Meat Sauce Memories

[Ed. Note: While I am not going to use any last names, there is no point in trying to conceal Tyson's identity by calling him 'T' since so many of my high school friends now read my blog. I'd ask that any comments (which, of course, are welcomed) not give his full name.]

It was unlike any other spaghetti and meat sauce I had ever eaten. My first memory of having it was at my friend Tyson's house during my freshman year of high school. Four of us sat down at the antiquated 1950's dinette set positioned at the west end of the kitchen, situated between two windows that overlooked the sloping yard and steep road which jutted off a major state route. The small table had room enough for exactly four adults: Tyson, myself, and his mom and dad.

Our meal that first night consisted of an assortment of salad greens, peperoncini and dressing from the cold little plastic bottles straight from the fridge, white bread with spreadable margarine, nearly as plastic as the tub it came in, and the pièce de résistance: a plate of spaghetti that had been tossed and topped with Tyson's mom's homemade meat sauce. As the honored guest, I had been served first, but upon hearing the little voices in my head that sounded remarkably like my own mother, I declined to take silverware in hand until everyone had been served and was properly seated at the table.

Tyson's mom had developed her own version of this Italian-American classic and it quickly grew to not only appeal to her husband, but Tyson as well. By the time I showed up on the scene, it had achieved an almost epicurean prêt-à-porter status, alterations to the recipe no longer required to achieve sauce perfection. Preparation of the sauce had begun hours earlier, an elixir of ingredients brought forth from fridge and pantry, slowly simmered for what seemed to be an eternity, giving the house an amazing smell of tomatoes and beef. It was the kind of smell that could bring hungry men from every corner of the house, regardless of how remote, appetites stimulated and mouths watering so thoroughly that Pavlov himself would have been impressed.

Well before my life as a dedicated foodie began, this meal already resonated with my sense of doing it slow, doing it right, and doing it from scratch. Even if the rest of the meal consisted of pre-bagged salad greens, commercial salad dressings, grated Parmesan cheese in the green can, spongy white bread with a two week shelf life and all of the nutritional equivalent of a couple of teaspoons of refined white sugar, and boxed dried spaghetti, at least the meat sauce was made from scratch with love. And that was enough.

As I twirled the pasta on my fork for that first time, capturing little bits of tomato sauce, onions and nuggets of ground beef, I lifted it skyward and was immediately faced with the dilemma of what to do with the errant strands of pasta still hanging out of my mouth once I had cleaned my fork. Fortunately, a gentle and silent slurp was all that was required to rectify the problem as I made sure to discreetly retrieve every bit of sauce lingering on my lips from the pasta I had cleaned only a moment before. I chewed slowly, patiently allowing plenty of time for the savory and sweet sauce to coat my tongue, releasing every flavorful compound it had to offer. Twenty-four years later, if I stop to take a moment and close my eyes, I can vividly taste that first bite of pasta and sauce on my tongue and it still makes me salivate.

This wasn't to say that my own mother's meat sauce wasn't good. In fact, it was one of the few dishes in which she took pride in the fact that it was made from scratch. Many years after the fact, she divulged to me the story of a man she had once dated for whom this effort was completely lost. Having been in the relationship for quite some time, he had never told her of his perverse dislike of onions. Deciding that she would cook dinner for the two of them one night, she pulled out the tried and true recipe my grandmother had given her. The ingredients that went into the stock pot were the usual suspects: garlic, onion, ground meat, tomato paste, tomato sauce, and dried herbs. Simmered slowly for hours, the sauce reduced and the sugars caramelized to a deep earthy red. Pleased with the results, she ladled the thickened sauce atop a plate of cooked pasta and served it to her date, eagerly anticipating at least a minimal amount of recognition for the effort she had put into the dinner.

Upon taking his first bite, he discovered the terrible secret in the sauce: the abhorrent allium. In a move that would resonate strongly towards the future longevity of their relationship, he decided that the best way of conveying his opinion to her on the onion issue was to simply pick up the plate and turn the entire contents over onto the table, plate now teetering on top of this epicurean abomination. Of course, my mother was stunned that someone could show such unconscionable behavior to anyone, let alone someone for whom he purportedly cared. While that incident alone wasn't enough for her to see the light (which she eventually did), it certainly set the tone for what was coming ahead. Fortunately, once they split, she could finally remove the Scarlet "O" with which he had branded her since that fateful plate of pasta.

But even as much as I enjoyed my own mother's meat sauce, it was still never as good as the version that Tyson's mom could replicate time and again. I had somewhat happily allowed myself to be brought under the fold by Tyson's family. I don't know that they ever knew what went on in my house, but I spent many a weekend night sleeping over at Tyson's, playing video games, watching movies, and generally just trying to avoid the unpleasantness of being around my father as much as possible. And the nights that we had spaghetti and meat sauce for dinner were always cherished by me. In all those years, I never once thought to ask her how she made it. I guess the folly of youth is the assumption that she would always be around to make it for us whenever we wanted it.

The last time I remember eating the sauce was when I lived in Columbus, somewhere around 2003. It was before Tyson's dad got sick and I had told Tyson that I would be coming up to Wadsworth and wanted to see him, his wife and two little boys along with his mom and dad. I don't know if I asked or if his mom volunteered, but the gastronomic siren's song of her spaghetti and meat sauce was enough to not only bring me two hours away from Columbus, but also spend a nice chunk of change on a hotel room in Wadsworth so that I could spend the night, thus maximizing my time with the family and the subsequent dinner.

With the addition of Tyson's wife and two little boys, the number of dinner guests had nearly doubled since those times in high school, but we still managed to squeeze into that little dinette table that should've only sat four. To be fair, space issues were the last thing that I was concerned with that night. As the pasta plates were brought to the table, I inhaled deeply, reconstructing the flavor of the sauce in my mind well before tasting it. I never realized that this one meal, this final meal, would be the last time I would not only dine with both of Tyson's parents, but also the final plate of the pasta and sauce I would ever taste again.

After finishing our meal, cameras were brought out and I managed to get a snapshot of all of us, including the new additions to Tyson's young family. I occasionally bring that photograph up on my computer when I'm feeling nostalgic and the moment I see it, various sense memories almost instantly get triggered and I find myself standing in that kitchen watching his mom stirring that pot of sauce, smelling those heavenly scents and tasting the sauce all over again.

By the time I evolved into my present day self, it seemed that my window of opportunity for learning the recipe had closed. While Tyson gleefully reported that his mother did eventually teach his wife the secret to making the sauce, I wished I had hung around the kitchen just a little more and watched his mom personally. I felt like I could've done something to not only preserve her tradition, but share a truly tasty part of my own childhood with others out there looking for a good recipe. After two decades of intense friendship, gradually Tyson and I began to lead separate lives. Inevitably, we grew apart to the point where it now appears that both of us have now moved on, each on our own path to happiness.

Whatever the outcome, I just want him to know that he and his family were there for me at a critical point in my life when I really needed it. And even something as simple as offering a homecooked meal in a setting with a modicum of stability had such an impact on me that I can still remember it twenty-four years after first experiencing it. I suppose that through the lens of nostalgia, everything good in our past only gets better, if not a little blurred around the edges. If that is the case, I am eager and willing to remember the way things used to be ... before life got complicated.

Culinary Alchemy at Parasson's?

Sometimes what we crave defies all logic and dictates that we eat certain foods or at certain restaurants that we normally wouldn't otherwise entertain. As a child, my mother would occasionally make what I can only imagine came from a 1950's recipe, tuna biscuit bake casserole. Generously spray your casserole dish with a layer of Pam. Then, using a can of biscuits, a can of tuna, a can of Campbell's condensed cheddar cheese soup, a can of Campbell's cream of celery soup, and some milk, layer this unholy concoction in the pre-greased pan, place in a 350 degree oven and wait for all sorts of processed food goodness to come out. And as a child, I loved it.

Over the years, I've tried re-inventing it to be leaner, healthier, less processed, but in the end, when I crave this dish, it is with all of the same ingredients that my mother used in her version. It just doesn't taste the same otherwise (and I'm sure some would say for the better). That reluctance to let go of a wonderful childhood memory is what drives me to return to Parasson's restaurant again and again. Parasson's is a local Akron chain that serves up what I would consider to be "ok" basic Italian fare. Pizzas, pastas, and subs make up most of their menu. They have four locations and over the many decades I've been going there, the food has always tasted the same.

Every once in a while I'll get that craving. And when I do, there just isn't any way to resist it. Tonight's craving was fulfilled at the Waterloo Road location. All the locations have both sit-down and take-out service, but tonight I felt like eating in. Here is a shot of the front of the menu (addresses and phone numbers are shown for each of the four locations):


And a shot of the condiment station on each table:


Almost any meal you order (except for maybe pizza), comes with the griddled garlic bread. It's your basic mix of butter, salt, garlic powder, and dried parsley. It is neither the best nor worst example of garlic bread that I've ever had, but there is something about it that I crave. They will refill the basket as you eat it, but whenever I dine out by myself, I always feel guilty if I eat more than the two slices they bring me.


The meal that I choose for my dinner also came with a garden salad. Parasson's uses a moderate amount of shredded mozarella cheese to top their salads. In my opinion it is just the right amount. You get the cheesy richness without it predominating.


I always order the French dressing on the side, for two reasons. First, I like to dress my salad minimally with the dressing. Most restaurants overdress salads. Second, and this is where culinarily speaking I may have just lost some of my gentle readers out there, the combination of the French dressing and the garlic bread is ... how to put this? Magical.

I feel like I should be standing up in a self-help group right now. "Hi, my name is Tom and I like to dip my Parasson's garlic bread in my leftover French dressing."

I don't know when this practice started. Maybe my server had taken away my finished salad plate and accidentally left the remainder of the dressing. And maybe while I was waiting for my pasta to come out, bored and with nothing but time on my hands, I thought, "Aw, what the hell!" and dipped for the first time. I've been doing it ever since. I'm always furtively sneaking dips in the dressing because I feel like if someone working at the establishment ever caught me, they'd certainly point out my unnatural ways to the rest of the guests there and throw me out as quickly as they could.

Now, this is not unusual salad dressing. In fact, I confirmed with my server that it is Marzetti California French dressing. Curious to know what this ingredient list consisted of, I stopped at Giant Eagle afterward for a little investigative work. You can read the list of ingredients here:


Basically most of the flavor is coming from tomatoes, sugar, vinegar, and some various spices. Equally as mysterious, the garlic bread is exactly as I described it before. But when you put the two together, the sweetness from the dressing and the saltiness from the bread makes an amazing flavor combination in your mouth. And the even more amazing thing? I taste flavors that exist in neither product by themselves: I get notes of both cinnamon and nutmeg. Every time I go back and try this experiment over again, I get the same result. Without fail.

As much as I come for the garlic bread/French dressing combo, the other lifelong draw for me has been their meat sauce. Made with pork and beef, it has a nice balance of sweetness, fattiness, and seasoning. But I would in no way consider this to be remarkable. Tasty, sure, but not remarkable. I will occasionally order something else on the menu, but that is a rarity. Today I decided to go with rigatoni for my pasta:


The large, at $10.49, is a good value because you will easily get two meals out of this. The one very positive thing about this dish is that I have never come across a plate of watery pasta from Parasson's. And I've eaten at all four locations over the last three decades. It's not so much that the pasta is all that spectacular, it's just nice when I don't end up with a bowl of rigatoni meat sauce soup, like I seem to experience at other places. I always end up dosing my meat sauce with a hefty hit of red chili flakes and grated parmesan cheese (I'm using a little 'p' for parmesan because I'm fairly certain this stuff comes out of the green can).

Sadly, even though they were advertising dessert:


None of their desserts are homemade. And honestly, the tiramisu pictured on the table advert just didn't look all that enticing. I was half tempted to have a scoop of the spumoni, but realizing that I was already pretty full, I opted to skip dessert entirely.

With as much food knowledge that I've gathered over the years by reading, cooking, and most importantly, eating, it still amazes me that sometimes you just want the comfort food of your youth. And I think it is healthy to occasionally let your ever-vigilant set of culinary standards lay by the wayside so you can revel in an experience that just makes you feel good for a little while.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think it's time for another helping of that tuna biscuit bake casserole.