You just made it clear to me that my claim never to have had pasta before I was 18 to be a big fat, tomato sauce smothered lie. I'd forgotten about Heinz spaghetti bolognese in a tin and yes, the ravioli with the peculiarly mushy filling like you were eating some small soggy animal's brains. Yet curiously more delicious than any small animal's brains.
My parents wouldn't eat it any of that pasta stuff, for obvious reasons. Their culinary circumspection, chary of anything but the most insipid of British food, more mummified than cooked, endless sad plates of overheated and burnt despair, used to drive me up the wall. My mother was sent home from Morrisons (where she worked) because someone dropped a jar of korma sauce and the smell made her sick (and thereafter she refused to work on the 'ethnic food' aisle). My father is still going on about the time he ate a piece a rocket – ten fucking years ago. My sister and niece aren't a lot better, they'll physically recoil if presented with an olive. It's not just that they scared to try something new (and they probably are), it's that they lack the curiosity. They're just not interested in anything that's not primarily potato or overcooked meat product. My mother doesn't even eat, she's survived the last forty plus years on a diet of drizzle and cigarettes. I did go a bit mental at our wedding where the inlaws had hired an actual Parisian bistro (I know this because it was in Paris) for a meal (at no small expense) and all my parents did was shuffle the food (excellent) around their plate and refuse to eat. Honestly, french fries are still fucking chips. The bloody irony, as a kid I had to eat everything or I got served it again later, even the unchewable liver that our mental poo-eating staffie wouldn't eat. Sorry, an escaped rant.
And breathe.
But yes, alphabet spaghetti. You ever think they somehow ration out the letters to limit the number of rude words you can spell out on your plate?