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.

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