That's cute, plinth. I love hearing your family stories.

Here's mine:
I grew up in a household of 8. Once a week, Wednesdays, mom would make spaghetti and meatballs. Her sauce was wonderful. We all love loved it. I can remember watching her a bit, making the sauce; one can of paste, a can of sauce, her secret spice mix and stir stir.

We would all rave, every week, about the sauce but never knew how she did it. Years later, I found, in the cabinet high-up above the stove, a Koogle jar (remember that peanut butter spread?) with her very secret spice mix. Turns out, though, that is wasn't anything more than a 7 Seas Italian dressing mix packet emptied into the Koogle jar. She would use about a tablespoon for her sauce.

For so long we where let to believe she had a great cooking secret (she hates cooking to this day, btw). But it doesn't matter, her sauce is still the best. And still, forty plus years later, that oddly shaped Koogle jar is still there, with its' brown plastic lid, like an anchor for the good memories, adrift in an unhappy childhood sea. And 'till this day, "use mom's Koogle," is still often heard around each of our homes, and is even said, as if it had always been that way, by mom's many, many grandchildren.

My mom had a great spaghetti sauce. She used a can of paste too. It was very hearty and scrumptious. She would put dark red kidney beans in it and ground beef. It was kind of like chili without the chili powder. I find myself craving it all the time. She didn't buy kitchen gadgets like a garlic mincer. She would roughly chop the garlic. You would end up with these big hunks of garlic and a whole bay leaf on your plate. She never bothered to fish out the bay leaf. We always had bread and butter on the side. Store-bought wheat bread with some kind of margarine spread.

Around here my kids love "homemade" tacos. Not Tijuana Flats or Taco Bell, but, "Mom, can we have homemade tacos tonight?" They're not very homemade. I use the Old El Paso seasoning packet.

She never bothered to fish out the bay leaf.

My mom too! I had forgotten all about it!!

My mom was the TV dinner queen.

In the 1960s, this was a wonderful trait.

Back when I was living in Napa, I had this beautiful girlfriend, and we'd have "eek dinner" pretty regular, which was burritos from the Mexican deli, and champagne. So nice sitting on her front porch steps drinking champagne and eating burritos. mmmmmmmmmm

There's no great story, just a recipe:

Noodle Nonsense

1lb pasta, al dente
1lb kielbasa sausage
1 sliced onion
1 sliced bell pepper
1-28oz can of stewed tomatoes, drained and chopped
8oz monterey jack cheese, shredded

Slow fry the sausage in a large pan with tall sides. Add onion and bell pepper, cook for a few minutes until soft-ish. Add tomatoes, cook until hot. Salt and pepper to taste, sometimes some oregano [photo]. Add cheese and pasta, combine really well.

Once, when my son was five, he told me that he wanted to have 'bobuck' for dinner. When I inquired about bobuck's ingredients, he responded, "Corn, rice and tofu". Sounded good to me, I added veggie bouillon with brewer's yeast in it to punch it up a bit. I asked my hippie girlfriends who sometimes babysat my son if they had taught him this magical new dish, which quickly became his favorite. Nobody knew anything about it. Before too long, it became clear that my boy had simply come up with this dish on his own. Twelve years later, and he still eats bobuck every week. Variations include 'mo'-buck, which has cheddar cheese in it. 'Mofo'-buck has taco sauce.

A special dinner in my childhood was a saute known as Alexander Giant, from the book series The Giant Alexander, about a genial giant who helped people wherever he went. The only task I remember was him polishing Nelson's Column.

After one helpful task, he hosts a breakfast for all the children of the village (city?), and he cooks up barrels and wheelbarrows and truckloads of sausages, potatoes, and onions.

Man, is that a great dinner. We always had applesauce on the side.

Thanks for this thread. I heard some dreadful news today that left me all hollow inside. A big plate of Alexander Giant might help a tiny bit.