January is the month when the dark, cold and icy fist of winter seizes York by the jugular and we all cry about the fact we can only have the heating on for a few precious hours a day.
Consequently, for me at least, January is about hearty and warming food. A light salad will do bugger all to toughen your constitution to brave snow, ice and even less appetising- slush.
The humble pasta bake is literally a godsend. It’s cheap, it’s warming and it feeds you for days upon days, largely because one spoonful, if you make a pasta bake right, will cripple your digestive system and leave you pleasantly bloated immediately after a sitting.
It’ll be so excruciating for your body to burn off, you’ll be pleasantly warmed all evening and you can also look a bit cultured because you haven’t just made a bog standard casserole.
Perpetually popular penne is a good base pasta and then I like to make a bolognese sauce to go in it, purely because meat’s more interesting than just tomato sauce but if you’re stuck for mince you can just keep it simple and crack in a tin of chopped tomatoes.
Then add a liberal amount of cheese and bung it in the oven – simple supper, you can even splash out on garlic bread if you like for an even carbier and satisfying winter supper.
You should always have baked goods about in January though, they provide a satisfying kick that fruits really won’t until the spring and if you’re prudent about what goes into them, they aren’t as wasteful as all chocolate desserts.
A favourite of mine is porridge oat based cookies. You can still add the chocolate chips for some added sweetness, but the oats mean you get slow release energy from them and they aren’t as bad for you as that bag of Millie’s Cookies you just eyed up in Costcutter as they’re on special offer (yes you there, the special offer is a con and it’s cheaper to get one packet, or better yet go to Yourshop, Costcutter is the most ironically named shop ever).
Ultimately though, cooking with friends is fun and it’ll add a special dimension to that reunion film night that we all have in the dark depths of winter, when only the glimmering highlight of a Disney film can pull us out of the essay and reading induced energy nosedive we all suffer from.
Easy as it is to buy a frozen pizza, they never cook properly and you always feel disgusting after eating one. Knocking up pizza dough is easy because it’s basically flour, olive oil and waiting, and since we’re students you can leave the dough to rise in advance (assuming you can find somewhere warm for it…).
If a group of you club together for about a tenner you can get more ingredients than you’d get for double that at a takeaway.
Then make your own pizza and cook away, it’ll taste better than Dominos and since you’ll have worked to make it you know it isn’t splattered in whatever masquerades as cheese on their pizzas.