Ketchup Spaghetti

A love letter to a very un-Italian sauce and the woman who invented it.

Growing up, my mom cooked most nights. She cooked much like her mother did: recipes forged in the fires of postwar frugality, molded by the modern convenience of easy-to-prepare packaged goods. By the 1980s, America–and my family–had embraced an astonishing array of foods that allowed one to “cook” while doing almost none of the actual cooking: Hamburger Helper, Toaster Strudel, Totino’s Pizza Rolls, Hot Pockets, Swanson Pot Pies, and something named, in a stroke of marketing…