Cottage Pie

A few weeks ago I stalked the lady doing the reductions in M&S. It's not pleasant, to find yourself standing menacingly close to a young woman who's just trying to do her job, but needs must. As a result of my continued proximity to her, I got quite a lot of gluten free stuff reduced, a couple of jellies and a pack of mince. Everything was down to 25% of its original price, which is a good job, as I am utterly bemused at the idea anyone could pay £5 for a small pack of mince. That's £2.50 a kilo. For mince! Anyway, with my reduced mince I made a cottage pie type of affair. Chucked everything bar the potatoes in the slow cooker, then when the mince mix was cooked slapped it in a baking dish, topped with mash that I already had made and then baked at 200 degrees for 25 mins. 

Obviously a less hungry person would have photographed the whole pie, or a nicely presented portion. Me and the girl scarfed ours at a disgusting rate, and only then did it occur to me to take a photo. Oops.

400g mince - £1.25

1 onion - 5p

2 sticks celery - 5p

Can chopped toms - 25p

Can beans - 25p

Spices and the like - 20p

Potatoes - 40p

Serves 6, so 41p per portion

Had mine with a portion of sweetcorn, so another 8p for that. 

Pie time!

Today I made a pie, and it was lush.

Pack casserole steak (£1.00 from last weeks reduced Co-op haul)
1 onion (5p)
2 potatoes (12p)
2 carrots (8p)
Dash Henderson's relish (free, cause stolen from pub whilst drunk. Bad Badger)
2 tbsp gluten free gravy granules (20p)
Shake of pepper and dried herbs (5p)
Mugful boiling water

Whack all of the above in a slow cooker for about 6 hours on high.

Make pastry the usual way by mixing the flour and xantham gum, then rubbing in the baking marg til it's like breadcrumbs, then add however much cold water is needed to bind it. Rest it in a fridge for a while, then roll it out super carefully, as gluten free pastry is a bitch to handle. Feel smug if you manage to do it one go.

100g gluten free flour (free from a box of samples for coeliacs)
50g baking marge (15p)
1tsp xantham gum (5p)
Cold water to bind.

Assemble pie in a beautiful Villeroy and Boch dish that your dad's neighbours have recently given you. Marvel at the beautiful dish, and feel slightly scared that you own a piece of bakeware that costs around £60. Forget to glaze your pie, as you're so scared of breaking the dish.

Bake for 35 mins, serve with peas and scoff. Ideally the peas will be a freebie that someone gave you, and even though you don't like peas you will eat them because a) they need eating, and b) everyone knows pie and peas were meant to be eaten together. 

Makes 4 portions, 42.5p each.  If you had it with mash or yorkies then it'd probably easy do 6 portions.

Shopping happiness

YS shopping haul!

Total value of products bought: £50.70
I paid: £11.26

That's a 77.79% saving on full price!

Now, it was the Coop, so the food was massively overpriced to begin with, but I'm still rather chuffed.

For my pennies I got:
3 packets ham
3 packets chicken
2 packets stewing steak
Pack chicken thighs
Pack chicken breasts
Pack turkey mince
Pack beef mince
2 packets pre-cooked chicken breast
Tub of coronation chicken
Tub of egg mayo
Tub of hummus
2 sausage rolls
4 pints organic skimmed milk
Small gluten free loaf
White loaf
12 yoghurts
2 packs of beansprouts
2 packs of chicken kievs
Packet of breaded chicken fillets

BOOM!

Soup sagas

I am a big snooker fan. As such, when the tickets to next year's World Championships went on sale, on May 1st, I devoted the day to getting the best tickets I could. I got some rather fab ones, and will be giving a couple of them to the current Mr Badger, as his xmas and birthday gifts. The tickets do sell out on thr day they go on sale, so I had to buy them.  Basically, this is my justification for blowing £300 on snooker tickets, which has had the rather obvious consequence of leaving me utterly skinted.

As such, I am primarily going to be living off soup for the rest of the month. Behold today's offering!

Heinz tomato soup, from a packet. From Approved Food, so mega cheaps. Also gluten free crackers from the same place. Not mega cheap, but as cheap as I've ever seen gf shizzle, so I bought a ton of them.


17p portion crackers

11p portion soup

28p for my main meal. There's clearly not enough calories here, but as I am a pretty tubby badger, it'll be no bad thing for me to living off soup for the next 11 days.

Sludge curry

A delightful curry that looked like something dredged up from a pond. Also, the current Mr Badger is refusing to eat it, as he claims it is too hot. Wuss.

So, for two portions:

Leftover chicken from roast - 75p

200g sweet potato - 20p

4 lumps of frozen spinach - 15p

Small onion - 5p

Packet of curry paste from Approved Foods - 5p

Can of coconut milk - 50p

Value rice - 10p

A total of 80p per portion, so a little high. Next time I'd probably just leave out the chicken and add some other veg instead to bring the cost right down.

Easter roast

Bought a chicken for three quid.

A bit of red cabbage with an onion, apple and some spicy gubbins

A small handful of frozen green beans

A few roasties

A couple of roast carrots

A pack of IKEA cream sauce

Based on the chicken feeding us for 4 meals, let's say 75p for the two portions.

Cabbagey stuff would have cost a total of 30p

Green beans 10p

Taters 7p

Carrots 8p

Sauce was free

So a roast dinner for a grand total of 65p each. RESULT!

Tasty white mush

It's slow cooker weather, so today I thought I'd make a rice pudding. Never done one before, but how hard could it be? Checked a few recipes, got a vague idea of timings and proportions so off I went.

I chucked in 1 mug of rice (just Tesco value stuff), 3 mugs semi skimmed milk, half mug demerara sugar and about a tsp of vanilla extract. Slapped it on low and went out. Came back 4 hours later to find it was cooked, and tasted awesome, but was pretty much so solid it needed a knife and fork to eat it. The child still enjoyed t, and as she's currently alleging famine every couple of hours, having this should hopefully fill her up a bit longer than usual.

Got 6 portions from it, costing approx 15p per bowl. Bargain.