Cheaper meals this week

 Sometimes life trips you up, but in a nice way.

Odd sentence!

What do I mean by that?

Well, some friends of ours who live a way away contacted us to say could they pop in.  It was going to be later in the day, so I invited them to stop for dinner.

We could have gone out for a meal with them, but the cheapest this would be for the two of us is £30-£40, and you then have the issue of talking about the bill...I'm afraid I'm a bit British about that and find it a bit embarrassing.  

So I decided to make a nice dinner for the four of us, and stepped off the budgeted eating plan.

Man Wonderful and myself would have been having a home-made stir-fry to use up the leftover veggies before our fresh veg box is delivered on a Thursday morning.  I didn't want to dish up a 'whatever.we.have.left stir-fry, so planned this instead:

I had all the ingredients except for cheese, and Man Wonderful decided to buy some small beers for him and the chap.

Dauphinoise Potatoes

Roasted vegetables

Sausages

Here is my recipe:

Dauphinoise Potatoes

Four jacket potatoes, peeled and sliced to about 5mm

Cream cheese pot - mine had herbs and garlic in, and this was perfect!

Slliced strong cheese - you can use parmesan, buut I didn't have any

1 tbsp flour

1 tbsp oil (I often use veg spread, but didn't have any)

Milk - I mixed half milk and half water in a jug

Put the potato slices on to boil.  They only need about 3-5 minutes.  They need to be cooked but still firm.  Drain.

Heat the oil slightly in a pan.  Mix in the flour and remove any lumps.  Add milky moisture while heating gently and whisking out any lumps. This can make over a pint of sauce. Turn off the heat and stir in the creamy cheese.

Spoon some sauce into a non-stick baking pan.  add some slices of potato and a little sliced cheese.  Repeat until the pan is full and top with the cheesy sauce.

Roast in the oven for approx 30 minutes.

Roasted Veggies

Peel any peelable veg and cut into medium sized pieces. (Carrots, butternut squash, onion etc.) 

Add in any choppable veg (peppers, sprouts, courgettes, mushrooms, tomatoes)

Pour over some oil

Pop in oven when you switch it on, then roast at the top of the oven for half an hour.  Test root veg to see if it's cooked.

This was not the cheapest meal, but used what we already had (except for the cheese) and was more like a posh meal.

Let me know what you cook for a posher meal.

FMxx