Breakfast!....again

Porridge is a healthy option. In the morning I give myself a little pat on the back for being healthy before I've even left the house. But it's also a little boring being so healthy and the extra toppings lose their appeal quite quickly.
But since I've gotten used to "breakfasting" I've had to go looking for another easy, warm and cheap breakfast. Scrambled eggs on toast might sound a bit done but it's something I've never tired of for lunches so I hope you enjoy it too!

Ingredients and method:

Milk. Tesco low fat milk, 1 litre. €1.00.
Eggs. 2 per person. Tesco eggs, pck of 6. €0.99
Butter. Tesco, Butter Me Up 500g. €0.85.
Bread. Brennans Half Pan Preiumwhite, 400g. €1.19.

Method:

Place two slices of bread into the toaster.
Melt a little bit of the butter on the warm non0-stick pan. Whisk the eggs in a bowl to break up the yolks and add 2 tablespoons of milk. Add the eggs and milk to the saucepan.
Stir gently until the eggs start to coagulate. Keep stirring, don't allow the egg to stick to the pan. Once formed take it off the heat immediately, add salt and pepper to taste.
Butter the toast and place the eggs on top.
Eat immediately.

Scrambled eggs on toast is a simple breakfast, it's more filling than porridge but it's also more expensive. It costs €4.42 altogether.

Enjoy!

Breakfast!

Breakfast is a meal which I usually forget about. There are two reasons for this, a) I have to be in class early and I just don't have the time or b) If I have nowhere to be I'm never usually awake before lunch.
But I do live life by my stomache and when someone mentioned I was missing a great meal I decided to set my alarm clock and for once enjoy my breakfast.

Porridge is what I decided on first. I always thought it was a plain sort of breakfast, but since it never seems to be warm in my apartment in the mornings, a warm breakfast was slightly tempting.

Ingredients (+ one suggested topping) and pricing:

Porridge. Tesco Scottish Porridge Oats, 500g. €0.99.
Milk. Tesco low fat milk, 1 litre. €1.00.
Strawberries. Market value strawberries. €2.99.
Honey. Tesco value clear honey, 340g. €1.39.

Method:

Place the oats, milk, 300ml water and a pinch of salt salt into a pan. Bring slowly to the boil, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon. Cook the porridge slowly for a couple of minutes, then pour into warm bowls (which will prevent it setting instantly).
Pour extra milk around the edge, then add the topping of your choice and serve immediately.

Topping suggestions:
1. Blueberries with sugar.
2. Nuts and seeds with golden syrup.
3. Bananas and maple syrup.
4. Strawberries and honey.

This breakfast costs €6.37 which is alot but it includes strawberries and honey. Basic porride and milk costs €1.95 and should last you a few mornings at least!

Couscous with tomatoes and chicken...heres one I made earlier...

...Ok so what I made didn't look quite that professional, but what I did cook wasn't very photogenic so I decided this photo was alot easier on the eye!
Just because you may not have heard of couscous, it dosn't give you the excuse to not try this meal. Once you get used to it, its just as cheap and as easy as pasta and with the right ingredients it can taste great too.

Ingredients and prices:

1 chicken fillet. T Market Value Chicken Breast Fillets small, 297g. €2.85.
1 loose tomato. Tesco class 1, €0.22.
Boxed cous cous. Erin Vegetable and mixed herb cous cous, 110g. €1.59.


Method: (easier than you'd expect!)

Cook couscous according to package directions. Chop the chicken fillet into small pieces and fry on a heated pan with a drop of oil. Chop the tomato into small pieces. Once the chicken in cooked through (no pink showing) add chopped tomato and chicken to cous cous. Serve immediately.

Cous cous can be a good alternative to pasta once you learn what ingredients mix well with it. (brocolli maybe?!) This meal cost €4.66.

Roast chicken

A roast is definitely not a typical student meal. The perception of a roast is a good Sunday meal with your family that someone spends about 3-4 hours slaving over in the kitchen, but actually trying to make my own at home proved that perception wrong.
Peeling vegetables and potatoes is defnitely the downside to a roast but once the preparation is out of the way apart from checking up on your chicken/lamb/beef roast from time to time the meal cooks itself!

Ingredients and prices:

Chicken. Tesco Finest Free Range Whole Chicken 1700g. €6.99
Potatoes. Rooster potatoes loose. €1.89 per kg.
Parsnips. Loose class 1. €0.37.
Brocolli. Market Value broccoli. €0.75.
Stock cube. La Romanella chicken stock cube 120g. €0.90.
Flour.Odlums Cream Flour 1 kg. €1.29.
Butter. Tesco, Butter Me Up 500g. €0.85.

Method:

Begin by peeling all vegetables and potatoes you will use for the meal.
Roast: Boil parsnips for ten minutes, dry with a tea towel and place on a baking tray with the chicken and potatoes. Baste (sprinkle) with a little oil and salt. Re-basted every 20-25 minutes if necessary. Cook for 50+ minutes. Make sure no part of the chicken is pink when eating!
Gravy: Place a small ammount of butter (less than a tablespoon) in a hot pan, add 1.5 tablespoons of flour, the stock cube, a splash of water and stir until you make a light paste. Add more water (approx. half a cupful) and continue stirring until the paste has entirely disappeared.
Brocolli: Cut the brocolli into small florets and place in a bowl with 2 tablespoons of water. Cover in clingfilm. Pierce clingfilm with holes using a fork and microwave for 3.5 minutes at full heat.


Ok i lied...this meal is more expensive and takes alot more time than the rest of the student recipes I have posted. In this meal I could have cut more cornors, such as it wasn't important that I made my own gravy but I felt if I was going to the trouble of cooking a roast I may aswell make the effort with everything that goes with it!

If you take my advice and do decide to make your own gravy, you can add more flavour to it by adding the cooking juices from the meat and potatoes...or a little wed wine if you have any.

This meal costs €13.04, the large price I blame on the chicken itself! But realistically this is not the sort of meal I would cook for myself and hope it would last for the next few days. What I recommend is to share the price with three of four friends for a night in...you can thank me later!

sweet-corn and cheese pasta?!

Although the name might put you off this really is a good, cheap meal so I reccommend reading on! I can't beileve this is the first pasta recipe I'm adding to the site because for my first year in college it was the one meal I knew I could make and afford every week!
But what I never did was get creative with what I put with the pasta and its the extras that make a better meal. Meat, like bacon and chicken always help to make a more tasty dinner but its how creative you can be when you have literally nothing left in the cupboard thats most important!
I found this recipe on a website and unusually I happened to have the random ingredients listed to make the pasta. Although it dosn't sound like the most appetising meal I'm been convinced by the cheap recipe that it's good enough for students!

Ingredients and prices:

1 serving of dried pasta. Tesco Farfalle Pasts Bows 500g. €0.99.
1 tin of sweetcorn. Tesco value sweetcorn, 325g. €0.57.
3 slices of cheddar cheese. Tesco value Mild Cheddar slices (10) 240g. €1.57.
3 sachets of your preferred cup soup. Oaktree estate chicken and vegetable Cup of Soup, 84g. €0.69 (*3)
Water.


Method:

Place the pasta and the cup soup mix in a microwavable bowl and add about three cups of water.
Microwave for 15 to 20 minutes stirring occasionally. Once its done add the cheese quickly and stir in well. Add the sweet-corn. Wait 2-3 minutes for the dish to cool.

This pasta meal costs saprox. €5.20 and I really reccommend it, it's worth it because it tastes alot better than it sounds and like most pasta dishes you can really vary the ingredients.

5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake

This recipe should be on all student handbooks when they enter college. It takes literally 5 minutes from start to finish, its cheap and its actual chocolate cake!
The recipe can be found easily by googling it but I've changed it slightly, from the original recipe by only using one teaspoon of oil rather than the 3 most recipes list. If you find this leaves your cake too dry you can always add a little more next time or just have some icecream on the side instead!

For the cocoa flavour it's not neccessary to buy a whole jar of cocoa, for a cheaper price to begin with purchase only the small sachets used for a cup or two of cocoa, and then depending on whether you like the recipe or not you can purchase a larger jar.

Ingredients and prices:

4 tablespoons of flour. Odlums Cream Flour 1 kg. €1.29.
4 tablespoons of sugar. Tesco Caster Sugar 500g. €0.69.
2 tablespoons cocoa. Options instant Belgian chocolate sachet 11g. €0.99.
1 egg. Tesco eggs, pck of 6. €0.99.
3 tablespoons of milk. Avonmore fresh milk, 330ml. €0.52.
1 tablespoon oil. Tesco Pure Sunflower oil, 1 litre. €1.35
1 mug!

Method:

Mix the flour, sugar and cocoa. then stir in one egg.
Next pour in the milk and oil and mix it well.
Put mug into the microwave for three minutes on maximum power. Once the time is up wait until the contents of the mug have stopped rising to take out it out of the microwave. Tip the contents of the mug onto a plate and enjoy! Feel free to add ice cream, fruit or any sauce.

The cake costs €5.83 but ingredients such as the flour and oil will last a long time even if unused.
Enjoy your 5 minute mug cake!

Chicken and Brocolli Bake

This is the sort of recipe that, if I hadn't ended up making it myself, I would never have recommended on a student cooking site. I think it was the cooking time of approx. 45 minutes and the preparation time that put me off because lets face it, who's bothered to spend that ammount of time waiting on a meal? But when a friend suggested we cook it I thought we may aswell and in the end it did work out! Although it's slightly more expensive than my other meals it feeds 8 and has definitely worked out the best of my meals so far.

Preparation:
The meal is easier to make if you buy ordinary breadcrumbs. However it only takes 2 slices of bread to make enough breadcrumbs for the entire meal so it makes sense to purchase a small loaf and use the left over bread for what ever you like.

Generally with this meal, a white sauce is added but interestingly Erin soup works out cheaper and nicer. I used mushroom but feel free to use any other flavour.

Ingredients and prices:

6 chicken fillets (2 pck of 3) €6.00 value offer, Dunnes Stores.
Tesco market value broccoli. €0.75c.
Erin's mushroom soup. €1.29. (3 cans needed)
Half loaf of bread €1.88. Any brand.

Place 2 slices of bread into a blender and blend until a light crumby texture is reached. Set aside until later.
Cut each fillet into approx. 6 little pieces and fry in a large pan with oil until cooked through. Keep white in colour but make sure no redness can be seen.
When ready chop the entire head of broccoli into small pieces, and cook al dente (cooked enought to be firm but not soft).
Once the chicken and broccoli are ready place both into a large serving dish, and stir in each can of soup.
Sprinkle the breadcrumbs over the entire dish until the soup, chicken and broccoli are entirely covered.
Place dish into a preheated oven (approx. 200 degrees) for 45 minutes.

The meal costs €9.92 and feeds eight people. But since it does have a more adulty feel to it than the rest of my recipes, I promise I'll do a great student dessert next time.

Fried rice!

Another quick and easy meal I've found is fried rice. It's great for students because apart from the basics ingredients you can pick and choose whatever veg you want to put in...usually depending on whatever you have sitting at the bottom of your fridge!
The basics are: rice, soya sauce and chicken stock cubes...which together come to a grand total of €4.08. It might seem like a lot but if you buy the ingredients I've found they should last you up to ten meals!

On top of that it's just up to you to add whatever vegetables you want...so far I've tried onions, garlic, frozen peas, fresh carrots, broccoli and green beans, which all fry in well with the rice.

For a healthier option, although more expensive, feel free to add in chicken or beef. The easiest way to do so is buy chicken breasts and chop them up into bite size pieces. Just make sure to fry them for about 6 minutes longer as they won't cook as quick as the vegetables will!

Ingredients and prices:

Euroshopper Basmati Rice Loose 1kg. €1.89. Superquinn.
La Romanella chicken stock cube 120g. €0.90. Tesco...same as last weeks.
Amoy reduced salt soy sauce 150ml. €1.29. Tesco.
VEGETABLES:
Market Value carrots. €0.99.
Green Isle Petit Pois 450g. €1.59...same as last weeks.
Market Value broccoli. €0.75.
Market Value Garlic, 3 pack. €0.69.
Tesco Whole green beans 400g. €0.69.
Onions in a net 1kg. €1.00. Superquinn.
#all market value products are Tesco products.

METHOD:

1. Pour one cupful of rice into pan of boiling water. Leave for 12-15 minutes.
2. Mash chicken stock cube with 1 large teaspoon of boiling water in a cup, Once
mashed add 1 teaspoon of soya sauce.
4. Start adding prepared veg to hot frying pan. Begin with the onions or garlic and
add as many as you like. Fry until golden brown.
5. Sieve rice and add to frying pan. Add cup (no.2) to pan and stir well until
entirely mixed.

Including the preparation, the entire meal takes 20-25 minutes and costs (with all ingredients listed €9.79...however I've listed much more veg than this meal needs so its just up to you to pick and choose which you prefer!

Being a student is hard and living on your own for the first time isn’t as easy as it sounds. One thing you shouldn’t be worrying about is whether you’ll be able to afford your next meal. That’s why I’ve been looking into coming up with some new cheap recipes of my own to follow each week. I suppose I can’t take the credit for coming up with the meals, what I’m actually doing is taking recipes from ordinary cooking websites and adjusting them to make them student budget friendly. I’m just sick of finding a nice recipe that sounds cheap enough but soon realising its full of ingredients I don’t have or if I did choose to buy, I’d only use once. This blog should help you realise a few adjustments to a recipe can really help with your student budget and take at least some of the stress away but still leave you with a great meal!

This recipe, for Spring Chicken in a Pot, I found on the BBC’s Good Food website: http//www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/10052/spring-chicken-in-a-pot. A great comfort meal I think and when you realise how cheap and easy it is to make it tastes a lot better! These are the ingredients listed:
1 tbsp olive oilolive
1 onion, chopped
500g boneless, skinless chicken thighs
300g small new potatoes
425ml low-salt vegetable stock (such as Kallo low-salt vegetable stock cubes)
350g broccoli, cut into small florets
350g spring greens, shredded
140g petits pois
bunch spring onion, sliced
2 tbsp pesto

To make this less complicated, leave out the spring greens, the onions will give the meal enough flavour, and with the peas and broccoli that’s still plenty of veg for a meal! Some recipes list brands, such as here Kallo stock cubes are listed but it’s really not necessary to shop by brand. Here are the cheapest prices I could find:

1 loose brown onion.19c.
Spring onion bunch .79c.
Skinless chicken thighs can be found in Dunnes stores for €2.99, usually I’d recommend freezing half but in this case I’d cook all 8 and use for dinner two nights in a row…saves you cooking everything twice!
Loose broccoli. .95c
Country Crest Baby Potatoes. .89c.
La Romanella Vegetable Stock Cube 120g. .90c
Green Isle Petit Pois 450g. 1.59. (or 2 packs for 2.50)
Apart from the chicken all other ingredients are from Tesco, where I found its 25% cheaper on most groceries if you shop online.

The method is similar:

1.Heat the oil in a large, heavy pan. Add the onion, gently fry for 5 mins until softened, add the chicken, and then fry until lightly coloured. Add the potatoes, stock and plenty of freshly ground black pepper, then bring to the boil. Cover, and then simmer for 30 mins until the potatoes are tender and the chicken is cooked. This part of the meal can be frozen at this point.
2. Add the broccoli, petit pois and spring onions, stir well, then return to the boil. Cover, then cook for 5 mins more, stir in the pesto and heat through.

It takes about 45 minutes once u start and costs €8.30 which is great considering it serves 4, you will still have a few of the ingredients left over (petit pois, baby potatoes and vegetable stock) and if uneaten the meal will last in the fridge for about 2 – 3 days.

Enjoy!