Gomito maccheroni, more commonly known as elbow pasta, is the foundation of American pasta culture. While we would like to claim something fanciful like fusilli, democratic like spaghetti, or something with the blank canvas promise of manicotti, we simply cannot. Elbow pasta, in all its tubular glory, is our pasta of choice.
Okay, okay, I hear your complaint. “What authority are you to judge America’s pasta? Where have you eaten that allows you to do this? Where is your family originally from?” My answers to those questions are, respectively: I don’t care, Little Caesars and Tennessee.
Now that we got that out of the way.
So, elbow pasta, or, even more particularly, elbow macaroni is the foundation of the United States pasta culture. But why? What’s the answer? The answer is that it itself is an answer. It is an answer to this problem:
Fact: Americans like to order salads.
Problem: Americans don’t like to eat salads.
Solution: Take out the lettuce and replace it with elbow macaroni.
I should note that this was the basis for a fantastic High Life commercial in the late nineties. This, however, does not help my thesis.
Onward ho.
Now, what product is elbow pasta featured in more than any other? Answer: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. What do babysitters cook for kids when they parents leave for vacation for three weeks? Answer: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, every night. What do parents tell their tweens to cook when they leave their kids alone in the house in those formative years of independent thinking? Answer: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and vodka.
This being the case, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese represents what Freud labled as his “Maculey Culkin Theory”. In this theory, Freud stated that anyone left alone to fend for themselves in the formative tween years will likely make associative comforts with anything that replaces maternal or paternal comfort. Therefore, for most of America’s youth, this is represented by the stovetop promise of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese filled with, what else, elbow pasta (Mcaulay Culkin wasn’t as lucky as he chose red wool sweaters and high grade Peruvian cocaine).
So, is it any surprise that they had commercials with kids singing that they had the “blue box blues”? No, these kids missed their fucking parents. When they grew up and it was time to be adults and order salads, what did they do? Replaced the lettuce with elbow macaroni (a.k.a. parents, see Freud’s “Baby Carrot Hypothesis” for further reading).
Elbow pasta was the subconscious babysitter of a generation. Now, it can be seen everywhere from Ruby Tuesday’s salad bar to children’s art. But where to next? What are parents leaving their kids to eat these days? Word on the street is organic free-range chicken. Oh no.
Loading ...
