Bolognese sauce

My eating habits aren't exactly great now, but I had really terrible eating habits when I was at secondary school in my teenage years in Hong Kong. After a much dreaded breakfast at 6am which usually consisted of oatmeal cooked with water and egg, I would eat three packets of crisps (the smallest size) from the tuck shop at school as my lunch. It goes without saying that the hot food served at the canteen was absolutely dreadful, so for my undeveloped taste buds crisps were infinitely preferable. As unhealthy as they were, three packets of crisps could hardly fill up a teenager's stomach for an extended period of time, so by the time I reached home at 4pm I would get hungry again. Time to eat a 'real' lunch. There were two routes I could go down - either heading to McDonald's or asking mum to cook spaghetti bolognese.

Now, I'm not entirely sure how my mum exactly prepared the 'spag bol' back then, but I can assure you that I would devour it in no time. I'm pretty sure that she just used a pre-made sauce and mixed it with minced pork and lots and lots of chilli. It goes without saying that it's by no means an authentic rendition of spaghetti bolognese, but it was one of my favourite things to eat back then - which was interesting since I didn't eat tomatoes in general (and still don't). I don't like things that are sour and tomatoes are just way too intense for me. Personally I find tomato-based sauces are slightly more edible than whole tomatoes - even though I do force myself to eat the odd slices of tomatoes in a burger every now and then for their healthy benefits.

The first time when I tried to cook an authentic bolognese sauce from scratch myself in my undergrad years, I was appalled by how complicated and lengthy it was/had to be. I had no idea that you're meant to brown the beef in small batches before braising it with the other ingredients - and by braising you're looking at almost two hours, if not more. Even now, I only make bolognese sauce every once in a while since it's really a major undertaking - but then I tend to make a huge quantity so that I can live on it for days. Once you've tasted the real stuff though, you'll find the commercial stuff so incredibly shallow. I would rather not eat spaghetti bolognese than use a premade sauce!