October 24: Mom's Spaghetti Sauce Seasoning

Trying saying that fast 5 times in a row! I've always thought that my Mom's spaghetti was the best I ever had; although, I have to admit, my Mother-in-Law's is extremely close. The secret to my Mom's spaghetti has always been her sauce. She used Spice Island Spaghetti Seasoning, and it always made the sauce simply delectable! I took the recipe with me when I moved out on my own, then shared it with my wife and it's become a staple for our spaghetti dinners ever since. Unfortunately, several years ago, Spice Island decided to stop make their seasoning, leaving my Mom, along with the rest of us enamored by her sauce, without the key ingredient. It was then that my Mom recreated the seasoning from scratch, and perhaps some help from the Spice Island reps whom she called to share her unhappiness and frustration regarding their manufacturing decisions. She provided us with our own personal bounty of the good stuff, and we've used it repeatedly over the years. When my Mom passed away in 2008, we discovered a jar of the seasoning she had put aside for her and my Dad, and, the other day, sadly, we used the last of it. It was then that my wife, the lovely creature that she is, found the recipe for the Spice Island Spaghetti Seasoning online; at the Spice Island website, no less. Apparently, we weren't the only ones a little bitter over the discontinuing of the product. You can find the recipe here if you're interested. Anyway, today, after buying all of the essential ingredients (even Savory, which I had never heard of), we recreated the seasoning ourselves. Not to toot our own horn, but it was pretty darn close to the original. And, so Mom's spaghetti seasoning lives on!