Spaghetti I & II

I.

Mom came by this evening to drop off some braised fatty pork. She called earlier asking if I had a tomato sauce jar, which I did. As I put the freshly-rinsed mason jar into a clear plastic bag, she gave me a look: “What are you doing?”

Oh. A jar of tomato sauce, not a tomato sauce jar.

“What would I do with an empty jar? I’m making chili.”


II.

Mom came by a second time this evening. The chili was quite tasty, although it was a cross between Taiwanese and Southwest. She watched me eat and then left, satisfied by the results. The empty mason jar remained on the dining room table.

The half-bowl of chili came in handy an hour later when I was feeling hungry again. I considered just grabbing a spoon and gobbling it down straight, but then, it wasn't every day that mom made chili. Some capellini was in order. I watched the sticks of angel hair warp into the boiling water, taking care to prevent any pillows—clumps of stuck-together pasta.

If anything, I know the sheer worth of pillow-free pasta, having had an unpleasant experience in 1988 after cooking with dad in what was then his apartment in Philadelphia. We could tell from the semi-greasy film we had to wash off the pots that he preferred to eat out. But, spaghetti is an easy meal. Jars was in charge of the sauce, I was in charge of the salad, and nobody, apparently, was in charge of the slimy fist-sized clumps of near-raw pasta. That was a bad dinner.

Still, it was an improvement from dad’s first attempt, when he dumped marinara sauce onto the spaghetti before draining the starchy water. He probably expected the concoction to reduce. Jars and I thought this was hysterically funny until we realized that we actually had to eat those bowls of Tang Mien Italiano.