Yep, believe me, those people do actually exist!! I was one of them, and to a certain extent I kind of still am one, but when I decided to do something salady with some chicken and halloumi I was kind of impressed, I have to say. I found a recipe for a pea-shoot salad on the Good Food website (okay but does BBC Good Food save the life of every student or what) and adapted it a little bit for me and here's what we came up with...

Look, I promise there's salad among the pile of chicken and halloumi and croutons. This is such a perfect one for the warm weather we've been having recently so hopefully you'll like the recipe and will try it yourselves, make sure to let me know if you do!!! Like in my other recipe post, the prices here are based on Lidl as it's my nearest supermarket and the cheapest, most student friendly, but mysupermarket.com makes it really easy to compare the prices from your local supermarket. There also aren't many specific quantities here because I feel like salad is a really personal thing, you can have as much or as little as you want so it's really up to you!

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Ingredients

Mixed leaf salad (200g bag 95p) (it's also really nice with peashoots but I couldn't get any in Lidl or even my Tesco so if you can find them go for it)

Frozen peas (1kg bag £1.05)

1 chicken breast (590g pack £3.15) (or you can use pre-cooked chicken breast but it is more expensive, but can work better if you won't use the other breasts in an uncooked pack)

Half a block of halloumi cheese (1 225g block £1.39)

Croutons (100g bag 89p) (or I'll tell you how to make your own later)

Olive oil (1 litre bottle £2.99 or you can nick your flatmate's which is what I do) (but make sure you ask first lol some flatmates can be VERY possessive over their food)

Lemon juice (200ml 27p or if you prefer fresh a pack of 3 lemons is 99p)

Oregano (7.5g 29p)

Salt & pepper optional but come on everyone has those already (surely)

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Recipe!!

1. Cut up the halloumi into slices and dry fry them over a medium heat. There's a lot of water in halloumi so no oil is needed and dry frying makes a really nice crispy golden crust on the outside of the cheese. Put aside.

2. Cut up the chicken breast into small chunks and fry it in the same pan (this gets all the leftover halloumi stuff on it and makes it taste sooo good) until it's cooked all the way through. Please make sure it's cooked all the way through, raw chicken is a bitch. Put aside.

3. Rip up the salad leaves or peashoots into smaller pieces and put in your serving bowl at the bottom, and use as much or as little as you like - I like quite a lot of salad so go for whatever you're happy with.

4. Meanwhile, pop on a pan of boiling water and cook the peas for 2 minutes. Again, use as many or as little as you'd like for this. Once they're cooked, drain away the water and pop them on top of the salad leaves in your bowl.

5. Cut up the halloumi into little bitesize chunks (it works better if you fry it as slices and then chop it up later, and using scissors tends to work best) and pop into your bowl. Do the same with the chicken and croutons.

If you want to make your own croutons (it's cheaper and a really good way of using up stale bread) just cut the crusts off three slices of white bread (or brown if you're feeling healthy) (or whatever you have), brush both sides of each piece with a little melted butter, cut into similar sized cubes and bake in the oven for 15 minutes at 180 degrees. Works perfectly.

6. Once all your dry ingredients are in the bowl, drizzle over some olive oil and lemon juice, and add oregano and salt and pepper to your own taste.

And voila, a lovely summery salad that isn't too heavy, super healthy and v v yummy.

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Hope you enjoyed this recipe and let me know if you make it for yourself, and even adapt it to suit your own taste!! Also do let me know if there are any other recipes you'd be keen on seeing on this ol' here blog and I'll be sure to try my best. I'm not the best or most creative person when it comes to food, I'm quite a fussy eater so I tend to stick to simple food that I know I like, so hopefully it won't be too boring and you can get some ideas for some super easy and cheap student-friendly recipes!!

What sort of things do/did you cook at university?

Em xx

Just Another Student Pasta Dish...

Oooh look at me being all fancy and posting a recipe!! Good one Em.

So today I am sharing with you a staple of every student's life...a pasta dish. Come on, we'd be lying if we said we didn't eat pasta at least four times a week. Yes it may be carby but it's filling, delicious and there are so many things you can do/put with pasta. Seriously, sometimes I just eat pasta with cheese if I need some hardcore comfort food. Plus, it's cheap which is what we alllll want in life.

So this is the recipe for the pasta dish I was talking about in this post which I literally made a ton of, depending on how much you eat in one sitting I reckon I got about four or five portions out of this recipe and considering it cost me about £4 to make I'd say that's pretty good going. Plus you get a veg fix and a meat fix and it's very yummy so what's not to love? Carry on reading if you wanna find out how to make this my loves...

Ingredients

The prices in this list are all based off Lidl prices as that's where I shop, but mysupermarket.co.uk makes it really easy to compare prices and put together a shopping list so you can easily find out how much this would be at your local supermarket. Not sponsored, just a really really useful website!

🥘 300g pasta 89p for 1 kilo or 45p for 500g

🥘 1 head of broccoli cut into florets 63p

🥘 1 onion 55p for 1 kilo

🥘 1 200g pack of bacon lardons 99p

🥘 Garlic 75p for 3 ( although I use granules as they last longer and they're much less faff - I'll tell you how to substitute later)

🥘 300g pot of double cream 99p

Trying to make it look more appetising with a fancy photo but let's be honest, it doesn't really...

Method

1. Begin by cooking the pasta and broccoli according to their instructions. I tend to do pasta for 20 minutes and broccoli for about fifteen but it depends on how you like it - I like pasta al dente and my broccoli slightly mushier than normal so do whatever you like best.

2. Cut up the onion into really tiny pieces and toss it in a large pan with the bacon and garlic to fry. If you're using cloves of garlic use 2, and if you're using granules substitute half a teaspoon of granules for each clove so for this you'd use a teaspoon of granules instead of two cloves.

3. Once they're done cooking (the onion will be slightly soft and the bacon slightly crispy), pour in the double cream and bring to the boil. In the meantime drain the pasta and broccoli.

4. Add the pasta and the broccoli to the sauce and if you like, stir in some grated cheese for extra comfort and happiness.

...and that is literally it. The hardest part of cooking this is probably the cutting up of onions if your eyes are as sensitive as mine appear to be!! I mean it when I say an idiot could cook this, because as my flatmates tell me probably on a daily basis, I can cook this and I am the biggest idiot in the world.

Hope you enjoyed this extremely simple, extremely cheap but extremely delicious recipe! Let me know how you get on and if you change anything - it would be so easy to add peas or sweetcorn, cooked chicken or even some spinach or kale if you wanted to get even more healthy goodness and protein in there too.

What sort of things do you/did you cook at university?

Em xx

November Favourites

Welcome to the most generic blogmas post ever!! I'm sure we're all bashing this one out at the moment so hopefully mine won't be too samey same!!