Tomato and pepper pasta

Hi all, 

Another cold day here in the north.we had a very quick.dinner tonight. This pasta takes about 15 minutes to cook.I normally start cooking the pasta and then start making the sauce, so its ready at the same time.

Tomato and pepper pasta.
Serves 4
 
500 grams of pasta (basic dried pasta 29p)
One onion thinly sliced. (10p)
One yellow pepper thinly sliced (20p)
2  garlic cloves crushed (or 1/2 tsp of powered garlic) (5p)
1 tin of chopped tomatoes (400g tin) (25p)
1 tsp of black pepper (1p)
1 tsp of oregano         (1p)
1 tsp of salt                (1p)

put the pasta onto boil
Place sliced onions and garlic into a frying pan and cook till soft.
Then add the sliced pepper and fry till cooked.
then add the tinned tomatoes, pepper, salt and oregano  stir and boil down till the  liquid is almost gone.
The pasta should be cooked by the time the sauce has boiled down.
drain pasta, place some  in a bowl with some tomato sauce and serve.
simple and quick

Costs about 92p in all

 

Here are some variations

Meat :- add raw bacon and fry at the same time as the onions and follow the recipe as normal

Sometimes we like to add cheese after we've placed the pasta and sauce in a bowl. 

Yummy and perfect for a quick lunch or dinner.

fruity bread yummy

Hello,

Well its bread day made a huge 700g bloomer, a small loaf and a fruity loaf.
Now i've never made a fruit loaf so thought what the heck lets give it a go.

So for the bloomer, fruit bread and small loaf i've just used the same recipe as i would for a basic large white loaf. Now i've made it by hand as my bread machine has broken down. The bread machine recipe is on further on the blog to.

Which is 

Basic Bread Recipe
300g Strong White Bread Flour
300g Plain Flour
1pint of warm water
1 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
7g dried fast action yeast 

For the fruit bread, same as above but also add 100g of whatever dried fruit you may have.

If making by hand place the flour in first ,then the salt, sugar and yeast.

Mix together till fully combined. Then slowly add the water whilst stirring till it has formed into sticky but not wet consistency.

Now leave to rise dough till its doubled in size. Once it has done this, knock the dough back down again .

You can now shape into loaves, buns etc Place the shaped into a loaf tin, baking tray and leave to rise again. Once it has done this, preheat the oven to gas mark 5. Leave for 5 minutes for the oven heat up and place the bread dough in the oven.

Bake for about 45 minutes or till cooked.

After you have mixed the dough it shold kind of look like this, if its too watery add more flour and mix again till its the right consistency.

I then  split the dough into two pieces, one for the fruit bread and one for the small loaf.

I place the small loaf dough into a separate dish. 

Then added about 100g of mixed dried fruit mix. 

I then mixed it all together and placed it back in the bowl.

to rise.

After placing the bread into bowls i covered them up with a carrier bag to trap the heat in to help them rise.

Heres all three of looking scrummy :)

ahh fresh bread, can't beat it.

Sausage and stuffing plait.

Hi all

Been a another cold and blustery day. 

Spent the day at my sisters drinking tea, cofee and chatting about life, kids basically anything and evrything.

Another recipe for you to try, i'm sorry i don't have pictures daft phone decided to run out of battery.

Sausage and stuffing plait.
1 large onion (thinly sliced and diced) (10p)
4 cloves of  crushed garlic (optional) (20p)
1 pack of basic sausage meat (494grams) (£1.45)
1 pack of puff pastry (£1.00)
1 pack of basic sage and onion stuffing (15p)
Fry onion and garlic till cooked and place into a bowl.
Mix the dried stuffing with the onions
Mix the above with the sausage meat.
Roll out pastry into a rectangle shape.
Fill the middle of the pastry with the meat mix, then fold pastry over into a sausage roll shape.
Place onto a greased baking tray and cook till pastry is brown, about 25 mins.
Serve hot or cold.
The above did us two meals with extras for the boys.
The first meal we had it had it with was veg, mash and gravy for one meal.
The second meals was sausage plait with chips and beans.

The plait can also be frozen and eaten cold, so very flexible meal.

Till tomorrow

Kez x

Macaroni Cheese

Oh what a freezing cold day, we've snow, sleet, rain and now ice, the view is so lovely. Everywhere is a lovely shade of white, absolutely beautiful.

Looked in the fridge and found a jug full of cooked pasta and i thought its to cold for pasta salad so pasta bake it is.

This makes a meal for four people.

Macaroni cheese

500g of dried pasta

2 tablespoons of butter

2 heaped tablespoons of plain flour

1 pint of milk

50g of strong mature cheddar

1 tablespoon of mustard

1 tomato sliced (optional)

Place 500 grams of uncooked pasta and cook till done. Once cooked place pasta into a large oven proof dish ready for when you place the sauce over it.

 

Melt butter in a pan

 

Once the butter has melted stir in the plain flour.stir till its a thickish paste

 

Gradulally stir in the cold milk till it smooth and cream with a whisk.

 

Carry on stirring till smooth and creamy.

 

Add cheese and stir till melted, stir in mustard.

Place cooked pasta into a dish and lay the cheese sauce over it, till pasta is all covered.

I added sliced tomatoes to the top and a sprinkling of cheese

and plae in oven on gas mark 4  or 180 degrees in an electric oven

 

Now as i'm  to cheap to but macaroni pasta i just use what i have.

500g sainsburys basic pasta 39p

1 pint of milk 25p (taken from 2l milk container £1 tesco milk)

50g cheese 43p (taken from 350g cheese pack £2.98)

2tbsp plain flour 3p (from 1kilo bag 45p)

mustard 6p(jar was 45p)

tomato 10p

So the price i think is £1.26 in total give or take and works out about 32p each.

We sometimes serve this with home made bread and salad if we have less leftover pasta.

The sauce should last a few days in the fridge and freezes well.

Till tomorrow

Kez

Bacon and mushroom risotto

Hello everyone,

Just had to share this lovely recipe which all my children enjoy.

Now i made this with the cheapest possible ingredients and everyone loves it.
I stopped buying arborio rice as it is just too expensive. It works well and can be served as a main dish  or as a side.But best thing of all its less than a £1 :)

25g (cooking bacon sainsburys 950g basic value)
300g Tesco Long Grain Rice (40p per kilo)
2 chicken stock cubes ( 8 cubes for 10p sainsburys basics)
water (paid for courtesy of northumbrian water)
2 garlic cloves (from 20p head of garlic)
black pepper (1p)
mushrooms ( from a pack priced at 95p)
cheese (about 35p)
 onion (from a bag of 10kg priced at £2.50)


Bacon and mushroom risotto

one large onion chopped and finely sliced.
2 rashers of smoked bacon (chopped into slices)
2 garlic cloves (crushed)
1/4 pack of mushrooms sliced
300g of long grain rice
1litre of stock (i used chicken)
1 tbsp of black pepper
30 grams of strong cheddar cheese


Fry onions  and garlic till soft
Add bacon and mushrooms and fry till cooked
Place the above mixture into a bowl.
With the remaining oil in the pan add the rice and stir till fully coated in oil
Then  add the stock bit by bit till fully absorbed.
If the rice isn't cooked just add more water till it it.
Add the cheese and fully stir into the risotto.
Add the onion mixture to the risotto and stir till fully warmed.

Once cooked and heated serve straight away.

I sometimes serve this salad and homemade bread.

This time we just had it warmed up home made bread.

I think in total the risotto and loaf cost about 98p in total. It made enough for 2 grown men and 2 bottomless pits and me and they went back for thirds.


Hope you all like it x

No Spend Days

Hi everyone,

We today definitely hasn't been a spend free day, had to go shopping yet again. My partner took us over to supermarket and pet store for things. I swear our third can cat smell fresh cat litter from a mile away.
Honestly my partner and i were shocked at how much the prices of general has gone up.
We looked at the reduced food and even that was expensive. Raspberries reduced by 10p, ridiculous. No wonder there is so much waste when the supermarkets don;'t reduce food by much.

One good thing happened, my partner now agrees with me that the local halal offer better quality meat that the supermarkets do and at very reasonable prices.  But he did say that we would have to find a good butcher just for pork, what an i say he likes his bacon and sausages!!


No Spend Days or a NSD

What is a no spend day? I hear you ask, well this is where you actively don't spend any money at all. To help me this i joined in a challenge on MSE as i find it helps me to focus when its down on paper or the net in this case.

They are no hard and fast rules and can choose what counts as a spend free day.Every person is an individual and so are they budgets.

The way i plan a no spend day is by making sure i don't so any unplanned spending.
For example:

• I don't count Direct Debits - i have no control of these.
• I don't interest payments or bill days - again i have no control of them
• I don't count overpayments to credit cards as i'm actively trying to clear debt

But i do count the following :

• Buying items from the corner shop such as sweets, milk, daft things
• Buying clothing which is not needed
• Getting the van fixed, again :(
• Paying for school meals
• Paying for large for groceries
• Paying for meals out
• Basically anything other than bills

Its the 11th of January and so far we have jointly achieved 8 days of no fiscal / monetary spending at all. Instead we had 3 days , one planned and two unplanned.  Which i think is pretty good.

I like the idea as it makes me think about my spending in a different way.

Maybe you could try a no spend day and see how it works for you :)

See you tomorrow

kez x

Paying off debt whilst having gadgets

I as recently reading an hearing people complain about others having technology i.e ipad's, tv's, whilst saying they have no money.It got me thinking as this is my family right now. As you all know this month in the madhouse will be very tight and monetatry wise they is nothing to spare.

So i thought i would share our reasoning behind having tablets, pc's and consoles whilst maintaining a steady pace of removing debt and living within our means.

I also wrote something very similar on a forum i visited earlier.

I think having the latest gadgets and using techology such as ipads, tablets, smart phones,  tv's etc is fine as long as your not getting into debt to get them. I know its sounds silly but hear me out.

My partner and two children are obsessed with gadgets and they love mucking around with computers and playing on games.To be honest i like them to but not to the same degree. My partner decided that he wanted to have internet upstairs, so he re-routed cables so now if we wanted to we could effectively have the internet anywhere in the house.

For instance my eldest son is 12 years old so he's a typical teenage boy, the moods, humor, the lot. He has a pc and a Xbox 360 in his room. We decided when he when 10 years old he could a desktop pc in his bedroom, this was the first electrical item in his room. We decided we would allow him to have these for both his homework and entertainment. The Xbox he chats to his friends through, as he rarely leaves the house and suffered form bullying when he was younger. He's not a fighter and prefers to walk away, unfortunately this affected his confidence so even now he still gets bullied. Except now they older kids with weapons. So for me personally i'd rather him socialise with people who he likes and he feels safe at the same time. Its funny because you can hear him laughing his head off and he puts mates on loud speaker, so sometimes they's four of them all shouting and laughing at the same time!

My youngest son is 8 years old, he only has a radio in his room as we still think he is to young.
Instead in the living room he has a wii and lots of games, before we got it he struggled to play with other children. But since he started playing on the wii it has really helped his communication skills. He now is able to have a conversation with another child, which is so amazing and such a dramatic change. To go from from barely stringing two words together  to having a full conversation. This year for christmas we decided to get him a tablet, he asked santa for an ipad, but they are just too expensive so went for an unbranded one off ebay. The tablet itself helps to calm him down and gives him something to focus on when were out and there's too much going on around him. Also we thought it would assist him with spelling and homework. To be honest it really has helped bring him and the tablet also has a physical keyboard he uses with it too, so it is very multifunctional.

A bit about us myself and my partner do not smoke, we very rarely drink alcohol. At christmas we bought two bottles of white wine and we stilll have one left.We  try and go on very cheap uk based holidays and we budget for them accordingly. We both cook from scratch when we can, take our children to the great outdoors and visit lots of historical sites.

We have a landline and broadband, BUT we don't have any channels including the bog standard terrestrial ones. If we want to watch anything we use 4OD, itv player and bbc iplayer. this is our own personal choice, so whilst we have technology we also mix it with the traditional. To be honest we don't really watch that much tv, and don't watch soaps instead we prefer drams, documentaries and films. Before we made the decision not have sky we used to sit and veg out in front of the tv, our life was dominated  by the tv guide and soaps. We also craft, make things such as benches, garden, go camping and we have a house full of books, toys and board games. When my children's friends come round they ask how to play connect 4 as they have never seen them before. Some of these children are 13 years old!

Recently we bought a new 40" flat screen tv for £250in the sales, it has freeview on it but we haven't tuned it in as we don not have an aerial. It is essentially a monitor so we can watch dvd's and play games on. Before that we had a 20 yr old tv that died a death just before christmas 2012, it had been going for a while but i refused to buy a . I wanted a smaller one but all the 20" inch tv's were than £250!!!!

We have mobile phones for business and personal but getting a contract was cheaper for us than PAYG.
This year all of our christmas presents were budgeted for and we never spent extra on credit cards. I had about £200 worth of vouchers / money which i earned from completing surveys. We used them to pay for games and gifts off amazon and ebay. The rest we paid from our cash budget. My partner was shocked that the Halo 4 game was £39.99, i bought ours off amazon using vouchers, in the end it was free.
My youngest wanted wii Lego batman 2 for christmas, priced at £25, i got it for £5 from argos. Using a mixture of nectar points and survey vouchers.

So really it does depend on your lifestyle, we don't buy designer labels, we sell / buy on ebay and hunt around charity shops for our clothes.

Right now were skint, our finances are poor, but that's not because of christmas, its through mismanagement and losing money.T he last three years of my life have been a complete turn around, we went from withdrawing cash from credit cards to pay for childcare and rent. To now , personally anyway, we have consolidated our cc debt onto two cards. I have probably paid over £6k or more worth of debt off on a very tight budget. Still have another £4k worth of debt on cc's but still it is slowly being paid off.

What i'm trying to say just because people have ipads/ tablets doesn't mean they haven't budgeted accordingly. It could be they are doing from an educational / social point of view. Or they could have saved up for the item, and thought right we have saved £200 up, dads gave us £50 for christmas,shall we treat ourselves. Its the end of the year and you know the coming year is going to be hard and you so you think yes. Lets go buy the tv so we know if the weather is rubbish and we haven't got any money to have a day out. Instead we'll make some home made pizza's, juice and home made popcorn and have a film day / night.
Its fun and everyone enjoys it, that way you don't feel deprived and you can have a good time without spending a penny!

So for us in our household its all about consciously deciding what to buy.

I hope what  i've written makes sense and can give you an idea of how you can live simply whilst having things you want.

kez x

very tough month

As stated a very tough month for us financially, don't know how were going to get through it. Tobe honest its happened before, December is a tough month and this timed we more than over spent. So i'm paid the bare minimum on credit cards. Not good considering i'm trying to pay debt off.

Today my partner and i went shopping, to be honest i thought i had an £300 spare this month till i checked and paid cc's today and i nearly cried. My partner doesn't quite know how bad it is, but i'm going to have to be blunt with him. Its so horrible though as the past few months have been horrendous healthwise . Anyway we spent £58.68 and that was £6.50 worth of coupons, yellow sticked reduced food and lots of deals. In the end with came out with hardly any food. I'm being serious 6 filled carrier bags and we will have to go shopping for more food.

I know i was to post a budget but to be honest my mind is so boggled and my hormones are all the place i simply can't.

So instead i will post when i can with ideas and how were coping day to day.

Sorry for the negative post i'm just being honest and upfront.We earn less than £10k a year including working tax credit, child tax credit and child benefit. So effectively were living on less than a person on Jobseekers Allowance, yet the government are cutting on benefits and people on very low incomes. So the poverty line is widening.

2013 a boring but a spend free start!

Happy New Year everyone!

Well we had a lovely chilled New Year, myself and my partner spent the night under a cover watching films. We didn't feel like having a drink so we spent the night laughing and spending with our children.

Had a slight problem though, we ran out of cat food! Oh no we had to leave the house and buy some.
After that we came back and a buffet tea of home made dips, crisps, pizzas, salad, nuts and shop bought savoury eggs. It was wonderful.

New Years Day we had the leftovers from the buffet, whilst i assisted my partner with sausage plait with veg, mash and gravy. It was scrummy and shockingly my youngest ate it!

So yes we haven't done anything exciting so just boring news for us.
I meant to post a financial plan, but my partner told me off for working when i should me resting.

See you tomorrow x