Cheap Dinner? I'll let you decide

The other day (late December) I was eating and enjoying a meal and I thought of the $5 dinner blog. I found a page today where you can add your own $5 dinner, so here it is. Here are the guidelines for playing.

We had this in our menu recently and I really liked it. I haven't really had a meal from the site I got it from that wasn't nice. My hubby does modify slightly to suit himself. If you grow your own zucchini and cherry tomatoes it would be great. Cherry tomatoes can sometimes grow themselves, and did in our previous garden. Here we bought some plants, but they were not the ones that seed down themselves. We told a person we know about it and they gave us some real plants. However our current garden has minimal water, no systems set up so I haven't seen any plants so far.

Spaghetti with zucchini and cherry tomatoes

Ingredients (serves 1)
125g dried spaghetti
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 small zucchini, grated
125g cherry tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese,to serve

Cook pasta in a large saucepan of boiling salted water, following packet directions, until tender.

Meanwhile, heat oil in a small, non-stick frying pan over high heat. Add garlic, zucchini and tomatoes. Cook, stirring often, for 3 minutes or until tender.

Drain pasta, reserving 2 tablespoons cooking water. Return pasta and reserved water to saucepan. Add zucchini mixture, salt and pepper to pasta. Toss over low heat until heated through. Spoon into bowl. Top with parmesan and serve.

I found the recipe here after having these vegetables left over and needing to find some extra recipes.

Costings in Australian dollars? We used 500g of pasta for six people, and really not much different to the rest of the recipe for the sauce, we used two zucchinis.

Cherry Tomatoes $3.82
Zucchini $1.28 each
Pasta $1.12
Parmesan $6.56 per 250g.

Wow, I had no idea I pay that much for parmesan. My husband's friend can get real Italian parmesan probably cheaper, same with the oil. Something to think about.

If I have a thought about a cheap meal again, I will try to grab my camera after it is cooked.