Nothing symbolises more the freedom and responsibility of being out on your own than cooking a meal. When food does not appear on the table and take-aways become boring or expensive, there is no escape – as three of our Youth Advisors recall.
I can’t remember the very first thing but it was probably something like spaghetti bolognese and it was probably terrible. My first housemate was a bit better at cooking than me so he did that and I did the cleaning…When it comes to cooking my specialty is gingerbread houses – that and biscuits and cakes generally.
I did a bit of cooking in residential care – helping out in the kitchen. But when it came to living by myself, I just figured it out. You need to say “I can do this.” Mostly it was simple stuff like pasta or fried steak with salad which worked pretty well. I made a curry once. I put in the usual veggies and some beans and then about eight of these little red chillies. I couldn’t eat it, it was so hot. My Mum and sister managed to eat a bit but not me. I’ve never made a curry since.
I can’t really remember the first thing I ever cooked! But when I first moved out of home, stir fries were the best things that ever happened to me. Just chuck it all in stir it around for a while and eat it! Cheap and healthy… that’s how it was! Here is a cheap, easy as, YUMMY recipe.
Sara’s Fettucini Carbonara
Ok… you need
- Fettucini
- 2 onions roughly diced
- about ½ kilo of bacon roughly chopped
- 3 mushrooms cut into slices (if you like them)
- small tub of cream
- a teaspoon of nutmeg to taste
- ground black peppercorns to taste
Here we go… Start by preparing the pasta. Fettucini is awesome, cook as per directions on back of packet. Once you have started boiling pasta, start on the sauce.
Fry onion, bacon and mushroom in frypan. Grind black pepper into frypan as cooking. Add a teaspoon of nutmeg and stir.
Once onions and bacon have browned reduce heat to low and add cream to fry pan. Drain pasta from the saucepan, once TOTALLY DRAINED.. put pasta back into the saucepan and add sauce.. mix all around and… EAT
