aldi spaghetti sauce had to go.

Tyler found some jarred sauce with just a smidge of added sugar - no HFCS - that they liked okay,

but it was no longer a cheap option, especially when you consider we needed 3 jars...

But of course, I still hated spaghetti night.

Mind you, I didn't carry on like a martyr or anything;

I'm sure some of the kids didn't even know I didn't like spaghetti,

but Tyler knew.

And he made it his mission to come up with a spaghetti sauce that I would like,

and preferably be inexpensive, too.

to be continued...