Here's how to make a GREAT pot of spaghetti:

1st and most importantly, have someone to share it with. it's just not the same slurping pasta by one's self.

after that, everything else is secondary.

bottle of good red wine for sipping (fizzy water works just as well).

fresh ingredients -- mushrooms, onion, garlic, basil, garlic, did I mention garlic?

not so fresh but will do ingredients - the so-called 'Italian' seasonings. check your local grocer spice aisle.

1 big can each of stewed tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste

meat of your choice -- or if you have a good vegan recipe, send it my way, won't you?

brown your meat over a medium heat, drain the lard, add to the mix of other ingredients (that you've already mixed in a separate pot and put on a medium heat), stir, cover, cook over low heat for as many hours as you can stand to, stirring ocassionally. I say this is a Sunday afternoon meal. save it for a day you don't have to go anywhere and you can cook in your own liesurely pace for hours on end, sipping your wine or fizzy water, listening to jazz music, watching tele, chatting w/ friends, yada yada yada.

of course, you cook and drain your pasta just in time to serve it warm, so plan to put your water on to boil about half an hour before you want to eat.

or serve it over toast. who cares?


Here's how NOT to make a great pot of spaghetti --

follow all of the above instructions, only instead of adding black pepper to taste, try adding a blind heaping of white pepper. just don't pay attention as you're pouring it in. it looks pretty much like the salt and Italian ingredients you've already added and are now standing on top of the tomato sauces so just forget about it when you've realized you've poured a good third of the cannister in for a pot that may feed four. stir.

and sip more wine or fizzy water, whatever, because you've got a foul taste in your mouth from the white pepper in the air that's just not right and you know it but you've only got one pot of ingredients and can't start over from scratch.

enjoy your first mouthful with your preferred dinner companion and put your fingers in your ears and say LALALALALALALALA when he tells you "WOW! THAT'S REALLY PEPPERY!" You knew that already. You'd even mentioned it to him, so why is he saying it now like some sort of revelation?

finish your plate as he throws his away and wait a solid fifteen minutes for your thiving headache to begin. Did I say 'thriving'? Yes, yes, I did. I would say 'throbbing' but that's what a thriving headache develops into. see? thriving. flourishing, big booming business.

after about an hour, remove yourself from his company and go immediately to the bathroom where what you've eaten earlier is about to make a reappearance.

then get in the shower, a cool, cool shower, as your throbbing - yes, full on spikes through the temple and cervix and orbs headache now includes an ass ache and a nausea so overwhelming you are CERTAIN of the migraine history you've had for most of your life has never, NOT ONCE, NEVER EVER been so swift or fierce or furious.

go directly to bed. do not take the dogs with you.

as you lay there dreaming of death, masturbate. Louise Hay SWEARS it will cure your migraine.

curse Louise Hay as you crawl your sorry ass back to the shower where you soak your head until you think you're just past the point of hypothermia and think it safe to turn off the water and return to the living.

there you go thinking again.

when he asks if you are ok, tell him through your sobs you are going to the store for migraine medicine. when he asks you to let him go instead, let him.

hug the toilet, here it comes.

when he returns with migraine medicine and one of those sticky cold compresses that works for 8 hours on your forehead, let him pour the pills down your raw throat, stick the icky mess to your head and tell you in his sweetest voice,

"We're not eating the leftovers."