I've been eating Chef Boyardee products since I was a wee lad. Whenever I think of my Aunt Dot, I think of Chef Boyardee Spaghetti Sauce with Meat. Darn near the only thing she could cook was to boil some Buitoni brand spaghetti and pour a can of the Chef's meat sauce over it. It was a pretty decent meal.
That sauce is apparently still made, even though I never see it in stores out here. A few years ago, I saw a store on the Internet where one could order it and I got a few cans, just to experience it again. It was still a pretty decent meal…not as good as the best pasta in my favorite Italian restaurants but I've had worse in places that allegedly whipped their sauce up from scratch.
In our clip today, you get a look at Hector Boiardi, who misspelled his own name and launched an empire. You may learn that, like me, you've been putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable when you pronounced his name.
In this commercial, he touts their packaged spaghetti dinner — an item which, like the corresponding product from the Kraft company, has kept an awful lot of people alive during times when they could barely afford groceries. Back in the sixties, there was some U.S. Congressman who wanted the government to buy tons of these packaged meals and to make them available free to any family below a certain poverty level. This never happened but I can think of dumber things our leaders have done to try and eliminate hunger.