It started as a gag: spaghetti tacos.
On an episode of the hit Nickelodeon series “iCarly,” the lead character’s eccentric older brother, Spencer, makes dinner one night. Glimpsed on screen, the dish consists of red-sauce-coated pasta stuffed into hard taco shells. What could be more unappealing?
When Julian Stuart-Burns, 8, asked his mother to make the tacos one night, she simply laughed. “I thought he was joking,” said Jennifer Burns, a Brooklyn mother of three. “But then he kept asking.”
Ms. Burns finally gave in — like thousands of other moms — and cooked up the punch line for Julian’s birthday party.
That punch line has now become part of American children’s cuisine, fostering a legion of imitators and improvisers across the country. Spurred on by reruns, Internet traffic, slumber parties and simple old-fashioned word of mouth among children, spaghetti tacos are all the rage. Especially if you’re less than 5 feet tall and live with your mother.
Mom blogs and cooking Web sites are filled with recipes from dozens of desperate parents who have been confronted with how to feed their offspring the popular gag. A Facebook page has sprung up with more than 1,200 fans.
There’s a dessert version, made with brownie mix, white frosting and strawberry preserves; a guacamole-covered version, with Mexican-flavored tomato sauce, at Barefoot Kitchen Witch, the Web site of the Rhode Island blogger Jayne Maker; and a recipe available at spaghettitacos.com that uses Italian sausage and peppers.
Subject: Spaghetti tacos: From joke to tween cuisine 
Fri Oct 08, 2010 1:52 am
