When it came to Italian food, Americans used to play it pretty straight. For most people, pasta meant spaghetti. Period. Occasionally an adventurous soul would add a little supermarket Parmesan--the kind with so many freshness-extending preservatives it had less a shelf life than a half-life--but that was it.
Things started to change in the 1960s with the introduction of SpaghettiOs, a circular pasta product advertised with the singsongy jingle "Uh-oh: SpaghettiOs!" (This was a slight departure from the focus group's reported reaction, which was said to be "Pardon-me-but-it-appears-that-by- some-hideous-mistake-you've-served-me: SpaghettiOs!") SpaghettiOs soon gave way to RavioliOs, which gave way in turn to a wide range of spaghettiesque foods including dinosaur pasta, shark-shaped pasta, Where's Waldo? pasta, and alphabet pasta (can you spell unappetizing?).
But if the United States is being spirited with its spaghetti, frolicsome with its fettuccine, Canada is even more so. Last February, Okanagan University College in Kelowna, ...
