One of my raves about living in regional areas – especially a foodie haven like Orange -  is the ease of getting cheap pub food. OMG, I didn’t declare that out loud did I? Forgive me if I sound like a total cheapie! But who doesn’t like cheap (and delicious) food? Okay, I sound like a total cheapie again. I couldn’t help it, ha!

Working across a pub which offers $5 lunch from Monday to Friday is a luxury. (Hehe, interesting choice of word?) As the pub specialises in steak,  it often makes cheap lunches revolving beef – which I think the unsold meat is made into something else in attempt to reduce wastage. Examples of the “something else” are lasagne, pies, braised beef, beef skewers, nachos etc. (Note – they do offer fish and chips and frittata as the “other” options but you mostly get one beef dish and a non-beef dish.) Anyway, I feel this particular pub does really good beef dishes in general, and by the end of the week, I get this hangover feeling from meat. So this is how my veggies loaded pasta bake came about and as a means to “cure” my meat hangover.