Favorite pasta dish?

I noticed a poll on facebook asking, "Favorite pasta dish?" To my surprise, the pasta I eat most often these days, ravioli, wasn't listed.

There are many fine choices on the list which have, at one time or another, competed to be my favorite pasta dish: beef stroganoff, spaghetti, chicken carbonara, chicken parmesan and lasagne. These days mac-n-cheese feel like the right answer for me.

We didn't have mac-n-cheese often as a kid. Usually it was a side with fish or other seafood. In those days mac-n-cheese meant original blue box Kraft, the kind with the cheese powder.

As a general rule, my father preferred his food to be dry, not moist. Mother made sure the mac-n-cheese reflected that. She, however, preferred moist food and Stouffer's frozen mac-n-cheese. That's what I prefer these days as well.

In college, my flatmate would buy the cheapest boxed macaroni dinner he could get (Da Vinci, as I recall) and only use the elbow pasta. He'd buy a block of Cracker Barrel extra sharp cheddar and melt it with some Best Foods (Hellmans) mayonnaise as his mac-n-cheese.

I've tried many sorts this year: Kraft Deluxe, Velvetta shells-and-cheese and assorted frozen varieties—I've just realized, the Deluxe product didn't replace the original I knew from my youth! At times I've added yellow mustard to give the meal a slight kick, an idea that came to me a few years ago. I was slightly disappointed adding mustard wasn't original and, in fact, appears as an ingredient in the famous Reagan mac-n-cheese recipe. Nonetheless, I was pleased with having reinvented that particular wheel.

If I wasn't a big mac-n-cheese fan as a kid, why now? Remembrance plays a part. After father died, I took up drinking Dr. Pepper and eating a few things he did, things that hadn't been my usual taste. I suspect the mac-n-cheese is a nod to my mother. It also happens to be something I know certain friends enjoy and can think of them when I eat that food.

There are connections to each of the foods from the facebook poll that competed for my favorite above. Beef stroganoff was something mother made that I'd even request at times. Chicken carbonara was something mother introduced me to in father's last year so it connects to that time.

Chicken parmesan was my favorite meal at Cyrus O'Leary's restaurant (sadly, recently closed after 31 yrs––the great pies are available) and lasagne, a favorite as a kid that I'd get as an alternative to stuffed peppers.

I left spaghetti until last. Of all pasta meals, nothing has the emotional connection of my grandmother's spaghetti. She'd get started early, it would simmer all day. For years I was the taster. After her mother passed, my mother tried to make spaghetti the same way but even with the same ingredients and having been part of the creation process many times over many years it just wasn't the same. To my knowledge the recipe, even an ingredients list, was never recorded.

Tempted as I might've been, I've never tried to recreate it. I don't know what all went into it and don't want to corrupt the fragile connection; it will only live on in my memory.