Love lasagna?

I'm off for a few days R & R with some friends-leaving His Lordship to fend for himself. Ergo, rather than let the poor man set the kitchen on fire starve, I've put together some meals for him to feed himself with until I return. :)

1kg of beef mince for $6 can be used in a variety of ways-but as His Lordship LOVES lasagne whipping one up was a no-brainer (using 750g of the mince). I also used the other 250g to make up some small meatballs to serve in a rich tomato sauce over pasta.

How do you stretch your mince?

Cooking is not the tidiest of occupations.....

The stovetop where the béchamel sauce and meatballs in rich tomato sauce are doing their thing....

Lasagna ready to go in the oven-I add enough cheese to the béchamel that I don't need more over the top.

Thursday thrift....

Entertaining essentials.

I was thinking back to the early days for His Lordship and I and how little money we had. Our first mortgage, a wedding to pay for, two children with a third soon to follow!

We rarely went out together-we just couldn't afford the cost! With no family nearby we couldn't even afford to pay the teenager down the road to babysit-in fact, we would book my mum a year in advance to stay for a weekend in Decmber so that we could both attend a work Christmas Party!

Sounds like a dull life doesn't it? Nothing could be further from the truth! In those days we had far more dinner parties than we do now!


Friends seemed to love coming to our house for a 3 course meal-all cooked from scratch with very cheap ingredients!

Our street at the time resounded most Saturday nights with lots of laughter as we took turns gathering at one home or another-sometimes it was bring a dish, at others someone or another would host us all

In the years since then our income improved-and at times we became "busy" with the number of social outings to attend. Our children are no longer at home, so babysitting isn't an issue!

Now however, I find playing host at home much more satisfying. Once again I am enjoying cooking those meals for appreciative friends & family-these days the young children playing in the house are our grandchildren and their friends and I couldn't be happier!

It doesn't take much to pull together a meal for people and in this colder weather something cooked in the slowcooker is always a hit!

Pasta, roasts, curries-all relatively cheap to provide and please most! Homemade Pizzas are usually met with enthusiasm by younger generations-especially if they are allowed to assemble them!

What do you do to entertain on a budget?

Thursday thrift....

I haven't "cooked" a meal since Saturday.

 How does that relate to Thursday thrift? Well...on Saturday night we had 12 people here for dinner. I cooked a lasagne, french onion slowcooker chicken casserole, homemade apple pie, bread & butter pudding and tossed a large salad.

When I cooked the bolognaise sauce for the lasagna I made extra-which has since been sighted at our dining table as Chilli Beef and Fettucini Bolognaise. The chicken casserole was also resurrected-as Chicken Crumble Pie ( sourdough crumbs and cheese sprinkled over the top and baked until crispy) and Chicken Risotto.

Leftover lasagna also went down a treat!

I had spent $8-96 on the beef mince ( 2 kilos ) and $9-20 for the kilo of chicken thigh fillets-so for a grand total of $18-16 in the meat budget I have served 22 meals! Less than $1/serve for the meat component!

The other thrifty part of the whole process is the fact that other than boiling some water for the fettucini ( the risotto used up leftover rice from Saturday night) all the cooking was done in a couple of hours!