“You Get What You Get, Don’t You Mummy”

Food. Home food. Food that we eat every day. With family, friends, kids friends. At tea time, lunch, evenings, weekdays, weekends. Can seem endless. Whether you are a keen cook, or a reheat from chilled queen, we all need inspiration at times. I (worryingly), love the challenge of producing meals every day. One day will normally affect what we have the next. Hopefully I can show you what I mean.

I wholeheartedly and emphatically believe in the title of this book...and so do my kids. They don’t always like it...but they don’t get a choice. I do however promise them, that the food they eat is always good. If I taste it and agree its not good, then I’ll agree with them & say “yes you’re right, it tastes horrid, don’t bother”. I will always check their food and never give them something that is horrid.

The idea is this book will give you ideas, not recipes. Things you can try and adapt to your own tastes.

Sausage and pea pasta

This is without doubt the kids favourite tea. Whenever the question “what’s for tea?” is uttered, this is without fail greeted with glee. Phew, and its easy, cheap, uses store cupboard ingredients, nutritious, and is delicious.

This feeds my 2 kids (5 & 7).

Ingredients

2-3 good quality butchers sausages

1 garlic clove (peeled & whole)

Olive oil

Paprika ¼ tsp (smoked preferably)

Dijon mustard ½ tsp

100g pasta

A handful of frozen peas

Crème fraiche/double cream/milk

Parmesan cheese (½ tbsp)

Normally I have sausages in the freezer in bags of 2 or 3. This way I can have tea done quickly.

Heat a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a large frying or sauté pan, and throw the whole garlic clove in. Cook the garlic gently in the oil until very lightly golden. Stop before it turns dark. We only want to flavour the oil, and don’t want a burnt acrid taste.

Next, make a slit in each of the sausage skins. Remove the sausage skin and pinch off small meatball pieces of sausage meat. You don’t need to be too accurate with this, so don’t worry. The idea is to brown these pieces. As long as you have good quality sausages they won’t break up, but try not to stir too often. Let the pieces brown, then turn.

When the pieces are browned, add about a quarter of a teaspoon of paprika and stir.

Next you need something to make a bit of a sauce, whether that is milk, crème fraiche or cream. This will also deglaze the pan and all the lovely sticky bits with the sausages will blend into the sauce. Add the mustard & frozen peas and let this bubble gently while you cook the pasta.

If in the meantime the sauce gets dry, add a little water or milk, to loosen the sauce. The water from the cooking pasta is good here.

Add a good grating of parmesan and taste for seasoning. Remove the garlic clove.

Drain the pasta and add to the sauce. A good tip here, learnt from Mr Oliver is to reserve a small amount of liquid whilst draining the pasta. This can be added to the pasta if required to loosen it slightly. Stir to combine everything. serve to hungry kids. Mine normally ask for seconds and thirds and often end up eating out of the pan!