Cheap Eats #9

I cooked a LOT last week... so much so that I don't plan to do any this week as we will be eating out of the freezer, which is great as it means that I can get on with clearing a few other things off my plate...

I had a bit of a mad soup making day. Seriously, it was insane. I made four soups in total - 8 portions of each - and a sausage casserole. I think it was worth it though as my bottom freezer drawer is now full to the brim with lunch options.

I used 500 Soups recipes for the potato and garlic and the garden pea soup and they both turned out well. I also made a leek and potato soup by cooking a load of leeks, adding stock and potatoes, cooking until the potato was soft and blitzing before seasoning to taste.

I then made a veggie soup using up all the leftover veg I had in my fridge by frying off 2 carrots, 1 onion, 1 leek, 1.5 chillies and about 2 stalks of celery before adding 2 cauliflower stalks and 2 broccoli stalks which had previously been frozen and were a little soft on defrosting. Next in went a LOT of veggie stock, 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp coriander and 100g rinsed split peas. I left it to cook for about 40 minutes, then blitzed until smooth. The end result was ok. It wasn't amazing - it did need more chilli, but given it came out at about 12p a serving, I'm not going to complain!

Next up was my sausage casserole. This was incredibly easy as I just threw everything, raw, into the slow cooker (bar the beans) and left it to cook on low all day before adding the beans for the last half hour or so. These are the ingredients I used - 6 small sausages, 4 rashes of bacon, 3 peppers (red, orange and green), 1 aubergine, 3 small onions, 2 carrots, 2 sticks of celery, 2 tin tomatoes, Thyme, Tomato Puree, Garlic, 1.5 litres stock and 2 tins of kidney beans.

This is easily one of my favourite meals and I love how it's even easier to make now that I have the slow cooker. Give it a go one day - it's great with mash, but there's enough in there to mean that you can serve it on its own.