Frugal meal - homemade pizza

About a year ago we decided to have a treat and rang Domino's Pizza one Friday night. The treat turned sour after we had ordered a basic pizza and we discovered one pizza was going to set us back £17 without any extras like garlic breads or drinks. That put the kibosh on that. I can make two medium-sized vegetarian pizzas for about a £1. A luxury pizza with all the trimmings I can do for about £2.50 - £3.00. No brainer. No Dominos. Order cancelled.

Basic dough recipe (dough mixed in bread maker for convenience)

250ml water
2tbsp of olive oil
1lb of strong bread flour
1.5tsp salt
2tsp sugar
A 7g packet of fast-acting dried yeast (If I want thin and crispy I leave it out)

Sling all the ingredients in the bread-maker in the order stipulated by the manufacturer and run it through one dough cycle. If doing a thin and crispy, leave out the yeast and just let the machine mix and beat the dough around for a while until it looks smooth and elastic.

Now I know it sounds very lazy to let a machine do something I could do by hand but I'm on the go and working full-time. When I'm retired I'll mix by hand and enjoy the process. Right now, I just want dough while I'm getting in the washing, writing press releases, talking to clients, mowing the lawn and having sex with my husband. In fact scrub all of the former and just stick with the later. I'd rather use the time to have sex with my husband than mix dough by hand. Call me strange.

Split the dough into two and roll out thin. Now I have a silicone baking tray that I use to roll the dough onto and, once topped, put straight into the oven. Saves vital minutes and a lot of swearing later. Why? Two reasons; 1) because rolling takes time and the elastic nature of the dough means it doesn't want to stay put where you left it. It will keep contracting itself back, but persistence is the key. That and grasping the edges and pulling them out gently. Once you've got it there, you don't want to have to peel the dough off the surface of something and try and move it somewhere else 2) if you use a baking tray you have to add extra oil to make sure the pizza doesn't stick. I try and use as little oil as I can get away with to take pity on the old arteries.

Right topping: I currently use chilli sauce on the base of our pizzas to give them some real zing, sprinkle over some grated cheese and then top with chopped or sliced onions, peppers and mushrooms. If I have it in the fridge, I might add some bacon and chicken (roast leftovers are good for this) or if I really want to push the boat out, I buy pepperoni, ham and some minced beef (which I season and fry) and add that. Then I top with more cheese. That's my luxury "hey honey it's our wedding anniversary" pizza. ROFL.
(As Dave Ramsey says, you have to live like no-one else, so one day you can live like no-one else.)

Then I stick each pizza in a hot oven at about Gas Mark 7 until the cheese is browned. If you use a silicone tray, slide the pizza off before cutting. Food resistant they may be; resistant to sharp cutting implements they are not. Ask me how I know.

Frugal meal - liver and onions with red wine

I never used to be a huge fan of liver until I discovered this baked recipe. My previous attempts using a pan on the stove top were ok, but resulted in liver that was a tiny bit too hard and stodgy at the end, and had a thick feel in your mouth. Once I started baking it and adding red wine, the liver became beautifully soft with no thick taste. In the past I've added some bacon if I've had it, but unfortunately at the moments tasty little extras like this are outside my budget unless I have some money left over at the end of the month.

Recipe for 4 (although we eat the lot!)

Two medium onions (around 7.5p)
One pack of lamb's liver (92p for 400g)
A generous glug of red wine (I usually use 'cooking' wine, that is wine that is a bit too vinegary to enjoy on its own. Friends and family are only too willing to let me have theirs so for me this bit is always free!)
A palmful of fresh thyme (free from garden)
Plain flour for coating the liver (so little it's less than a penny)
Salt and pepper

Total cost: 99.5p

Slice the onions and lay on the bottom of a lightly greased baking dish. Coat the liver in the flour which has been seasoned with salt and pepper. Lay this in the dish. splash over the red wine and add the fresh thyme. Take a spoon and mix it all together, then shake the dish until the ingredients settle into a layer. Cook for around 30 minutes in the oven at Gas mark 6, covering with foil if necessary if it looks like it's cooking too quickly.

Now, tonight for a change I decided to try and cook this in the slow cooker and make today one of my No Gas days. I've also added some extra veggies - some mushrooms and courgette - that are getting a bit old in the bottom of fridge.

After an hour on high, I can honestly say this is a no-go. It has cooked too quickly - far quicker than the veggies - and has that thick taste that I'm not keen on. I've had to rescue it by adding more water, half a stock cube and some cornflour to make a casserole served with boiled potatoes. It was ok, but I wasn't overly keen. I won't be cooking liver like this again!

Frugal meal - tuna arrabiata

Tonight's meal I stumbled upon by accident when I made pasta and forgot to buy the jar of arrabiata sauce. Sometimes when I'm busy that happens, so I threw together anything I could to make a passable red chilli pasta sauce that I could add tuna to. We liked it so much it stuck and now I no longer buy jars of sauce. This is also much cheaper - I would buy a supermarket branded 350g jar for 88p. This I get 400g+ for just 44p.

Basic red sauce recipe for 2
One onion (from a pack of about 20 for 75p; 3.75p)
Smidge of garlic (1p - usually from an ancient tube I have in the fridge. It's so old it has pricing in farthings ;-))
400g tin of chopped tomatoes (31p)
2 scant tsps of sugar (1p)
Good glug of chilli sauce (5.8p - bottle cost 58p and I can get 10 good glugs)
Squirt of tomato paste (1.2p - 36p for the tube and I get about 30 squirts)
Cost of sauce: 44p

Small tin of tuna in brine (54p)
12 oz pasta twirls (18p - £1 per 1kg. Hubby is a very thin manual worker so eats A LOT of food every day)

Total cost for two: £1.16

Fry garlic for few seconds and add onion. Fry gently until transparent Add the chopped tomatoes, sugar, chilli sauce, tomato paste bring cover and simmer for 15 minutes. In the meantime cook the pasta, drain and set aside. Drain the tuna and add to the pan, stirring gently. Heat through. Serve.