Cooking on a Budget; Beetroot Pasta

I'm probably not meant to moan about how broke I am on this blog, I really should pretend that I am super successful, and that I sleep in blankets made of money. This sadly is not the case, I'm broke at the moment, I know I'll get through it, I always do, but for the next while I'm living on a very strict budget. 

It frustrates me when the media talk about people eating badly because they are poor. The times in my life that I have eaten the healthiest food is when I'm really stuck for cash. There is no option to buy processed food as it's way too expensive. Years ago when I suddenly lost my job was the first time that I realised that you can eat really well on very little money, you just have to put in some extra effort in the kitchen. If you build up a good larder over time it makes cooking flavoursome meals affordable. If you get into the habit of buying one or two things for your cupboard every week you will quickly build up a good arsenal of spices, herbs, oils, and grains.  

I had the misfortune of only having a few euro to get the makings of a dinner for two days. I got  the above ingredients for the grand total of only €4.13! Keep an eye on the veg section that is just about to go out of date, this means shopping more often during the week, but that suits me fine since I live in the city centre. I also went for the own brand feta, which was 1/3 the price of the one beside it.
Cooked beetroot
Feta cheese
Green Pepper
Red Onions
Baby leaves

This is where the well stocked cupboard comes into play for making a delicious dinner on a budget!
Veg stock cube
Garlic
Tomato puree
Black Pepper
Marjoram
Tinned tomato
Soy Sauce
Leftover garlic bread
Pasta
Mixed Seeds

-Chop the red onion and cook with a little olive oil on a low heat in a pot with a lit, at this point add you crushed garlic.
-While the onion is cooking cook up your pasta with a veg stock cube, it really adds flavour.
-Add lots of black pepper and a teaspoon of marjoram to the onions.
-After your onions and garlic have sweated nicely add in your chopped green pepper, turn up to a higher heat.
-To make sure your garlic bread is cooked on time pop it into to the oven at this stage.
-Put in your tinned tomatoes, 2 teaspoons of tomato puree, and a splash of soy sauce.
-Chop your beetroot into large chunks and add to the tomato sauce, leave to simmer until your pasta and bread is finished cooking.
-While you are waiting on the pasta make the dressing from the below instructions and mix in with baby leaves, crumbled feta, and beetroot chunks.
-Sieve your pasta and add to the tomato sauce, add crumbled feta on top of the dish.

I never buy salad dressing, I make it as I need it and it tastes 100 times nicer. Just use
1 teaspoon  honey
1 teaspoon mustard
loads of black pepper
Half a lemon
Good splash of nice vinegar
Mixed Seeds

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Food Love

I'm not normally one of those people who takes photos of my food but a combination of a new phone with a a snazzy camera and also making some tasty food has transformed me into a supper snapper. Both of these dishes were really easy to make, and were absolutely delicious.

Pitta Pizza:
I had some left over homemade Italian sauce from the night before in the fridge and I used it as my base for this homemade pizza cheat.
-Wholemeal pitta cut down the middle
-Leftover sauce(red onion, garlic, tinned tomato, black pepper, chorizo, red pepper)
-Fresh mozzarella(from the Milk Market)
-Avocado
-Olives

Put it under the grill for 7-10mins while you prep yourself a lovely side salad. I made a dressing from ume plum vinegar, pepper, and soy sauce, it's super quick and adds loads of bite.

I've been obsessed with black pudding salad since I got it in a hotel years ago in Dublin. I usually make it with some sort of goats cheese but this time I changed things up a little.

Salad:

-Carrot(I use a peeler to make long strips, very nice in salads and stir fry)

-Olives

-Mixed seeds

-Rocket(I'm totally addicted to it, I put it on everything)

-Baby tomatoes

-Cucumber

-Semi-soft poached or boiled egg

-Black Putting from The Milk Market

-Rye Bread from The Milk Market

-Fried chorizo

I've gotten back into cooking in a big way lately, so I suspect that there will be lots more food updates!

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Egg and Quinoa Cups

I get very bored eating the same food all the time so I'm always on the lookout for new recipes, that's why Pinterest is a goldmine for new ideas. I have a food board called 'Tasty...nom,nom,nom' where I save the most delicious looking things(and also things I would feasibly make), I also have another board especially for Crock Pot recipes as I'm still learning how to use mine. I've tried quite a few things that I've pinned but I never remember to take photos, so they don't make it as far as my blog, but for once before diving in I thought to take a couple of badly lit pictures.

When I saw these quinoa cups I knew I had to try them, I'm a little obsessed with quinoa at the moment, it acts as a carb as part of your meal but it's a protein so it's much better for you. You get that nice full feeling like rice, but without the bloating, like a light satisfying fullness that gives you lots of energy. It's quite similar in texture to cous cous, but better since it's not made from wheat. It's a little bit more pricey than things like pasta and rice, but it's totally worth the extra money. I usually cook mine with a veg Knor Stockpot, and it's delicious. I got the original recipe here on Iowa Girl Eats, but it can be easily tweaked to whatever you have in your fridge, just like an omelette.

Basically they are like an omelette that you cook in the oven with added quinoa. The original recipe made little mini bite sized pieces but I used my muffin tin instead for dinner sized portions. As I said you can put in whatever ingredients you like, but this is what I used.

Quinoa Cups:

3/4 of a small cup of uncooked quinoa

1 veg knor stockpot

3 eggs

fistful of grated cheese

1 finely chopped red pepper

1/2 red onion finely chopped

6 cherry tomatoes finely chopped and de-seeded 

2 slices of cooked ham

black pepper

dash of soy sauce

Salad:

Rocket

Cherry Tomato

Cucumber

Grated Cheese

Mixed Seeds

Linwoods Flaxseed mix(super food,I would highly recommend getting this, I add it to loads of things like breakfast, soup, salads, pasta etc)

Cook your quinoa with 2 1/2 parts water to every part quinoa, then add in your knor stockpot to add flavour, bring to the boil, and let it simmer. While this is cooking preheat your over to 180 degrees. Then chop and grate your ingredients. And mix in a bowl together with your 3 eggs. Liberally grease your tin with oil/butter/non stick spray. When the quinoa is cooked add it to the egg mixture, and divide evenly into your cake/muffin tin. I got 4 servings from this mixture, but I'd say if I added another egg (I had a little extra quinoa left over) and made the portions a little smaller I would have gotten 6 out of it. Put in the oven for 20-30 minutes, wait until it's golden on the top and cooked through.

This may not look like the most filling dinner in the world but I was totally stuffed after it, I will definitely be making it again!

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Tea Party, my 30th Birthday

You may have noticed my absence from the blog for the past week or so, this is because I turned 30 last Tuesday. Instead of having a mental breakdown because I'm no longer 21 I decided to have a civilised tea party during the day. I blame Pinterest for putting this idea in my head because of all the pretty girly cakes I see there.

I haven't baked since I was in my early teens, and even then I didn't really do much, I mostly just stood beside my mother and licked the bowl when she was done. But I like setting myself impossible challenges, so I decided to bake all the cakes myself, and to have lots of different types. After some obsessive research on Pinterest and an epic shopping trip I was ready to go. I baked:

Lemon Cheesecake: you can find the recipe here but I tweaked it by adding lemon jelly made with very little hot water( you don't need to add sugar then) and I added an extra tub of philadelphia. I must say I was delighted with the result, it was really fresh and lemony.

70 Plain Buns: I got the recipe from the Odlums website, for kids baking. I decorated them with different icing to vary the taste/display. Here are some links to icing recipes, I made toffee and chocolate ones. I also made butterfly fairy cakes too, you just use a blob of cream and jam, it brought back memories of every kids party I had ever been to.

Marshmallow Rice Krispie Cakes: These Rice Krispie cakes taste like the Rice Krispie Squares you can buy in the shop, I'm not the biggest fan of them but I know other people love them. I got the recipe from Pinterest, but after making all the other millions of cakes I ran out of time and ingredients to make icing for them. They are actually the most frustrating cakes to make as they were so sticky and difficult to handle. At one point I did scream 'I hate you, you ****ing evil devil cakes!', I will obviously never make them again! (I did have some mix leftover so I made a cake version and covered it with icing and strawberries,if nothing else it looked pretty on the table!)

Whoopie Pies: I cheated with these and bought a readymix box. Little did I know it takes pretty much the same amount of effort, next time I'll just make them myself.

Cucumber Sandwiches: It's obligatory to have white bread cucumer sandwiches with no crusts at tea party, I also made some egg sandwiches too.

Savoury Sandwiches: I got some yummy brown bread from the shop around the corner(Bobby Byrnes) and I put chirizzo, olives, rocket, tomatoes, and humous on them.

Vol-Au-Vonts: I bought the frozen pasty in tesco and just added my own filling, I figured I was elbow deep in cakes and that it was too much hassle to make my own pastry. I used various combinations of olives, humous, chilli jam, tomatoes, chirizzo, and mozzerella to fill them. 

Mini Pizza Rolls: I saw the recipe on Pinterest for these bite sized pizza rolls and thought they were perfect for the party. Mine were no way near as tidy but they were super tasty, the key is to make a lovely herb oil to baste them in.

Even though it was a tea party there wasn't much tea consumed, instead I served Pimms. This is a very traditional English garden party drink, closely associated with Wimbledon. It's an alcoholic drink that you soak in fruit overnight and serve on a hot sunny day with ice. Here is my recipe:

1 bottle of Pimms
2 large oranges
1 lemon
2 limes
1/2 cucumber
8/12 strawberries
1 fistful of mint

Leave to soak overnight. Then just before you serve add 2 litres of white lemonade or soda water and 1 litre of ginger ale. Add ice to your glass before serving. I served mine in a selection of mismatched old tea cups.

You may also notice the bunting in the background. I made this from wrapping paper which I got for €1.50 per roll. I then stapled the triangles onto ribbon. It was really quick to make tonnes of it to add some festive cheer to the party.

It was such a lovely day, the party was small enough that I was able to have a good old natter with everyone.  It was perfectly girly, exactly what I wanted! We brought the leftover cake to the pub that night where I met up with the rest of my friends who weren't able to make it to the daytime party. I really can't think of a lovlier way to have spent my day!

Yep that's me crying I'm laughing so much...it may have had something to do with the crazy amount of Pimms that was consumed!

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I Bought A Slow Cooker

Cannellini Beans and Sausages

My friends Branden and Mary-Rose have a slow cooker and they are obsessed with it, and kept nagging me to buy one. I really like the idea of bunging all the ingredients in a pot and leaving it for 6 hours, and at the end you have a delicious dinner that didn't really involve any work. I like cooking but like most people I'm pretty strapped for time, so a lot of my meals are quick and easy but not that exciting. I also fell into the trap of cooking the same 8/10 meals in rotation just because I can't think of anything new. Things improved a bit last year when I went on my detox as it forced me to change how I eat and how I think about food.

I found it hard to get healthy recipes, lots of them that I looked at used convenience food like canned soup and pre-made jars of sauce as their base, which to me defeats the purpose of making a healthy dinner as these foods are packed with salt, sugar, stabilisers and preservatives. I'll probably end up making up lots of my own recipes, and figuring it out as I go along. Don't worry if I invent something delicious I'll share it here with you guys. Here are the few that I found that were made from fresh ingredients.

Ps: I got my slow cooker in Tesco for just over €20

Beef Stew

Falafel

Jambalaya

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Spicy Sausage and Bean Casserole

As a lot of my regular readers will know I've changed my eating habits a lot over the past few months. .I've been refining this concoction over the fast few weeks but I think I hit the perfect balance at last.

Spicy Bean and Sausage Casserole:
You will need the following:

1 Tin of Tomatoes
1 Tin of Mixed Beans( I use the organic ones from Eats of Eden)
4 Cloves of Garlic
1 Red Onion
1 Red/Green Pepper
1 Punnet of Cherry Tomatoes
2/3 Large Spicy Sausages(from the French Stall at the Milk Market...and they are gluten free too!)
1 Cup of brown Rice(also from Eats of Eden)
1 Veg Knor Stock Pot
Small Pinch of Chilli Powder
Small Pinch Sweet Paprika

(I get all my veg from the Milk Market which helps keep costs low)

*Turn your hob to No.2 and heat a large pot with a small bit of olive oil, pop in your 2/3 sausages in the pot and cover with a lid. While they are slowly sizzling chop your onion finely and crush your 4 cloves of garlic. Leave to slowly cook for 15 minutes stirring occasionally.

*In the meantime chop your cherry tomatoes in half, and your pepper into long strips. When the onions and garlic have softened and started to smell delicious pop your peppers and tomatoes in the pot. At this stage add your spices to taste. I use Sonnentor Chili Powder which packs quite a punch, so I only use the smallest pinch. I then add about a half a tea spoon of paprika. Leave for 5 minutes.

*Strain your tin of mixed beans, put both your beans and tomatoes into the pot.

*In another pot put on your cup of brown rice, adding 2 1/2 parts water to 1 part rice. Add your knor stock  pot to the rice water to add extra flavour. Leave your bean dish stewing on No.2 for the length of time it takes for your brown rice to cook.

*At this point sit down and have a cup of tea and relax...this is when I watched an episode of the IT Crowd on 4OD.

If you've used 3 sausages this is more than enough for 3 servings, with maybe a bit left over for lunch the next day. It's a really luscious hearty meal, perfect for a cold blustery evening.

Here is some info on the health benefits of adding beans to your diet and also some info on brown rice.

PS: Please excuse the poor picture quality, I was way too hungry to hunt down my camera, so I used Johns phone instead.