Beware of the $15.00 Jar of Pasta Sauce

Intricately stacked bottles filled with bright orange liquid wrapped in decorative white labels, much prettier than your standard grocery store shelves. With beautiful well-balanced displays of overpriced kitchen objects and fanciful pantry items with French names and organic ingredients, Williams-Sonoma sucks me in every time. Just like walking around Hobby Lobby gives me the false bravado that I could macramé something, perusing the displays at Williams-Sonoma fills me with the sensation that I could be a great chef.

So, I grab the orange bottle that contains Pumpkin Parmesan Sauce. The artisan label complete with a beautiful sketch of a pumpkin tells me that if I buy this bottle of sauce, my family will enjoy: A celebration of the autumn harvest, our handcrafted pasta sauce makes it easy to savor authentic Italian regional flavors at home.…As convenient as it is delicious, this artisanal sauce makes it easy to whip up a memorable meal. Simply heat the sauce, toss with your favorite pasta and serve.

I turn the bottle over and see the $15.00 price tag and put it back on the shelf only to have my husband snatch it immediately.

“The kids are so not worth a $15.00 bottle of pasta sauce,” I argued.

“Tough. We are trying it,” he replied firmly.

I was glad that I lost the battle and continued to fill our cart with ridiculously overpriced items.

The following evening, I heated the sauce in a pan and brought lobster and crab stuffed ravioli to a gentle boil for a special Sunday night dinner for my kids since their dad was already on an airplane destined for Connecticut. I topped the plump stuffed pasta circles with the slow-roasted pumpkin infused with heavy cream, aged Parmesano-Reggiano cheese, caramelized onions and roasted garlic.

I refrained from stealing a taste until everyone was seated and served. Most of us took a bite simultaneously with only my eleven-year-old son being the holdout and his ravioli were covered in butter instead of the pumpkin sauce.

“Gross,” said the six-year-old boy, who requests salads for lunch and prefers peppermints to chocolates.

“It’s okay,” says the eight-year-old girl, an already wonderful cook who aspires to be a professional chef someday who won’t have to get pseudo-gourmet flavor from a jar.

“I don’t like it,” said my three-year-old.

The kids were right. A mix of pumpkin, Parmesan and vomit stirred with feet covered our pasta. We scraped off the sauce to salvage a few raviolis, but we just mostly devoured our corn and sweet peas.

The remaining pasta was tossed in the trash and along with my trampled desires for a delicious dinner.

At $15.00 for the sauce, $10.00 for the ravioli and $1.75 total for a can of peas and a can of corn, I could have ordered pizza for less money and had happier children.

Home Economics Is a Relevant Class: Who Knew?

Cream cheese lasagna, tasty but runny. Tortellini with mushrooms and cream sauce, my husband’s favorite but the Worcestershire possibly sours the milk during the baking process giving it a bizarre consistency; green chicken chili enchiladas, bombed with my in-laws; red enchiladas, stick to the pan; spaghetti pie, no idea that pasta could transform into something so foreign. I have not one meal that looks perfect and tastes great every time. I do not have classic meal that I can give to new moms, take to potlucks and serve to company. My cooking is for personal use only.

Why didn't the Ghost of Future Domestic Dilemmas come visit me in 1990 when I was seventeen and screwing around in home economics class, improperly handling a sewing machine and sloppily making microwavable desserts? If I could have had a glimpse of my domestic future, I would have saw myself practicing a cherry cheesecake six times before taking it to a Super Bowl Party; bringing a chocolate pie to a party where it melted immediately upon making contact with plates; burning Easter dinner leaving us with Spaghetti-Os as an alternative meal; and, checking out books in September to work on Christmas cookies months before the annual holiday cookie exchange. A glance into my hapless culinary fate would have resulted in less babbling about my future as a career woman with no kids, no husband and more time learning how to make a roux and homemade pie crust. A little less time on Feminism, Queer Theory and Post-Colonialism in the 1990s might have meant that I could bake brownies with cooked centers and chocolate chip cookie that do not have black smoke emanating from the bottom.

So if you need to know how to bake ziti, poach an egg, or seer chicken, don’t ask me. But if you need to know about Deleuze and Guattari’s Theory of Minor Literature, Judith Butler’s view of performativity or Helene Cixous’ assertion for a feminine language, I am your woman.