Welcome to Week 2 of the cooking on a budget competition! This week we focus on one of our all time favorites... NOODLES AND PASTA! I think noodles in one form or another are a global delight with so many types of noodles made from a long list of different ingredients. We have the all time favorite from Italy which is of course pasta, often made from wheat and shaped in an endless variety of forms such as Spaghetti, Tagliattelle, Penne and combined with a lip smacking sauce such as tomato or pesto. In China noodles are created to make the good old Chow Mein made from wheat or rice and combined with a great assortment of vegetables or meat and a very different kind of Chinese sauce. Japan have mastered noodle making in the most incredible soup knows as ramen, made with many kinds of noodle such as udon, buckwheat, soba, and even mung bean. Oh and let me not forget one of my favorite Thai noodles, Pad Thai!

This week your challenge is to prepare a noodle / pasta based dish of your choosing. You can buy noodles from the store, but bonus points are going to those of you who take the time and effort to make your own. Making some kinds of pasta is not as hard as it may seem, although preparing thin Chinese noodles is indeed quite an art form! You can be creative and make your own sauce, pesto or soup and you can serve it with whatever vegetables or meat you wish. I would like to say that we do prefer to see vegetable based dishes here on the ecoTrain community because of the large number of animals that do have to suffer just to put food on our plates. If you enjoy to cook with meat then we just hope and assume that you are able to source meat from animals that have lived a happy and free life at least!

$50 IN PRIZES!

Throughout this competition I will be awarding a total of $50 in prizes each week to the best posts. @charleywhittall and I will choose 5 talented winners each week and award the prizes as HBD as a tip on your post. These prizes will appear in your wallet ready for you to power up or use as you like. I hope this helps to encourage you and inspire you to create some great dishes!

Bonus points will for sure go to those who post with good pictures, and a write up of what you think makes your dish special and healthy.

So without further ado here are the guidelines!

POSTING GUIDELINES

Please try out the recipes yourself and take photos of your finished dish.
You must Subscribe to post to the ecoTrain community.
It's important to use the tags #cookingonabudget and #ecotrain so that it is easy to find your post and group all the posts in Week 2.
Your thumbnail should be a photo of your dish with a written note by the dish that includes your Hive username.
You must leave a link to your recipe post in the comments below this post to be eligible for prizes!
The deadline for submissions is Wednesday 22nd December

Please comment if you have any questions!

INSPIRATION!

If you would like a little bit of inspiration here are some photos of some amazing noodle and pasta dishes! I don't know about you but I'm getting hungry just looking at them!