i’ve had a lot of pasta sauces in my day.
as an avid cook, i’ve also cooked quite a few from scratch.
in my college days i worked at a foods co-op, which gave me a lot of access to fresh, quality ingredients with which to craft the finest bolognese or carbanara.
all of these experiences and others that have not been mentioned make me the sauce connoisseur.
and do you know which pasta sauce i still crave the most?
prego.
this is not an advertisement. though, it probably should be.
i get that prego is store bought, processed, super-cheap, and loaded with sugars that make it’s claims about hearth health completely bogus.
it still tastes the best.
because taste isn’t about pomp. it’s about nostalgia, and i have many a good memory of pasta nights as a kid.
pasta nights were tranquil nights, because nobody complained over a heaping bowl of pasta. through most of my childhood i piled butter and fake parmesan on top of my spaghetti. i was afraid of sauce. but once i was forced to jump into that tangy, rich wonderful sauce that never forgot to add a bit of sweetness at the end, i knew i would forever be a prego addict.
years later, when i was newly graduated from college, i was pretty much starving in a little studio apartment. there was a grocery outlet next door, which was the regrettable source of most of my diet. but the place had one thing in its favor: they carried prego. and after a rough day of reporting the news as a total rookie who had no idea what she was doing, there was nothing better than coming home and cooking up the most nostalgic bowl of cheap and easy pasta. at that time, i couldn’t even afford the parmesan. but i didn’t care. i was happy with the prego.
now that i’m living abroad, i find that prego is readily available at most grocery stores and this is a huge relief. even though i don’t advocate coming to a foreign country just to eat the same foods you ate back home, there are times when you are living abroad (much different than visiting abroad) when you just want to curl up in a little ball and look at something familiar. even better if it can be ingested.
of course, i still enjoy making a wonderful tomato sauce from scratch because really, the enjoyment of a homemade sauce is more in the process than anything. put on some good italian tunes, pour a glass of wine, and let it simmer all day.
but for the fast times in life, there’s no shame in prego.
THOUSAND THOUGHTS 