FAST & EASY FAMILY MEALS ~ What a family of 5 eats for dinner

I'm just starting tonight with dinner and I have done these chicken bags with this peri-peri bag and bake. So I'm planning to do like Nando's burgers with some halloumi fries and wedges. So I've done two lots of these. I'm just going to stick them in the oven and I'll show you when I'm done. So here is everything served up. We've got the Lidl wedges. I didn't make them myself, I was going to but I couldn't be bothered. So these are the just lightly spiced wedges from Lidl. They're about £1.69 per kilo. I've got some halloumi fries, this is for one of the boys and the Nando's bag and bake chicken with lettuce, mayo, cheese slice and the Aldi chilli cheese topped rolls which I've just popped in the toaster and this is what is for dinner tonight. So for tonight's dinner I've just done some leftover rice. I've turned it into an egg fried rice with some soy sauce, lime juice, I've put some smoked paprika, some garlic and obviously some eggs and sweet corn in there and then I've just done some chicken breast in the airfryer and these have got one of the Thai airfryer seasonings and this is what we're having for dinner tonight. I got some steak pies from Aldi so I decided to do some airfryer roast potatoes, some frozen peas and just some bisto gravy. The airfryer roast potatoes come out perfect every time and if I don't need to use my oven then I won't. I will stick them in the airfryer every single time. So I was really unsure what to make for dinner tonight. This morning I just grabbed a chicken breast out the freezer and I thought I'll defrost that and then we'll see where the day takes us. So I have decided to go for a pasta bake. So I've got two fajita seasoning mixes, obviously I'm making a fajita chicken pasta bake, two peppers, I just went through the fridge and found the ones that look the squishiest and need juicing up. I've got some feta cheese in here and half a tub of soft cheese, tomato puree, garlic granules, plum tomatoes and then I've got my bag of chicken breast and I'm just going to boil some pasta. So what I'm going to do is start frying off my peppers, I might chop an onion as well, then I'm going to add in my chicken, fajita season it all and then I'll add in the tomatoes, the soft cheese and the feta. I might break the feta up, not sure yet, but possibly add the feta in in chunks. Some tomato puree, basically just mix it all together with the pasta, top it with a load of grated cheese and then pop it in the oven. That's what I think I'm doing so let's get started. So I've added my chicken, peppers, onions and garlic in here and then I've added my two fajita seasoning mixes. So I'm going to go in with my tinned tomatoes, I'm not sure if I'm going to add one or two, I might add some pasta water as well just because the starch is nice and thickening and the tomato puree will thicken it a little bit as well. I'm also going to add in my soft cheese and my feta and then I'm cooking my pasta. I'm going to put it all in a pan, put cheese on. So I've added my two tins of tomatoes, tomato puree about two tablespoons, half a block of feta, half a tub of cream cheese and some more smoked paprika and now I'm just going to stir this through so it melts a little bit. My pasta is very nearly cooked but it doesn't need to be cooked all the way because it's going in the oven and I've saved a little bit of my pasta water just in case when I mix this through it's not quite as liquidy as I would like. And another tip, if when your pasta bake is cooked and it's too solid and it just feels like it's really dried out then you can just add a little bit of that pasta water to it and leave it in the oven for a little bit longer and it will loosen it up slightly. So here's our pasta bake, I've combined everything together, I have added a little bit more pasta water because the pasta is going to absorb loads of water while it's cooking and then like I said I don't want it to be a big stodgy mess so I kept it quite liquidy and most of that will cook off so the only thing left to do is top it with loads and loads of mature cheddar and then I'm going to pop it in the oven, it's not going to take too long because most of it's pretty much cooked, maybe half an hour, I do everything really high like about 220 and I will show you it when we are finished. So I haven't actually showed you it in a bowl because this basically looks just like this but in bowl version, so this is what it looks like on the inside, come out really nicely, I have tasted it as well, it tastes really good. Yeah this is what we are having for dinner tonight. So I couldn't not include a little bit of our Christmas prep, this was Christmas Eve and we always make the stuffing and sausage rolls on Christmas Eve, this year we made marmite and cheese sausage rolls, they were absolutely amazing and I'm going to leave you with some of Steve and Oscar building the gingerbread house, this was absolutely hilarious and something we're definitely going to do every year from now on. Well you do it, I'll squeeze it. Oh my god, that's quite nice, just use it, just use it. A bit more, oh my god it's ready, not that much, I just squeezed it. Get the roof, he might be so sorry, it's like you lot, Oscar. You've got Nanny doing the potatoes. The method to your madness Oscar, I think you might need a bit more, he's got loads in there I think. What we should do. What? Candy cane. You put a candy cane on it. Should I leave it in the wrapper or should I unwrap it? Unwrap it. I've got to find the one that's not broken. Should I put it through the hole? No, stand it, no maybe that side, here. That'll do, it's like, yeah, perfect. No it needs to be more. Not perfect, stupid. Yeah, yeah. So whilst I was cooking the Christmas dinner I asked Steve to get a little bit of footage of the table because I was really pleased how it turned out this year and then we had our delicious Christmas dinner and I just got a shot of it pre-gravy because we had six people here and trying to get everybody's ready and out on time and hot and film it all was just too much so this is it, I promise you we did have gravy and all the sauces and things there is nothing worse than looking at a Christmas dinner that has not got gravy on it, absolutely delicious. This was our New Year's Eve spread, we got loads and loads of really good produced items in Sainsbury's that afternoon so we just did a whole buffet. So this year we actually had all three boys at home which was absolutely lovely so we had some drinks, our buffet and we played music quizzes all night and it was just the best evening. Every year if I have leftover turkey I like to make a creamy leek and turkey pie, this time I decided to put a bottom on the pie as well because I don't think it's actually a pie unless it's got a bottom. This is using turkey, double cream, leeks, white wine stock, chicken stock, loads of salt and pepper, some flour. I have made the recipe on here before, I think I uploaded it about a month or so ago as well or something similar anyway, you can top this with mash or you can put it in pastry. So I just laid the puff pastry in the pan and I pricked it with a fork, covered it with foil and cooked it for 25 minutes. Then I added my filling and then I put the lid on, popped that back in the oven. This was absolutely delicious and I served it just with some fries that I did in the air fryer and some peas and it was even better cold the next day. I just love a cold pie especially with a white sauce, really really good.