My wife recently stocked up on one of my kids’ favorite lunch foods: SpaghettiOs. I’ll even admit to not hating them in a pinch.
Well today, I found myself home alone at lunchtime and decided to crack open a can of those classic “circular pasta shapes in a cheese and tomato sauce.” But instead of just dumping it into a bowl and nuking it straight-up for 90 seconds, I figured I’d adult it a little.
I went out to the garden and picked some basil, a big red tomato and a green pepper. I sliced the pepper up and sauteed it with a clove of garlic and a quarter white onion.
I dumped the S’Os into a bowl and added the chopped basil and tomato with some EVOO, coarse ground black pepper, a teaspoon of powdered beef bouillon, a dash of red wine vinegar and a healthy covering of parm. I mixed in the sauteed veggies, covered with some shredded mozzarella and nuked it all for two minutes.
Now, no one’s mistaking this for gourmet Italian cuisine, but it was good. *Real *good. And my kids would’ve hated it, all those fresh veggies and spices-- yuck, dad!
So anyone else done any “adulting” to SpaghettiOs before? Or used them as an ingredient in a “respectable” dish?
Great topic, and I will add a SpaghettiOs confession. I will once every other month or so, get a craving for SpaghettiOs. But here is the weird part. I like them at room temperature, not warmed up. As in, I plop them out of the can into a bowl, and eat them. Most of the time I will drain off a little of the excess liquid. cause, you know, don’t want to be gross or anything.
I’ve eaten my share of canned pasta, but I’m not so crazy about it anymore. Just seems to sweet for my tastes now. But so do most other home-made and restaurant-made tomato-based sauces.
I’ll take some of the Chef’s beef ravioli or Beefaroni, but I’ll pass on the entire can of Spaghetti-o except for the meatballs. I used to suck the sauce off those, and save them in a pile to be eaten all at once at the end.
Serious guilty pleasure, but my wife won’t allow them in the house. Probably for the best.
I do fancy up canned soup sometimes, with a little diced onion and garlic in the pan first. But Chef Boyardee-O stuff is just… beyond help.
I don’t eat much of the canned stuff any more, but frozen burritos, salisbury steak sandwiches and the like occasionally find their way into my lunch. One thing I miss is frozen tamales - another thing that seems to be taboo, shunned or illegal in FOSONE. (Along with tri-tip, boysenberry anything and some other west coast staples.)
Never liked Boy Ar Dee but loved Spaghettios as a kid. Once a year or so now, I’ll buy them and save them for a snowy day. I heat them with some garlic, oregano, pepper flakes and Kraft parmesan. Yum.
I’ll have to try adding my own peppers and/or tomatoes.
When I was a kid, I would only eat spaghetti-os room temp. Heated up? Hell no. Now I prefer them to be hot. That is, once every few months when that sounds good.
I will confess to a hankering for Spaghetti-Os once in awhile. It’s a good cold-weather comfort food, esp. with a piece or two of garlic bread. Not fine cuisine, by any means, but mmmmm tasty.
So my question to you fine adults who admit to enjoying an occasional (or not-so-occasional) bowl of the Os, have you ever zhuzhed it up with additional ingredients? Made it more “grown-up?”
I never have, but, inspired by this thread, I most certainly shall!
(I probably won’t go as far as you did; I’ll sass it up, but with a little less overall effort. Spices, cheese, onions, chopped bell pepper, maybe even some crumbled bacon… Why not? Crumbled bacon makes ANYTHING better!)
