My mother cooked often as a child and would typically use it for spaghetti and lasagna. I usually end up making lasagna cause cheese... This is the story of the origin of this recipe, in my mother's words.

"This red sauce recipe was given to my mother, Crisstella Olsen Myers, from Mrs. Croce. My mother, who was a RN took care of the Croce's son, Anthony, while he was in an iron lung the last year of his young life. I believe he was about 8 years old when he died. He had suffered from lumbar polio, the kind that affects the lungs, not paralytic like I had. This immigrant Italian family became friends of my family. I have very early memories of being out at their farm house in Commerce City where they had settled after they immigrated from Italy. They grew vegetable which was called Truck Farming because they would take their produce down to the Denver Produce Market in trucks."

My mother went on to explain that out of gratitude to my grandmother's care, as a nurse, for the Croce's son, she passed this recipe to my grandma.