Tuesday 12 November 2013

Low calorie and cheap tuna and tomato pasta

Like many in their early twenties I wonder how old I will get before I feel like I belong here in the adult world and I'm not just pretending. There are many things I don't fully understand and that terrify me about being a grown up and one of those things is 'money' and/or lack of it. I am now a totally self sufficient person - I left home five years ago but I always had a student loan/ financially secure ex as a safety net. Now it's just me, I earn the money that puts the food on my table and pays the rent for my own room. It's terrifying, but at the same time I kind of love it. Everything here is all mine and paid for with my own money and no one else's. The house I live in? I pay rent for it! The car I'm driving? I bought the driving lesson for it! The clothes I'm wearing? I bought them from Primark! I could go on.

Anyhow, my financial situation has changed quite a lot over the past month or two as I'm sure you can imagine and now I am really trying to cut back on everything. So I thought I would be "creative" and create a recipe that is not only healthy(ish) but cheap! I know that this could definitely be more healthy, I know it could be cheaper, but cut me some slack, I'm just trying to get into the routine of not every dinner being a ready meal and/or takeaway.

A little background info: All food bought from Sainsbury's today (12th Nov 2013). I was cooking two portions, one for myself to have today and one to have tomorrow. I then won't be eating at home for three nights so wanted to minimise food wastage.

Tuna and Tomato Pasta
312 calories, 7 points and £1.25 per portion.



Ingredients - for 2 portions

70g dry pasta (7 PP, 240 calories). = 4p! Based on the fact you can get 500g Sainsbury's pasta for 30p. Amazing.
4 mushrooms (0PP, approx 40 calories) = 27p, bought loose.
1 red onion (0PP, approx 40 calories) = 14p, bought loose.
1 pepper (0PP, approx 40 calories) = 80p, bought loose. It would have been cheaper per pepper to buy a pack of 3, but I knew I couldn't use the other 2 before they went off so didn't bother.
1 carton of chopped tomatoes (0PP, 74 calories) = 34p.
1 can of tuna in water (2PP, 82 calories) = £1.30.
40g of low fat cheese (4PP, 107 calories) = 32p.

TOTAL for 2 portions - 13PP, 623 calories, £2.49.
Total for 1 portion: 7PP, 312 calories, £1.25

Method
Well you can probably work this out but....

1) Put the pasta on to boil. In the meantime, chop your vegetables. BEFORE AND AFTER SHOT:




2. Heat some Frylight in a pan and then cook the vegetables for about 5 minutes.


3. Add your chopped tomatoes and cook for about 2 minutes.


4. Then add your tuna. NOTE: I am living with cats for the first time in my life. Heed my warning: if there are cats in the kitchen, there is no such thing as being too vigilant when opening a can of tuna.



5. Then add your cheese. This step is optional yet DELICIOUS.




6. Then mix up with your pasta.


7. Divide into two portions and serve! Yum yum.



This meal is pretty delicious if you like tuna and any meal for only just over 300 calories is pretty useful once you are on a diet. It is also actually pretty filling. You might feel that 35g pasta per portion is crazy small, but the veg doesn't make it feel like it's any less pasta than normal, really.

Perhaps more importantly this is two days' dinners for £2.50. If I ate this every day for a week imagine how much money I could save! (But I won't.) It didn't taste like it was cheap and it actually tasted much better than the ready meals I have been living off that are more expensive. From now on when I post recipes I will also calculate the costs.


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