Pasta Cheat

During the hellish ordeal that is weekend shopping, I came up with my next dish. As I sat in Frankie and Benny's watching the rush of people enter, eat and leave the restaurant, I wondered how many of us actually wanted to be there. Who was there by choice, or because it's the weekend thing to do or actually felt they just had to be there. I don't mean just eating out, but shopping. I really hate it, pushing through crowds of people all racing around trying to complete their missions. Sitting in queues of traffic getting angrier and angrier waiting to get to our destination as quickly as we can so we can get home again. I still can't get my head around the fact that people do this for pleasure. Give me the woods or the beach and I'm in heaven. That's not to say I didn't enjoy myself, we had a lovely family day out and it's all about compromise and doing things that everybody enjoys. Watching my youngest two children's faces light up because they are getting treated to a dessert and a balloon, they really are that easily pleased, is a lovely thing even if it isn't my cup of tea. Considering I got my inspiration for this next dish while I was there it wasn't all bad. So here's my recipe for bacon and mushroom tagliatelle. Combat the 'carb coma' by serving with a large fresh salad instead of garlic bread like I did!

Bacon (I used Asda smartprice smoked back bacon for £1.20 312gm)

250g mushrooms (mine were 25p from the Spar bargain!)

Tin of cream of chicken/= or mushroom soup

2 tsp dried thyme 

2 tsp garlic powder

400g tagliatelle

Finely grated cheddar to sprinkle on top

Slice the mushrooms and bacon

On a high heat fry them for 15 minutes or until golden

Add the thyme

Cover the tagliatelle with boiling water and simmer for 10 minutes

Heat the soup

Drain the cooked pasta, add the soup, bacon and mushrooms and serve with a sprinkle of cheese on top. 

How to pocket more pounds

I thought I would share some more tips with you on saving a bit of money, after all Christmas is sprinting towards us now! If there are any of you with young kids and they like the tins of spaghetti shapes for their lunch then you will know they cost quite a bit if you're buying a few at a time. I can save you pounds, instead of buying a few small tins, or even large ones to portion up, buy the basic brand spaghetti. It's around 20p-30p in most supermarkets, and get a jar of the cheap tomato sauce for bolognese, this ranges from around 30p-80p. Then simply cook what you need each time, it lasts longer than an opened tin and you can portion the exact amount you need. As spaghetti takes about 10 minutes to cook it's not much longer than heating up a jar in a pan. If your little one likes you can grate cheese on it or stick some chopped sausages in for a more filling meal or serve with garlic bread for a cheap, easy and tasty lunch. My children love it so does my step-son who is quite a picky eater and he gave it a big thumbs up! The same went for my cheesy pasta which is as simple as the tomato pasta. Instead of buying tins of macaroni cheese buy the basic brand pasta, very cheap for a bag 29p in Lidl! All I do with this is serve it with my home-made cheese sauce (recipe on my vegetable lasagne post) literally cook the pastas and then add the sauce to the drained pastas and stir. Very simple and very tasty, also you know exactly what you're feeding them when you've cooked it yourself and can't stress how cheap they are!