Grandma's old-fashioned style curried sausages

This dish is total comfort food - fairly old-fashioned and perhaps a bit daggy, but my kids almost lick the plates clean they love it that much! It is also a meal that can make using items from the pantry/freezer and is a cheap way to feed a crowd.

Grandma's Old-Fashioned Curried Sausages

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

8-10 sausages

1 tsp olive oil

2 x brown onions, peeled & sliced

1 tbs Keens curry

2 tbs plain flour

1-2 carrots, peeled & chopped

2 cups chicken stock (made with stock cube or powdered stock to save $$$)

2 tbs tomato sauce (ketchup)

1 tsp sugar

1-2 cups frozen mixed vegetables

1/4 cup milk

Plus mashed potato or rice to serve (you could serve it with extra vegetables if desired)

Method:

1. Brown sausages in a large frying pan, remove and chop into bite-sized pieces.

2. Add olive oil to pan (if needed) and fry onion for 2 minutes.

3. Add curry powder to pan and cook for 1 minute. 

4. Add flour and stir, add sausages, carrots, stock, tomato sauce and sugar. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. 

5. Add frozen vegetables and milk, simmer for 5 minutes.

6. Serve with mashed potato or rice. 

Saving money: Menu Planning

Menu planning is something we have been doing for years, especially once I realised that without a weekly plan we not only spent a lot more money by constantly going food shopping, we also were less stressed.

I usually do my menu plan on a weekly basis, and base my grocery list on this. I firstly look at what we have in the fridge or freezer, and plan to use these first. For example, we had a BBQ over the weekend, and for some reason we have a few sticks of cabana left in the fridge, as well as some salami - I will use this for our "Bits and pieces pasta" dish (see recipe below). I also look at what our family is doing, for example if someone is not going to be home until later I would plan to cook something that is easy to reheat.

Our menu this week looks like this:

Monday - Meatless lasagne (I can't believe it's not meat lasagne) with salad
Tuesday - Bits and Pieces Pasta
Wednesday - Tuna Pasta bake
Thursday - Curried sausages, mashed potato & vegies
Friday - Crumbed chicken & homemade chips with garlic aoili
Sat - Takeaway
Sun - Easy dinner - most likely eggs on toast

Backup Dinner - Baked meatballs & spaghetti

Baking - Chocolate cake (will bake two of these as they go so quickly in our house)

My grocery bill was around $170 for the week (including a bottle of gin for a few G&Ts) :-)

Bits and Pieces Pasta

Ingredients:

Packet of pasta of your chosing (enough to feed your family)
Salami/cabana/chorizo sausage - chopped
1 x Onion chopped
Sundried tomatoes (we keep a large container in our fridge)
Olives
Garlic
Basil (from the garden)
Olive oil
Whatever else that you can find in the fridge - for example some leftover basil dip goes well, or some leftover roast pumpkin, mushrooms, any antipasto leftovers, fetta cheese....
Parmesan cheese to serve. .

Method:

All we do is fry up the meat and onion in a little olive oil (usually we use chorizo) until the fat renders and the meat is crispy, then add whatever you have to add to the dish. It can be as complex or as simple as you want. We buy olives and sundried tomatoes in bulk and keep them in the fridge so we always have a simple dinner ready to go.

Whilst frying the ingredients we cook the pasta. Then drain the pasta, but keep a cup of the pasta water for later.

Toss the drained pasta through the pan-fried ingredients, adding a little olive oil. If the pasta looks dry add some of the pasta water.

Add parmesan cheese to serve. It's not a precise recipe, as the recipe amounts will change according to how many you need to serve and what you have in the fridge.

Money Saving Tip: Some supermarket delis sell the salami ends at a greatly reduced price. As you are going to dice them up anyway they are perfect for this dish.

Recipe - Meatless Lasagne (AKA - I never thought my husband would eat lentils)

Last night, we had our traditional "meatless Monday" night. For health and budgetary reasons I try to put at least one meatless dish into our menu per week. It's not that hard - think spinach & ricotta lasagne, basic pasta dishes etc....

We have been eating this recipe for a few months - I have calculated that it costs about half the price to make compared to using mince, and it is in the oven in under 10 minutes. The white sauce is made in the microwave (I KNOW - how did I not know this could be done) and we serve it with a salad and perhaps some garlic bread if we have some. Due to the refried beans the recipe has a slight Mexican flavour - but it is still yummy - so much that we are tempted to serve it to friends to see if they realise that there is no meat in it! 

Note - when you make the lentil/bean mixture as per the recipe - it does look a little like dog food - but don't be worried (I was the first time I made it), as it will look different when cooked. 

Link to recipe: http://www.stayathomemum.com.au/recipes/i-cant-believe-its-not-mince-lasagne/

Let me know what you think!