WEDNESDAY PUZZLE — True Story: When The Boy was younger, he went to a day camp that was known, among other things, for its famous spaghetti dinner on one of the last evenings of camp. The kids would stay late, playing games and doing what campers do, while the Italian-born mother of the camp’s owner cooked a homemade meal for roughly 200 people. The fact that this woman was still doing this well into her 80s always amazed me.
Every year, The Boy would come home afterward, rhapsodizing about the red sauce Mrs. Breene made. He’s a fussy eater, so I was duly impressed that her homemade sauce made such an impression on him. He told me that while everyone was playing soccer and swimming, the smells coming from Mrs. Breene’s kitchen were tantalizing, and I imagined her standing over her pot of sauce, stirring it for hours with love and care.
In his last year there, I felt that I knew her well enough to ask her for the recipe. I wanted to be able to make this wonderful sauce at home for my son, since he was moving on to sleepaway camp. Sidling up to her as she watched the campers devour her food, I shyly asked her if she would be willing to share the secret of her sauce with me. Wiping her hands on her apron, she looked at me and said, “You want to know how I make my sauce? First, you open a jar of Prego…”
“Wait…you use jarred sauce?”
“Of course I use jarred sauce. I’m 86 years old. What am I going to do, cook from scratch for 200 people? That’s crazy talk.”
She had a point, and today’s puzzle by Elizabeth C. Gorski humorously salutes Prego’s longtime motto, “IT’S IN THERE” by hiding the word ITS in the starred clues.
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