Recipes From A Single Mum

I'm a single mother with two children, both of whom are teenagers now. Over the years trying to provide for my family has often been a struggle, and feeding my family is no exception.

The recipes here have helped my family and I in budget and pleased the taste buds! Not always the most health concious but most recipes can be modified to suit your lifestyle.

This hub is new and will continue to be a work in progress, so feel free to come back often.

If you have a great recipe to share you can email them to me using the email link to right.I will post them here giving you full credit. If you want to share your recipe adn don't have a hub page you can join here.

Bacon N Cream Pasta

500 grams of bacon (tip: any type of meat can be used, left over's, sausage etc)

1 kg pot of sour cream (lite, you can use 2 pots if you like a more creamy sauce, I sometimes do)

1 400 gram can of chopped tomatoes

500 gram pkt of pasta

1 very small onion (optional)

Method

Peel the small onion and cut up quite small, fry in a pan till transparent. Cut the bacon up, any size is fine, it's your preference here. Add the bacon to the onion in the pan and cook. Once bacon is cooked add the sour cream, cook through till you have a nice creamy texture. At this stage you can add the can of tomatoes, cook through till ingrediants are well blended. Once all this cooked add to the cooked hot pasta. And you're done.

Tip: Before I start cooking the bacon I get a pot of water going for the pasta and cook both simultaneously. This recipe is very, very quick, the kids love it (and so do I). This recipe also makes more than enough for us for one night, I usually cook this one on Friday for which there is plenty left over for breakfast and lunch.

Budget

This meal cost comes in around $6 NZD (New Zealand Dollars), translated in USD, thats around $4.50.

Tomatoe Vegetable Soup

2x 400 gram cans of tomatoes

Seasonal vegetables of your choice.

Method

This recipe is one of those "chuck everything in" the method is longer than the recipe itself, but what I write here works best for me, again you can adapt according to your taste.

Empty the two cans of tomatoes into a large glass microwave proof dish. Cut all your vegetables up into rather small pieces so they cook evenly. Vegetables that work best for me are, carrot (grated) broccoli, cauliflower and onion. Mix these althogether and add a sea salt. Cook in the microwave until done, usually takes around 10 minutes. Very quick, easy and simple and I love the taste, for some people its a bit plain but a good way to get some vege groups into your diet. Can also be cooked on a stove top.

Tip: If you grow your own vegetables this meal can almost be free, you don't have to use canned tomatoes, I often use tomatoes grown in my backyard. If you use them this way I boil up some water dunk the tomatoes in then peel them, if you dont mind the tomatoes skins being in the soup then no need for that last step.

Budget

Free to around $4. NZD

Baby Spinach Salad

1 bag of baby spinach leaves

1 carrot

1 can of corn or small bag of frozen corn

1/4 of a Cauliflower

1 Broccoli

3 cloves of garlic

1/4 cup of cider vinegar

1/4 cup of coconut milk or cream

Method

Prepare the baby spinach leaves by washing and leaving them to drain. Finely chop your garlic, put aside. Mix together the vinegar and coconut milk add the chopped garlic. In a glass proof dish layout your vegetables, pour the vinegar mixture over the vegetables and cook. Once thats all done mix the vegetable and vinegar cooked vege's over the spinach.

Tip: there are many varations of this recipe. You can make a salsa style sauce and mix in left over roast beef then combine with spinach leaves.

Budget

Depending on what you use this recipe comes in at around $2.50 - $5.50 NZD

This isn't so much a recipe, but I'll explain how I go about making this one up.

Make one scone dough mix. I use the recipe from Edmonds Cook Book (iconic New Zealand cook book, every NZ house should have one, here's a wiki) . from here you can choose to make one large pizza, or a few smaller ones.

Once the scone mixture is ready roll out so it's quite thin, brush over with olive oil, add a tomatoe base, I love to use Greggs Hickory Sause. Empty the can of spaghetti and spread all over your pizza base. from here you can put anything on your pizza you like, mushrooms, ham, bacon, onion, sausage, olives and cheese, just about anything can go on this.

Budget

This one comes in at around $3. $6. NZD