Ah budget food, I know thee well. The problem with budget food it that is always seems to save on money by taking a long time to prepare and that’s not something I’m prepared to compromise on often. James is awesome at cooking and he enjoys taking time to make really complicated recipes… I do not XD I like baking but cooking because I *have* to is not something I’m good at. So James does pretty much all of the cooking in our house and I make desserts 😀
So in the spirit of my hatred of wasted time and money I present the “James Can’t Be Bothered Cooking So Let’s Have Cheap Easy Pasta” recipe…
Also fair warning that I like my food with a lot of strong flavor 😉
You need:
- Pasta (my favorite is fettuccine) – around $0.69 a pack if you get the home brand one
- Tomato paste – around $1.10 a bottle if you get the home brand
- Pre made pesto – around $4 a bottle
- Parmesan cheese – around $2
- Mozzarella, pre-shredded – around $5 (optional)
- Frozen or fresh veges (optional)
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Cook the pasta, for ultimate laziness points use one of those microwave pasta box things. I got mine at a junk store for $2 and it is AWESOME. Add a spoon of tomato paste and one of pesto.
Mix together, add a lot of parmesan and mozzarella if you like a lot of cheese (I do!).
Add optional veges, I like fresh mushrooms or just those cheap frozen cubed veges.
Quit screwing around in the kitchen and get back to work while you eat lunch ;D The total time spent in the kitchen (not including pasta cooking time because I am generally back at the computer during that) is maybe 5 minutes. It doesn’t look particularly appetising and it’s definitely not presented very well but it tastes good and it’ll get you through until dinner haha!
For something more visually appealing, here’s some packet mix pudding that I made last month. It looks good and I didn’t think it tasted half bad but James thought it was the worst thing in the world and spit most of it back into the sink. Clearly I need to stick to baking pies and macarons!
I’m completely obsessed with watching videos of those Japanese DIY gummy sweets though, they look like SO much fun to make and if importing wasn’t so insanely expensive I would totally get a bunch of them to experiment with! I need to find a Japanese grocer near here so I can start hunting for them at reasonable prices ^_^ If you haven’t seen the videos you totally need to, just check out RRCheriePie’s Channel. I wasted too much time watching them on the weekend… I probably should have spent that time making better pasta 😉
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Add cooked pasta to a bowl.
