My gnocchi version

half a packet asda smart price instant mashed potato (you can’t taste the difference in this honest!) 8p

400g plain flour 9.6 p

make up mash according to packet instructions, I made mine a little wetter than normal, and added ground black pepper.

add flour and mix then knead until a fairly stiff dough. Somewhere between bread and pastry…Leave to rest for 30 mins then roll out into long sausages, about 1.5 cm fat, then cut into 2cm chunks. You can roll them into a ball now if you can be bothered!

Cook gnocchi in boiling water til they rise to the surface of boiling water, approx 2 mins.

Makes 4 generous portions.

Great for vegetarians ceridwen!

Weezl x

Soak 125g dry weight haricot beans for 5 hrs or overnight. Drain.

Boil vigorously for 10 mins, drain, then put in slo-cooker with 150 ml water, 3 tablespoons tomato puree, 1 tablespoon vinegar, 1 tablespoon sugar (or honey ceridwen!) a scant quarter teaspoon chilli, 2 bay leaves if you have them. You can add thyme leaves if you have them.

Cook 4 hrs on high, or all day on low.

Serve with mash and sausages. A 23p evening meal!

Here’s a tip you might like to try…..

Mr Weezl cleverly hammered flat some copper pipe we found in the garage and nailed it round the top of the new raised bed he built. It was meant to be a slug deterrant.

Self- confessedly feeling like an 8 year old boy, he just picked one up and placed it on the copper, ‘just to see…’ . Well, it writhed and foamed and generally did not seem to be happy. Yuck. But I think we can safely say it’s a good trick for anyone trying to avoid the dreaded blue pellets, and go more organic!

Weezl x

Saag Aloo

Makes 12 servings

1 kg potatoes, – 29p, chop into ½ inch dice
1 large 575g tin spinach- 77p, drained, keep the liquid
500g chopped onions- 40p
Dessertspoon Cumin,
3 cloves garlic, 6p, chopped, crushed or grated
½ teaspoon chilli,
fresh coriander, 5p, I used a tenth of a 50p bunch
salt
100ml veg oil – 9p

Start with a large pan, you’re going to make 12 portions of curry! Fry cumin and garlic and chilli in oil for a minute, then add the onions til coated and translucent, a few mins. Stir the cubes of potato in until coated, then add the spinach. Reduce heat, and simmer until the potato has cooked through, testing with a knife every 5 mins ish. When the curry gets too dry, add some of the reserved spinach liquid.

14p per serving, with 60g of rice and a HM naan bread, that’s your whole evening meal for 20p! Each portion contains 2 portions of your ‘5 a day’.

Happy chomping,

Love Weezl x

These cost me 4p cos I made the jam out of blackcurrants from my garden, and a strawberry one (in the photo) from some strawberry jam from ISOM!

I also used a pat of butter for 50p from asdas price war weekend. You could do it for 6p a serving if you use stork marg instead of butter, and with asdas own blackcurrant jam, or 9p a serving with their jam and real butter. I’ve tried it all ways, and they’re really nice!

OK here’s how:

750g self-raising flour
250g butter/stork/sunflower marg
1 large 454g jar jam
cold water (start with about 200ml and keep adding til it’s a wet slippy dough.)

Makes 18 servings, so you might want to reduce the quantities if you don’t have an enormous freezer/skinny husband/excessive need to do enormous batch cooking!

Combine the butter, cold and cubed into the flour using finger tips, until you’ve achieved a breadcrumby consistency throughout. Then add the cold water, little by little, mixing with your hands until you get a wet slippy dough and all the floury mix is incorporated.

Put a dessertspoon sized dollop of jam in the base of a pudding basin. Add a layer, about 1 cm thick of the dough on top. then another layer of jam, then dough again, until the pudding basin is just over half full (it will grow when you cook it!) repeat this in 3 other pudding basins till you’ve used up all your dough.

I then normally put them in the microwave for 3 mins, pause and then 1 min to activate the self-raisingness of the flour, then transfer them to the slo-cooker to steam so they are lovely and moist. You can do the slo-cooker part after freezing and defrosting to end up with steamed puds just before you serve.

Boil a kettle and put 2 ins water in the base of your slo-cooker. switch SC onto high or auto. Make a foil lid for your pudding, with a little fold in the centre for expansion, and secure with string or a rubber band. Place the pudding into the slo-cooker and steam for anything from 1-4 hrs!

Makes 18 very generous, Mr Weezl sized servings. Most women I know ask for about half the portion. My brother does too!

Love Weezl x

Been cooking up some rice krispie cakes today, having inherited rice krispies and butter from a pal who’s gone on a diet, and having dark chocolate from the lovely Shaz.

So all I had to contribute was 50g sugar. Due to the generosity of my friends, my batch of 26 cakes work out at 6 for a penny!!! But you can make them by buying everything for 3.5p each, which I think is pretty darn good too!

250g rice cereal
50g butter
50g sugar
100g dark chocolate

Mix butter, sugar and chocolate together in a large pan on gentle heat until melted. Melt sugar into butter first so choc doesn’t over-heat!

Turn off heat and stir in cereal. While still warm place 2 heaped dessertspoons of mix into each fairy cake holder. Or press gently into baking tin and cut into cubes later.

Enjoy!

Love Weezl x

Mr weezl loves pesto, so I’ve been working out how to make it much cheaper.

Step 1: grow your own basil.

Step 2: play around with ways of missing out some of the ingredients

Step 3: swap veg oil for the olive oil, grana padano for the parmesan, and sunflower seeds for the pine nuts

Step 4: get 15 portions of pesto for £1.50 and feel very chuffed with yourself!

Weezl x

In February, I bought a punnet of tomatoes in Lidl for 25p from my shopping budget, and harvested the seeds from one of the fruit. 5 months on, they have ben tantalisingly plumpening (is this a word? It should be!!) away, but no sign of reddening. I keep googling search phrases like ‘how long to tomatoes take to ripen?’ but noone seems to want to make me any promises.

Every morning I’m like a kid waiting for santa, who hasn’t quite arrived yet!

Can you tell I’m new to gardening?

Love Weezl x

after a couple of heartbreaking weeks when they all turned floppy and brown and started falling off, these lovely healthy-looking cucumbers are emerging!

I’m very pleased! The seeding was donated by my friend helen, and with compost from the garden, and potting the cucumbers on into an old paint tub, they’re free to grow…

Can’t fault it eh?

I think they are about 3 and a half inches long now, I wonder how long before harvest?

Love Weezl x