Sacrilege in a Can

I'm Italian. Yes, go ahead, look at the picture again and you still won't see it in my pale skin and freckles, blue eyes and (currently) red hair. There are two reasons for that. First, ol' Gregor Mendel's theories of genetics have NOTHING on my Wilson blood, my mom's side of the family where we tend to resemble each other so much that my own mother has mistaken me for my cousin on more than one occasion - and grandfather has also mistaken my mother for that same cousin. Recessive genes, my hiney - we're all glow-in-the-dark-white, Coke-bottle-curved women. Second, the Italian in my genes is all from Northern Italy, where we tend to be more fair-complected. My nonna, born in "the old country," was pale (though she could tan like I can never hope to) with light eyes and auburn hair. She was from a tiny town called Acquafredda (Coldwater) in the Piemonte region of Italy - the cuff of the "boot." Her husband, my nonno (literal translation of that is "grandfather" but they were actually my father's grandparents) was from Genoa. For all of you Houstonians out there, it's pronounced JEN-oh-uh, not jen-OH-uh.

So anywho. By blood I am 1/4 Italian, and northern to boot. By upbringing, I am more like your average third-generation Italian-American. And so my lunch today, was sacrilege in a can. For all you laypeople out there, Chef Boyardee. Lord, I can hear my family gasping in horror all the way from Colorado and California... Sorry guys... I was desperate.

In ideal circumstances, you can't even get me to eat spaghetti sauce out of a jar or can. If worse comes to worst, I will use it, but add extra spices and seasonings to make it palatable. A few years ago, when Kris was in dive school, the secretary there asked him what kind of recipes I cooked for him, and he told her, "Mostly Hamburger Helper." I just about popped him one, screaming, "I'm never wasting another damn minute making you my homemade spaghetti sauce again!!!" He had no clue that every time I made spaghetti, the sauce was from scratch. He's lived to eat those words now, though. Sucker.

I make a killer lasagna... roughly 3 lbs. of meat and 2 lbs. of cheese (mozzarella, Parmesan, Italian blend - never ricotta or cottage cheese, with their nasty texture)... sauce that simmers for a minimum of two hours, because you need time for the flavors to blend. On more than one occasion, I've been "commissioned" to make a lasagna for a former supervisor. In fact, one year she paid me a ridiculous sum for lasagna, chicken picatta, cappelini with homemade pesto, antipasti, sauteed zucchini and mushrooms, and a store-bought pannetone for Christmas. One day soon, when my kitchen is all squared away and I have a new ravioli rolling pin, I'll start work on my next big thing... coming up with a recipe for crab-and-portobello-mushroom ravioli.

Great. Suddenly my sacrilege in a can is even less fulfilling.