A simple red meat sauce. It’s the most basic red sauce you can make and when you have made it up, you can easily add more flavours to it – it works in lasanga, cannelloni, on top of pizzas, or just poured on to pasta. I don't claim this as an "Italian" recipe - but it is my own.

Serves 4 (Or 2, if you’re hungry!)

* 200G lean beef mince
* 1/2 bottle red wine (and don't buy wine you wouldn't want to drink)
* 3 large white onions
* 5 small tins of tomato puree (100g tins of "double concentrate")
* Salt
* Olive oil

Begin by finding a sauce-pan, with a reasonable size, a lid and a heavy bottom – if you don't have one then please consider buying one! A lid is really important for this, as it will be cooking for so long, something needs to be on top to keep the moisture in

Once you have a pan, then chop your onions up into 1cm cubes (this doesn't have to be precise)

Put the pan over a medium-high heat and add some olive oil, once this gets hot – throw in the onions and hear them sizzle! Once they do this, stir them and throw on a little more oil and some salt. You want at least 1tsp of salt here to help draw the moisture out of the onions

Turn the heat down to low and let the onions cook through for about an hour. You want them down so low that they won't burn, but up high enough that they brown through. The best way to assess this is to listen to them – if they sizzle, then you have the heat up too high.

Once the onions look delicious, brown and cooked, then throw the meat into the pan and turn the heat up a fraction and then leave the meat for another half hour to an hour – till it is browned through. You are aiming to slowly cook the meat through with the onion – infusing the flavour of the meat into the onions and the onions into the meat.

When this has done, turn the heat up to high, wait for 30 seconds and then pour in enough wine to cover the meat and onions. This might be half a bottle – it might be a quarter of one – just enough to cover.

Stir this through and then turn the heat down to low again

Add in the tomato puree and stir – you now have your sauce

Leave this to cook for at least 2 hours and for preference, 6 – please bear in mind that you might have to top it off with either more wine, or a splash of water to keep it from drying out.

To this you can add any kind of flavour you want - garlic should go in with the onion and any dried herbs should go in before the wine and after the meat is cooked. But.. Do yourself a favour - if you haven't tried a simple, herbless and garlicless sauce - then do it.

...where-in the author shares with you his recipe for settling your head and your stomach.

The Hangover Cocktail

* 1 shot Chambourd liqueur
* 2 scoops of high quality vanilla ice-cream
* Milk to top up to a pint of liquid

Combine all 3 ingredients and then either blend, whisk or mix (depending on how your kitchen is equipped; I used a stick blender) and then serve.

The milk soothes your stomach and the slight kick from the Chambourd will help your head. If you're feeling really shaky then add a crushed ibuprofen to the mix.

Enjoy.

Following karohemd 's advice I used white onion for my sauce today and balsamic vinegar instead of port, wine or any other kind of alcohol.

I also tried cooking using a little more worcester sauce - based upon duncanneko 's wisdom.

This was more sauce than last time - I'm making for me, for a housemate's lunch and for meatballs tomorrow night.

I feel a lot more ambivalent about this sauce. Too much strong tomato flavour - I think doing it in volume meant the ingredients didn't have room to mix, to breathe.

The white onions are good though - they brown off well and you can't help but love worcester sauce. I'm not sure about the balsamic vinegar though - I need to try using it some more.

I followed the standard pattern of cooking the onion and garlic, then the chunks from the tinned tomatoes - then seasoning, sugar and topping up with the tomato juice until I am happy with the taste.

Tomorrow - re-seasoning this sauce and meatballs!

This week I am going to be perfecting my basic recipie for making a red, tomato sauce using tinned tomatoes, garlic, herbs, spices and the rest of it.

On Sunday we had a pizza, using some of this sauce and tonight I have had a bowl of pasta using a new batch. So far I have experimented with paprika (don't use too much of this, kids - it really isn't going to help) and am debating the relative merits of red onion vs white onion vs the shallot.

I have gotten a lot out of using a splash of tawny port instead of my usual wine or vodka, when deglazing the pan (following on from frying the onions) - but it just isn't something I can keep around the house (expensive + I am likely to drink it).

Does anybody have any advice on making a basic tomato sauce?

Walking home from the supermarket tonight, I could not help but overhear from one of the flats next to our house, the strained voice of a woman, obviously pleading for a life soon to be left behind;

"Look, oh god I can change......... Yes I know but.... No, no, no, please.......... " and then more wailing and crying till I felt as though to do anything other than withdraw would be rude.

I cannot help but feel that.. If there were anything I could do to stop this heartbreak; even for a stranger. I would do it.

Am I a hopeless romantic for wanting to do so? A hero without a cause?

I hope that whoever they are.. The wounds are not too deep to heal.

Van D'Alsace Pinot Gris, 2005 Reserve from Cave Vinicole Hunawihr

( Review under the cut.. )

Inspired by both season 7 of 24, (excellent, by the way - new direction), and my current cycling predicament, (4 inner-tubes in a week. A combination of poor maintenance and ill circumstance), I present to you - one of my favourites;

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

--William Ernest Henley.

That said, it has taken 3 gin & tonics to calm my raging sensibilities. Over the last few years, many things have happened which I have railed against - but there is something about cycling issues that makes my blood boil. Loss of independence, loss of dignity. Loss of a speedy-way to get into work.

It stresses me and I feel angry about that.

..going back, back to school.."

Or not, as the case may be. But it's the festive season and quoting RENT is a requirement for this journal.

My 3 (public) goals for this year, include;

1. Learn how to cook more and quicker meals - Week-night specials. Most of my cooking needs a lot of preparation and time. Not a bad thing - but I'd like to be more experience with pulling things together quickly.

2. Continue exercising - I've been doing yoga, going to the gym and have been biking to work for my whole time in Cambridge - it's good and I'd like to keep it going.

3. Rise up, at work - I've been asked to do a lot more as part of my role. It's not going to be impossible - but it is going to require me to put my back into doing it.

In general, I'm more excited and happy going into 2009 than I have been over the last few years.

Catch you all on the flip-side.

This is my favourite version;I like the Cohen version. I do - but I think this one is the better, the best.

It's a good song. Whenever anybody - girl, boy or pop-idol, uses the phrase, "...it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth. The minor fall and the major lift...", I get goosebumps.