Throw it all together and this is what you get!

[Lovemybrood]

Money's tight in the brood household and the kids have turned into eating machines in the holidays. And I'm fed up of spending a fortune on food, so I'm deliberately emptying the cupboards before I buy anything else.

I didn't know what to do them so I raided the cupboard.

They ended up with

Peas, penne, meatballs, a bit of ketchup, sweetcorn, all mixed up with cheese on top and put under the grill.

They want it tomorrow

Does anyone have any variations.

That's a normal meal in our household!

Ooooh I love thrown together meals like this. Every now and then we have a right old mix up where I get all the bits and pieces out of the freezer, you know the nearly empty boxes - one fish finger, one chicken kiev etc. Cook the lot and serve buffet style. Lovely. Your mix up sounded lovely

Actually I love these meals too and they're all the more satisfying when you've emptied another packet lurking in the cupboard!

I often do: pasta sauce, frozen mixed veg, tinned tuna or leftover chicken, herbs/spices, onion and pasta or rice baked together with cheese on. It's just as good all heated together in a pan and served with cheese on though.

For lunch today, DS and I had rice cooked in chicken stock with coconut, peas, sweetcorn and the end of a tin of chickpeas. It was lovely. Well, DS spurned his but then he also spurned his pre-birthday cake so I think he's coming down with something

not sure if this counts as truly thrown together, but it was invented in desperation when I was intending to cook chile con carne.

I had a jar of tesco's hot chile sauce that had been lurking in the cupboard for a couple of years. It was quite a hot sauce so I added a tin of tomatoes. I then added some (rehydrated) soya that I had bought a few weeks before; again from Tesco, and very cheap compared to mince.

Then,I discovered I had no rice, so I made a pastry from vegetable suet, using the recipe for dumplings on the packet. Instead of making little dumplings I made one large round of the pastry, tipped the chile mixture into a casserole dish and covered with the pastry lid. Baked it for about 30 or 40 mins until golden brown.

It was delicious! Everyone loved it.

So to recap:

1 jar chili tesco chile sauce - this one seemed full of quite chunky veg. nice but hot)
1 tin toms.
3 handfuls of dried soya rehydrated (optional?)

mix together. put in casserole

suet.
make up pastry. Top casserole.

Bake medium oven till golden.

Unexpectedly hearty and tasty