I am renowned throughout all my family and friends for never, ever cooking. Last year I think I cooked a proper' meal less than a dozen times in all. However, sometimes I have to like when I have forgotten myself and invited people round for an evening and then realise I have to feed them. Obviously I can't keep getting my poor teenage son to cook for my friends, so I have come up with a cheap, cheerful and terribly easy supper that works for meat eaters as well as vegetarians. Some of my friends have food intolerances so I have included adaptations for the main ones I have encountered.

The ingredients vary depending on what is on Buy One Get One Free in my local Supermarket. But the most important thing is to get fresh pasta. At last supermarkets have increased their range of fresh pastas, until recently they only had penne, tagliatelle or spaghetti. Of course it could be because my supermarket is just totally hopeless!

My shopping list for a dinner for six usually goes something like this:

- Wine (red) well you can't cook without wine, can you?
- Fresh pasta 1 good sized bag [if you have a celiac guest most supermarkets now do gluten free pasta]
- Whatever meat is BOGOF currently Herta frankfurters but I have used lardons, [which are tiny bits of fatty bacon] chicken, sliced pork or beef any meat you can slice works really
- Bag of assorted coloured peppers
- Onions 2 red, 2 white [medium size]
- Button mushrooms a couple of handfuls
-Pesto with or without sun-dried tomatoes
- Brown sugar any kind
- Very Lazy Garlic, or pured garlic in a tube just a little squidge needed
- Mix of herbs fresh or dried, Provencal mix is nice with this
- Bag of ready prepared salad told you this was going to be easy
- Loaf or rolls of Italian style bread
- Bag of grated cheese
- Fresh grated parmesan as in ready grated in a pot
- At least one large pot of soured cream

Now for the complicated hard work bit:

1 Pour a glass of wine and sip/glug intermittently throughout the following instructions

2 Chop all the peppers and onions into smallish but not too small bits, say about an inch long and a quarter inch wide

3 Slice the frankfurters to about an inch in size

4 Put all the veggie bits (except for about a third of the onions) in a large frying pan with a dash of virgin olive oil and a couple of teaspoons of the herbs and fry over a medium heat

5 Put the meaty bits and the saved third of the onions

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