Oatmeal Porridge

You don’t get cheaper than this and if you’re really desperate for a good, cheap meal – this one’s for you. Rolled oats don’t cost much and you don’t need milk as your liquid, water is just fine.

Ingredients:

1 cup (2.5dcl) rolled oats

2 cups (5dcl) water

½ teaspoon salt

Jam, sugar or butter

 

Instructions:

1. Add the oats, water and salt in a small saucepan and stir
2. Put the hob on High until it starts to simmer.
3. Take the heat down to Low and let the porridge simmer for a few minutes. Stir quite often to prevent it from sticking to the bottom.
4. Serve up in bowls, with a bit of jam, butter or whatever you’ve got at home.

This recipe makes about two portions or one large portion. If you’ve got milk at home, add some on top of the porridge.

Mud cake in a cup

Ingredients:

¼ cup of flour

¼ cup of sugar

2tbps cocoa powder

Pinch of salt

2tbsps olive oil

3tbsps water

 

Instructions

1. Mix all the dry ingredients in a coffee cup or a tea mug
2. Add the oil and the water and mix until it’s a smooth batter
3. Put in the microwave and microwave on high for 3-4 minutes
4. Enjoy with ice cream on top!

Santa’s favourite porridge

Ingredients:

1 litre whole milk

1 cup (2.5dcl) pudding rice

2tbsp sugar

2tsp salt

3tbsp butter

 

Instructions:

1. Add the rice, sugar, salt and half the milk to a saucepan.
2. Bring to a boil on high heat and then reduce to the lowest setting. It should be simmering slowly though.
3. Let the porridge simmer on low until it thickens and stir every minute to avoid it from sticking to the pan.
4. Add a bit more liquid (1-1½dcl) as the porridge thickens and keep doing this until you’re out of milk. Cook until the rice is very tender and soft.
5. Stir in the butter at the very last moment before serving.
6. Serve with cinnamon and sugar on top.

 

• It usually takes about 30 minutes to cook this porridge, depending on how thick you want the porridge.
• To make the porridge even cheaper – substitute half the amount of milk for water. This is why it’s important to use whole milk! I’ve used 1 pint of whole milk and 1 pint of water and it’s still turned out very creamy and rich.
• Instead of white sugar, try using the same amount of brown sugar instead – the porridge will get a slightly different flavour and a turn it golden instead of white.
• To make this porridge vegan, simply change out the butter and milk for vegan options!

Simple Chocolate sauce

This is one of the easiest and quickest sauces I know and it’s perfect on so many desserts, like ice cream, banana split and on brownies. It contains only three ingredients and you can modify the amounts to suit your needs for the situation at hand. Just remember this – mix equal amounts of each ingredients and you’re halfway there. The milk can be substituted for water, but it tastes much better with milk, especially whole milk. For a vegan recipe – change the milk to a vegan option.

 

Ingredients:

1dcl milk

1dcl sugar

1dcl cocoa powder (the darker the better)

 

Instructions:

1. Mix all the ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a boil while you stir it, to prevent it from burning.
2. Lower the heat to low and let the sauce simmer for a few minutes, or until it’s smooth, silky and a bit thicker. Stir all the time to make sure it doesn’t stick to the bottom and burn.
3. Serve on ice cream, banana split or any other dessert that requires chocolate sauce.

Chickpea korma

This is a vegetarian korma, that can become vegan if you use sauce with no cream or milk, and it’s really easy to make. I added some frozen vegetables to the sauce too, just to add some substance to it – but that’s not something you have to do.

Ingredients

1 can of chickpeas

1 jar of Korma sauce

1 onion

1 cube vegetable stock

½ jar of water

2 tbsp. soy sauce

2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

2 tbsp. sweet chili sauce

1-2 cloves of garlic

1 tbsp. paprika powder

½ tbsp. turmeric

Salt and pepper to taste

Oil or butter to fry in

 

Instructions

1. Chop the onion and garlic finely.
2. Fry the onion and garlic in a frying pan on high heat. While the onion is frying, drain the chickpeas and rinse them under running water.
3. Add the chickpeas to the frying pan for a few minutes until the onions have a nice brown colour.
4. Add the rest of the ingredients to the pan and stir well. For the ½ jar of water, use the same jar that the korma sauce came in.
5. Let the sauce simmer on low heat for 10 minutes.
6. Serve with boiled rice.

Oven baked Pastrami Sandwiches

Baked sandwiches are amongst my favourite types of foods, hands down! The simpler ones require hardly any prepping and are filling on their own, or with a salad. When it comes to toppings, the combinations are almost endless – it’s so easy to make sandwiches for every taste and these are very cheap and budget friendly. I chose pastrami as my protein but you can naturally use ham, turkey, a selection of veggies or any plant based food you like.

Ingredients

4 slices of toast

Butter

4 slices of pastrami

Grated cheese

Mustard

 

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 225 Celsius
2. Place the slices of toast on a baking tray
3. Butter the toasts on the side that you’re putting the filling
4. Put the slices of pastrami on the toasts
5. Drizzle mustard over the sandwiches
6. Top them with grated cheese
7. Place the baking tray in the oven and cook until the cheese has melted and turned golden brown.
8. Enjoy!

Cabbage Salad recipe

This recipe is a very popular salad in Sweden and Finland and is usually eaten with pizza. It’s therefore known as Pizza Salad in these countries. The salad is completely vegan and is a great base when you want to make a salad, you just put some of it on the bottom of a plate and then just pile up with any other vegetables and toppings you like – even pasta. The cabbage salad is also a great side dish to grilled meats and fish, so try it at your next barbeque!

Ingredients

1 head of fresh cabbage

2-4 tablespoons of white wine vinegar (depending on the size of the cabbage)

1-3 tablespoons of olive oil (depending on the size of the cabbage head)

½ – 1½ teaspoon(s) of salt

½ – 1 teaspoon of ground black pepper (or according to taste)

Instructions

1. Grate the cabbage on the coarser side of a grater or shred it finely with a knife.
2. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl. Make sure that the ingredients are well mixed, use your hands!
3. Cover it with cling film and leave it in the fridge for at least two hours before serving.

This dish tastes better if you make it the day before you’re meant to eat it and just let it sit in the fridge and soap up all the flavours. If you want to, you can add some raw, shredded or grated red onion too.

Chocolate Snowballs Recipe

Today I had a huge craving for something sweet, so I made some Chocolate Snowballs – an easy treat that you can freeze, is a favourite with kids and a no bake. In Finland, this recipe is a very traditional sweet and often the first thing that a child learns how to make in the kitchen, since they’re super easy, hardly any ingredients, no knives involved and no stoves or ovens! I remember learning how to make this at about five years old and I still make them – over 20 years later. We often have Chocolate Snowballs at children’s parties or on Saturdays – that are the Swedish and Finnish day when children can have sweets after dinner.

The Snowballs are also very easy to make vegan or gluten free. For vegan – use vegan or milk free butter. For gluten free – use gluten free oats. I always use the darkest cocoa powder that I can find, since it brings a deeper flavour and makes it a bit less sweet and sugary.

 

Ingredients;

300gr butter

3dcl sugar

6 tablespoons of cocoa powder

8dcl oats

4 tablespoons of water

2.5dcl (1 cup) shredded coconut

 

How to make them;

1. Combine the sugar and the butter to a dough. The sugar and butter should be well combined and smooth. Use your hands for this.
2. Add the cocoa powder, oats and the water and combine with your hands. Make sure that everything is an even dough and that there aren’t any specks of sugary butter left.
3. Grab 2 flat plates. On one of them, add the shredded coconut and put the other one on the right hand side of the coconut plate.
4. Roll little balls of the mix to smooth balls and the roll them in the coconut. Place the Snowballs on the empty plate.
5. Once you’re done, put the Chocolate Snowballs in the fridge for a couple of hours to firm up and set.
6. Enjoy!

The Poor Man’s veggie soup

This soup is perfect if you’re on Ann extremely tight budget since you can use any veggies that are cheap or free, as long as you have vegetable stock and some cheap herbs like parsley and dill.

Ingredients:

• Potatoes 
• Onions
• Carrots
• Leek
• Water
• Vegetable stock cubes
• Dill & parsley 
• Swedish turnip 
• Cabbage
• Peas

Instructions:

1. Cut all of the vegetables, except for the peas, into cubes and put all of the veggies into a large saucepan.
2. Add the parsley, dill and cubes of stock.
3. Cover with water and bring it to a boil quickly, before lowering the temperature.
4. Let the soup simmer until all of the ingredients are cooked through.
5. Adjust the stock flavour, it should be strong tasting to be extra filling and tasty.
6. Serve with freshly baked bread.

Notice that I haven’t put any measurements or amounts – this is because you will have different amounts available to you at different times. This is what determines what amounts of what vegetables you use and how much you can/want/need to make of the soup. The point is that however much you make this soup is as cheap and simple as it gets, the highest cost is for the stock, parsley and dill. 

Bread / Baguette recipe

This is literally one of the easiest ways to make baguettes at home, that won’t cost a small fortune (and is superhard to make). You only need a few basic ingredients to make this tasty bread.

 

Ingredients:

5dl water

2tbsp olive oil

13dl flour

2tsp salt

1 pack dry yeast

(1 egg) optional

 

Instructions:

1. Heat the olive oil and water to 37 degrees Celsius on the stove
2. Mix the hot water with the yeast to start up the yeast. Mix it in a large bowl or a kitchen aid.
3. Mix in the rest of the ingredients well for at least 5 minutes in the kitchen aid. It shouldn’t stick to your fingers when you handle it.
4. Take it out of the kitchen aid and put the dough on a table, sprinkled with a little flour.
5. Knead the dough for a few minutes more and add some more flour if needed.
6. Put it back in the bowl, cover it with a baking towel and set it to rise for 60min. Don’t leave it too cold, or the yeast will die. The same thing applies if the opposite happens!
7. Heave the dough back on a floured table and cut it into 4 equally big pieces and form them into breads/baguettes. Do NOT knead the dough at this stage!
8. Put them on two baking trays, layered with oven paper. Sprinkle some flour on the bread and put baking towels over. Let rise for 30min
9. Preheat the oven to 275 degrees Celsius while the bread is rising.
10. If you want you can brush the bread with the whisked egg, and then grind over some sea salt. It’s optional but adds some flavour.
11. Bake the bread in the middle of the oven, one tray at the time, for 15 minutes.
12. Let them cool on a cutting board, or something else – but not the baking tray.
13. Eat fresh and freeze the bread that won’t be used right away.