Pasta all'amatriciana...all'americana

In a quest to try new pasta recipes I found one for pasta all'amatriciana, typically a tomato-based sauce with pancetta and pecorino cheese.  While grocery shopping yesterday, we decided to make this for dinner and consequently we had to substitute for items not commonly found at Meijer stores since we didn't want to have to make another stop on the way home.  Thus we called it: pasta all'amatriciana...all'americana.  It was still quite delicious but probably not anything like traditional.

Our notes:

• Meijer does not carry pancetta which is hardly a surprise.  Thus we used both Canadian bacon and regular bacon as a substitute (though if it had been up to me, I would have skipped the Canadian bacon and only used regular bacon...).
• Meijer also does not have bucatini pasta (again, not a surprise).  Linguine worked fine.
• The recipe called for a can of plum tomatoes which would then be run through a food mill.  Not owning a food mill, we opted for a can of crushed tomatoes.  Our dish looked much like the photo from the recipe's original site so this was probably all right.
• The addition of a very small quantity of baking soda (<1/8 tsp.) near the end of cooking reduces the acid in the sauce nicely without much affecting the overall taste.
• Red pepper flakes are not as inexpensive as you might think given that every single pizza joint has a jar of them on every table.
• We used closer to 1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes; even I think I could have put in a few more to make it a bit spicier.
• A bit of black pepper made a fine addition to the sauce.
• BelGioioso Romano cheese was perfectly serviceable.

Verdict: a recipe to try again, though with a little more planning next time around in order to get the traditional ingredients.  What we made was delicious already but presumably with the actual ingredients called for it would be even better.

An American interpretation.