budget buffet help!!

Fish Crackers:

Pick up a couple of tubes of squeezy primula cheese (plain or with chives - usually about £1.20) and a box of ritz crackers (80p). Then get a small tin of caviar (John West is about £1.50 in Tesco) or a pack of smoked salmon trimmings (Tesco value - 1.20).

Lay crackers on serving dish, and squeeze primula cheese on top, top with either a small half teaspoon of caviar, or a little smoked salmon.

Very lazy and very quick and easy and less than £3.50 for a good trayful of canap!s.

If you can bake your own mini-scones in advance and cut in half to use instead of ritz this would work out even cheaper. Also, these can be made in advance, whereas ritz crackers do go soft if made well in advance.

Spicy mini meat-balls: 200g (beef, lamb or turkey) mince, spring onion, pinch of cumin, pinch of coriander, salt and pepper, plus egg yolk. Whizz in food processor and then shape into little balls. Dust in a little flour and put in fridge. When ready to cook, pop in oven on greased tray for 20 mins, turning once, allow to cool then spear with cocktail stick. Serve with sweet chilli sauce dip (blue dragon 1.79).

Use sweet chilli sauce to coat chicken wings before baking in the oven. I am sure someone else will have a HM recipe.

I am not good at vegetarian options - sorry!

I often cheat on these occasions and buy a couple of the ready cooked pastry flan cases (made by Hoppers? or others) from supermarkets, and then fill them them savoury fillings, such as bacon, cheese, mushrooms in an egg mixture. . Butter Bean & grated cheese is quite a savoury veggie version.

Cous cous keeps a couple of days and tastes nicer if you make it with hot stock and some olive oil rather than just hot water, add veg (and chopped chicken or prawns).

BBQ chicken wings are easy just coat in sauce then bake in the oven for 20-30 mins (best if you can do it on a rack but if you don't have a rack just turn them half way through).

cheese straws (a cheats way is to get ready rolled pastry, grate cheese over the top, use rolling pin to squish cheese into pastry, cut into strips, put on a baking tray twisting them at the same time and bake, very nice)

home made fish gougons or chicken nuggets, I don't like fish so haven't done those but for the chicken coat in egg, then breadcrumbs and deep fry. You can cut up and coat the chicken in advance, freeze it and cook straight from frozen.

I second the home made sausage rolls, very nice. Haven't looked at delia's recipe but the way I do it is to buy ready made puff pastry (I think life's to short to make puff pastry) and a pack of pork sausages, split the sausages and chuck the skins, mix them in a bowl with any other herbs you fancy (as balmk says sage is very nice) then make the sausage rolls, you can make them as large or as small as you like but small ones go a long way.

Home made salsa is a nice side dish, I made up a recipe and everyone loved it and it'll keep for a day or two. I stupidly forgot to write it down but I think it's 4 toms, skinned and chopped, 1/3 of a pepper chopped, 1 garlic clove finely chopped, 1/2 red onion chopped, salt, pepper, 1 chilli chopped and a good glug of olive oil all mixed toghether. To make it more colourfull pick different coloured pepper and chilli

There was a post about this the other day and they suggested a big pan of chilli and jacket potatos, you could make a veg one and a meat one, supply bowls and rice and you'll be well away