What's cooking?

I like to cook in bulk and often use "leftovers" in our meals. One thing I do very often is to buy a whole chicken, roast it and then use this as the basis for some of our meals.

Yesterday we had roast chicken with veggies and today the leftover roast chicken is going to be yummy enchiladas. This couldn't be easier to make, although I am cheating slightly today as I am using a jar of enchilada sauce I bought in Home Bargains for 79p ;)

So, to make easy yummy enchiladas you need:

Leftover roast chicken
Veggies (whatever you have lurking in the fridge, I'm using peppers, onions and mushrooms)
Tortillas
Tin of tomatoes
Tin of chilli beans (the ones I'm using are from Sainsbury's, but Heinz 5 beans also work well, or just ordinary beans!)
Paprika
Chilli powder
Cheese

Chop up the veggies and gently fry them. Add the tomatoes, paprika and chilli powder and simmer until the sauce thickens. You can add a bit of tomato puree to thicken if you like.

Place some of the enchilada mixture into a tortilla, roll up and place in an oven proof dish. Do this for each tortilla. Pour any leftover sauce on top of the tortillas. Grate some cheese over the top and pop in the oven on 190 for about 20 minutes or until the cheese melts.

You'll notice that I've been quite vague about ingredients and quantities etc? That's because this dish is meant to use up what you have in and also be really easy to make! The beauty of it is that you can easily adapt it :) Sometimes I use leftover chilli instead, so they are more like burritos :) We've also used left over pulled pork to make a similar dish.

We normally have this with salad and dips (salsa and sour cream), but tonight we are having wedges with it as I don't have any salad in and am not driving to the shop (8 mile round trip) just to buy salad!

Hello again :)

I have shamefully neglected this blog, but have decided to restart it to keep us focused on our goal of saving money and living a frugal lifestyle.

There have been some big changes around here, the biggest of which is that we have a new member of the family! Baby H arrived just before Easter! He has settled in beautifully and Mr Mischief is delighted with his new baby brother :)

I was quite ill during the pregnancy with hyperemesis so it was quite a difficult time in our household. Thankfully since baby has been born, there has been no sign of the sickness and I am feeling so much better :)

In other news, I have also started a small business making handmade goodies for the home and for children. It is still in it's infancy and I have taken some time off to have my baby, but I have lots of plans for the future regarding this and feel excited about it :)

With the pregnancy and the new baby, we have been less frugal than usual, but this is going to change. We are going to get back into the routine of meal planning, growing veggies, cloth nappies etc with the aim of saving money for Christmas and also with the longer term aim of moving to the seaside :) This blog will be a place for me to document our frugal adventures and also fun activities for the kids that hopefully don't cost much money!