Spaghetti Pie

Brittany Eynard

I'm one of many in a big Italian family. Sunday isn't the typical day of rest for my family. Our Sundays consist of all the cousins, aunts, uncles, and my grandparents getting together and cooking all day and eating all night. All the girls of the family play our own part in helping prepare the huge meal.

Although there are many dishes prepared every Sunday throughout the year, one dish in particular is my favorite. It's called spaghetti pie. It's usually the dish we have on the second Sunday of the month. It's nothing extravagant, but it always gets my taste buds going.

Spaghetti Pie was introduced to me when I was a little girl. I remember one Sunday when all I wanted was spaghetti. I was about 7 years old and couldn't get spaghetti off my mind. When is comes to my grandmother she can't just simply make spaghetti. Every dish she makes has to be full of flavor and creative. She always wanted to make sure everyone was satisfied.

My grandmother said that spaghetti was too boring. I remember sitting there with her as she went through her huge recipe book trying to find a delicious recipe that was closely related to spaghetti. She came across the spaghetti pie recipe and knew I would love it. From then on, it has been a family favorite. It may sound simple, but it has a very different taste than spaghetti with meatballs. There is a lot more flavor and everything is mixed together well so you get to taste a little bit of everything in every bite.

Our family has kind of separated with people moving away and such, but we still try to get together at least two Sundays a month. To this day, I'm still the girl who gets to help her grandmother prepare the spaghetti pie.

My favorite part is sprinkling the mozzarella cheese on the top at the end. It's as though the cheese turns into flowing lava from the heat. I'm not too good at measuring things out, so I generally just stir everything together. I definitely didn't get my grandma's cooking gene. We always enjoy my grandmother's homemade garlic bread with spaghetti pie, and most any other dish she makes, for that matter.