Money Saving Cooking from Scratch - meal ideas

[2monkeys]

I enjoy beautifully cooked, from scratch, foods. I love expensive, quality foods but I can't budget for them everyday....so I am constantly on the search for budget-friendly meals. Here is one of our delicious, simple and very healthy meals that we have every fortnight; the kids love it!

What's one of your favourite cheap meals?

Baked Sweet Potato with Chili Beans
Serves 4

1. Scrub 4 Small-sized sweet potatoes and place them on a baking tray in a preheated 220C oven (leave the skin on) for approx 40 minutes.
2. When you know the sweet potatoes are ready.....in a frying pan, saute garlic in oil (you may want to add onions if you & the kids like)
3. Add chopped basil, mild-hot chili and mixed beans in the frying pan.
4. Put a sweet potato on a plate. Cut it open and mash up the sweet potato a bit. Add a dab of butter if you'd like. Top with the bean mix and garnish with a dollop of sour cream. Yum!

NOTE: I buy dried beans from the local Indian grocer and soak them overnight and then boil them in water the next morning. This is cheaper than buying canned beans and in my opinion healthier and yummier.

[Astra2]

We love vegetarian burritos:

2 cans red kidney beans
1 onion
1 red capsicum
1 tbs cummin
1 tbs coriander
1 can tomatoes or bottle of italian tomato sauce (a recent change to avoid bpa)

Fry onion in olive oil. Add capsicum and fry for a bit. Add everything else and cook until tomatoes have reduced.
Wrap in wholemeal pita bread with salad of your choice, grated cheese and chilli sauce.

This is so quick and easy and really cheap.
Red lentil Dahl or chickpea curry are two other favourites for when money is low and sometimes DH cooks roti or naan (fried in a frying pan with olive oil) to go with it. Delicious!

[2monkeys]

Astra2, are you at my house? We are eating a very similar meal tonight, except with a little bit of organic chicken thrown in too.

[Astra2]

Tonight we are having vegetable soup. I really cooked it for DS but he wouldn't have a bar of it so we are eating it instead. Tonight will be the 4th night but it feels so healthy that we are happy to eat it again and again. It is a minestrone with silver beat, carrots, beans, broccoli, onion, garlic, potato, fresh tomatoes, tomato paste, fresh basil, dried basil, dried thyme, 4 bean mix 4 cups of vegetable stock and cracked pepper. Super cheap but not so quick.

[Saphira]

a bit off topic - but I love those jars of italian tomatoes instead of the cans. We made the change when I got pregnant. Same reason, to avoid the BPA and we've never looked back

Recipies sound yummy by the way!

[organic]

Here's a budget recipe I love.

Cabbage - any kind
Dried shitakes (not as expensive as you imagine!)
ginger (just a little)

Rehydrate shitakes by soaking them in a bowl of just boiled water for about 10 minutes. Add cabbage, shitakes with the soaking water (less water is better) to a pan over medium/high heat. After about 5 minutes add ginger and seasoning if you like (a sprinkle of caraway seeds if you have any). Cook until it's ready (depends on the amounts, how you like your cabbage etc - I know you can figure this part out!).

I could live on this and it is so nutritious.

a.

[suzee]

I'm doing vegie minestrone in the crockpot every week or two. The first time or two the kids watched me eat it while they had other stuff, then they both started eating it because they wanted what mummy had. I've been amazed, now they like it, and the oldest hates sloppy food and the youngest doesn't eat veggies. But this they will both eat.

I've found it is a great one for using up veggies in the fridge. I cook it for most of the day in the crockpot, then we eat it for three days, the littley likes hers with grated cheese. I like mine with a glass of wine . We eat it with homemade bread or pasta.

This is a relatively low chemical version, without tomato

1/2 chopped leek
chopped celery
chopped sweet potato
chopped zuchinii
chopped carrot
can brown lentils
2 cans kidney beans
chicken stock if have it or water
chopped cabbage if fancy it

I'm going to have a go at pre-chopping my veggies the night before, so I can throw it all into the pot on a work morning.