One of the meals I came up with while still in uni­ver­si­ty was a basic spaghet­ti recipe. I still have it reg­u­lar­ly to this day, and think I’ve per­fect­ed the sauce now, because it’s nice and thick but one does­n’t lose their noo­dles in it. I’ve nev­er liked the process of con­sum­ing meat­balls with spaghet­ti, so I’ve always used ground beef instead.

Ingredients:

• Approximately 500 grams of ground beef (for an even thick­er sauce, use as much as 600 grams)
• Spicy Pepper Medley Seasoning by Club House
• One jar (26 oz) of toma­to sauce (I usu­al­ly use Fire Roasted Tomato and Garlic by Classico)
• A lit­er­al dash of sug­ar (Clemenza’s trick)
• 0.5 lb uncooked spaghet­ti

Makes:

3 gen­er­ous serv­ings

Directions:

1. Boil spaghet­ti in large pot. It should be al dente in rough­ly the same amount of time it takes to cook the sauce.
2. Brown ground beef in a medi­um sized pot. Drain.
3. Season ground beef lib­er­al­ly with Spicy Pepper Medley and con­tin­ue to sim­mer for three min­utes, stir­ring fre­quent­ly. (This is too give the sea­son­ing time to bring out the flavour of the beef, which would­n’t be as promi­nent if the sauce was added first)
4. Turn heat to high, and stir in pas­ta sauce. Stir in sug­ar. Add more Spicy Pepper Medley to taste (I prob­a­bly end up adding about 10 table­spoons to get the spici­ness just right, when it does­n’t burn at the start, but gets hot­ter as it is con­sumed).
5. Continue stir­ring until sauce is at a boil. Remove from heat.
6. Drain spaghet­ti, and serve with sauce.

Variations:

• For a chunki­er sauce and more com­pli­cat­ed taste, add in a com­bi­na­tion of mush­rooms and onions right before sim­mer­ing the beef in step 2.
• Use a jar of Presidents Choice Sweet Basil Pasta Sauce for an almost dessert-like spaghet­ti. The per­fect com­bi­na­tion of sweet and salty.

It’s con­ve­nient because all the ingre­di­ents are shelf items or can be frozen, so it can be used as a back­up meal, yet still be hearty enough to be fill­ing. It’s also fair­ly cheap and sim­ple.