Spaghetti O’s and other canned pasta, my guilty pleasure food from childhood.

I’ve been accused of being a foodie and I guess that I am one. I love different flavours and enjoy what my multi cultural region around Toronto offers. But despite all that, I still have my simple and cheap processed childhood favourites. Canned pasta being one of them. Alpha-ghetti/Zoodles (alphabet and animal shaped tiny pasta) and Chef Boyardee ravioli being another.

They are soft overcooked noodles and the sauce is vaguely tomatoe-y. Ultimately, I’d pair it with something like that sponge like Wonderbread dipped or an open faced sandwich.

In recent years, I learned about reality TV’s infamous Honey Boo Boo and her mother June who made something called ‘Sketti’. It’s overcooked spaghetti with ketchup and butter. It sounded rather low brow but it looked a little too familiar so I gave it a try. Low and behold, the flavour seemed a dead on match to my beloved Alpha-ghetti and Zoodles.

Imagine that! The canned pasta taste from scratch. Only way to go from there is to either make ketchup from scratch and to jar and can process it for long term storage. (The latter, I think would be an interesting but strange exercise.)

But, on occasions that I end up with tomatoes on the verge of going bad and in need of an idea to use them and the matter that La Molisana, an excellent mass producer of factory pasta makes various shapes, why not go the scratch route?

The end result was good enough but doesn’t touch the gold standard. Mama June’s Sketti does though. This was more rosée than the Heinz or Libby product and still a bit toothsome than soft. I may have over done done some of the seasoning too.

Maybe next time, I’ll splash some white vinegar and some sugar into it to get more ketchup like.