I have decided to return back to work. Ok, it's only 2 days a week but it's a start. Anyways, I work with preschoolers, so I'm hoping to do more kid focussed posts because of it. We have decided to buckle down and save hard for the next year or so, so we can buy a house. I have always been a good budgetter, but I guess over the past few years we haven't needed to be as tight as we once did, so will be tightening up where we can to save faster.
One thing I have gotten a bit slack at, is making sure we use up left overs. And not just for lunches, but ideally make it stretch to another dinner. So keeping that in mind, when thinking of something for dinner the other night, I spied the left over bolognaise from the night before. There was certainly not enough left over to have spag bol again, or another meal like that. Normally I chuck it in toasted sammies for lunches, but I really wanted to use it for a dinner.
Then I remembered something I used to do with the left over bolognaise. Pizza! That's right, Bolognaise Pizza. The kids love it, it's reasonably healthy (minus the fact its covered and cheese and most of our family shouldn't actually eat cheese) and it's super cheap.
Just make up a base (my base recipe here, for a basic scone type base), smear over the bolognaise, and top with grated cheese and bake for 20-30mins.
Ok, not the most appetising looking pizza around haha!
And when we make spag bol here, we fill it up with lots of vegies. So that was 500g of prime mince, feeding 5 of us, for 2 nights. So, like, $2.50/night (averaged) for the meat portion of our meal... 50c ea. Can't get much cheaper than that!
What do we put in our spag bol? Well, onion of course, garlic, grated carrot, grated courgette, finely chopped spinach or silverbeet, mushrooms and if they are cheap enough then also capsicum too (though they haven't been cheap for quite some time I have noticed, so haven't been buying them often). Then of course the sauce is full of tomatoes. Lots of good nutrients in there!
Another thing I do with leftover spag bol is make bread cases, fill it with the bolognaise mix and top with mashed potato (or any mashed vegie). Then serve with a side salad or steamed vegies or whatever floats your boat. Harder for the littlies to eat though, so I prefer the pizza.
The pizza sounds good. Bread cases is an awesome idea, I need to put more thought into my leftovers! x
ReplyDeleteyeah, too often lately our left overs have been biffed out. Pretty much I have to use them the following day or they don't get used at all, so will try to share other ideas as I do them to help others out
Deleteoh and everyone - I'm always willing to hear your ideas for what to do with leftovers! Pop over to my facebook page http://www.facebook.com/#!/tastytidbitsandrandomrambles and send me suggestions there :)