National Spaghetti Day in the USA

Americans love two Italian dishes: pizza and pasta. In the USA, spaghetti is eaten with minced meat or meatballs, Parmesan or cheddar, and topped with ketchup and other types of sauce. Residents of the Apennine Peninsula cannot imagine their life without penne, rotini, pappardelle, bucatini, mafalde and tortellini. In honor of the favorite dish, the Spaghetti Museum is opened, located near Genoa. However, the holiday in honor of pasta was founded not by the Italians, but by the Americans. Every year on January 4th, the United States celebrates National Spaghetti Day. In honor of National Spaghetti Day, families gather around a large table and eat freshly cooked pasta. America's favorite dish is Mac'n'cheese, spaghetti with cheese sauce. It owes its popularity to the Kraft company, which in 1937, during the Great Depression, introduced a version of budget pasta made from inexpensive flour. Easy to prepare and high in calories, Mac'n'cheese satisfied the hunger of soldiers during the Second World War. Today, pasta is on the menu of school lunches and home dinners, fashionable restaurants and cafes selling fast food. The history of Mac'n'cheese is quite confusing. The first recipe for making this flour product that has survived to this day dates back to the 18th century. At that time, spaghetti with cheese was made in France and Italy, but the palm still belongs to Switzerland. In this country, Älplermagronen, "Alpine shepherd's pasta", is served as a national dish. The Swiss use cheese from the Gruyere region to prepare them, Americans and Canadians put cheddar in spaghetti. In addition to macaroni and cheese, pasta with meatballs is very popular in America. It is also prepared in Italy especially for tourists from the USA. Paying tribute to the culinary tradition of “pasta”, Americans add olive oil to the dish, frying onions and garlic, and spices from Mediterranean herbs: basil, oregano, rosemary, mint and paprika. To prepare the sauce, tomatoes, cream, Parmesan and other ingredients are used. Classic spaghetti had a length of 50 cm. However, storing such pasta was quite difficult, so over time the standard changed. Today, the length of pasta with a round cross-section varies between 16-25 cm. The pasta is cooked in boiling water for 5-7 minutes until Al Dente (“to the tooth”) and hot sauce is added to it, which brings the hard spaghetti to readiness. Americans love this dish so much that they even invented the Pasta God, who is at the head of a comic religion - Pastafarianism. In honor of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a church in Kansas has held services and other ceremonies since 2005. Adherents of the religion that promotes the interests of the flying pasta monster treat National Spaghetti Day with special respect and celebrate it, like other Americans who deify pasta - the favorite dish of millions of people living in the United States and other countries of the world.