Austerity Tart and Student Survival

The title refers to a dish rather than me. Not that I am a dish, clearly.

Circumstances dictated lunch was today's family gathering, the boss off to Ireland later. Travel for her and stuff to do for the rest of us meant something fairly light, so I made a cheaty tart with a pack of mushrooms, three onions, some not great cheddar and a block of Sainsbury's ready-made puff pastry.

It looked great (I must remember to take some food images again), with the cheese browning and the edges, the surface just cut through to make a border, rising to hold in the ample filling. It could have fed six, but didn't. The meal was made for its taste not price, but afterwards I worked the cost out at around £2.75.

I told SC that it's a dish worth remembering for when he's a student - it would make the main for four yoots, and bulked out with chips in the same oven (we virtuously had salad), or boiled spuds, would still come in under the £1/head mark. Especially useful if feeding vegetarians.

Back in my own student days vegetarians were rarer animals, not perhaps the most appropriate description. A couple I knew lived (very badly) on baked potatoes, and were unhealthy because of it. And not even baked potatoes with. Just BP. Basically they'd removed the meat from the already unhealthy meat and potatoes regime. Even at that time people thought they were daft, lazy and unimaginative.

It is the 'with' bit that makes the difference. Reading about Tuscan peasant cookery of a couple of generations back brought up the description of most evening meals as pan e companatico, bread and something that goes with bread. Filler and variation. Starch and vegetable matter, or on good days protein. Things would have to be really extreme in our times for the companatico to be absent. The only excuse today for a carbohydrate-only diet would be the direst poverty, though variation would be possible even on a really tight budget: lentils, onions, garlic, beans, chilli peppers, all cheap and if not cheerful then certainly not cheerless.