What's for dinner? Budget version

[LottyD32]

I thought a budget dinner thread might be a good idea for inspo and ideas.

I'm having soup tonight:

Shredded chicken
Onion
Celery
Garlic
Ginger
Turmeric
S&P and herbs
Water
Stock cube
Worcester sauce
Tinned mushrooms
Frozen broccoli, spinach and cauliflower

Cheap, easy, goes far and has load of immunity boosting ingredients.

And I'll probably add a couple of flour and water dumplings or flatten and fry them into flatbreads the whole reason I eat soup

Homemade lentil and bacon soup.

Chopped onion, fried off with some tired looking celery and carrots in the fridge. Add a veg stockpot, lazy garlic and half a bag of lentils. Topped up with boiling water. Cooked gently for an hour, blended, then added the leftover roast gammon from the other night, finely chopped. Enough for 4, just had a big bowlful with two slices of granary bread and will have the rest over the next few days.

I've done well so far this week.

500g of beef mince, yellow stickered at 99p. Cooked up with soffrito and seasoning.
Half becomes Bolognese with extra garlic, cheap tinned toms and Italian herbs.

Half becomes cottage pie with beef stock added, peas and topped with cheesy mash (cheap potatoes).

At least 6 meals 🙂

@Pinkflipflop85 - I've been meaning to try it oven baked but haven't got round to it yet. How long do you bake for?

After steaming ours, I usually sit it in a low oven for 15 minutes so the crust firms up. Not quite crispy on the outside but still squishy on the inside. Bloody lovely comfort food.

Chicken soup, because I'm feeling sorry for myself.

I've got soup again too, I bulked it up with dumplings and a tin of sweetcorn so I only had half of it.

It was seriously delicious, I haven't had soup for ages.

Pasta with home made carrot top pesto and fake meatballs, olives, capers and walnuts. It’s very nice.

A family dinner but on the cheaper side.
Fresh turkey breast made into breaded escalopes. Fried and served with crisps, ketchup and home made garlic mayonnaise.
Green beans and cauliflower steamed in the pressure cooker.
Lidl’s Catalan cream
HM chocolate chip cookies.
About €4 per person.

We are having dippy eggs, toast and sausages!

End of the week so using up leftover veg. Some will go into a risotto today and some will be used up in a chicken and veg Thai curry tomorrow. I buy pre chopped freezer packs of veg for the week to make everything as easy as possible.

Mushroom risotto in the pressure cooker.

We had 2 whole mackerel , got reduced for 1.50 something. Baked with coriander and lemon and salt, baby potatoes , spring greens and roast parsnips and carrots. Fed 3.

Tonight we had yellow sticker beef stir fry £2.25 and rice. It was lovely but I'm already hungry again

Tuna Mayo and cheese paninis.

Dc had pizza chips and beans.

Dhal, packed with stealth veg and served with sweet potato wraps.

@ThreeRingCircus

We just had fried egg, chips and beans. The DDs absolutely loved it.

It's not something we have often but trying to save money at the moment. I remember my mum cooking us egg and chips with some ketchup when we were kids.....we were totally skint but were always so excited when we had that for dinner... proper chips done in a chip pan. We don't deep fry anything at home so it was oven chips tonight but I'd forgotten how bloody lovely simple food like that is!

Egg, chips and peas is always popular. Cheap and easy.

Tinned fruit works well for a budget pudding if you want one too.

Fuck all! Kids had pizza, chicken nuggets and fries.

Bolognese. Had mine on a bed of buttered cabbage, everone else had gluten free pasta

Mushrooms roasted with onions and garlic with toast.

I'm having spinach and ricotta tortellini and pesto tonight, and I forgot to get garlic bread so might have a go making some.

Vegetable chilli (tinned tomatoes, kidney beans, red lentils, onion, celery, green pepper, smoked paprika, cumin, oregano, garlic), rice, sour cream.

Steak and kidney with mash here, just right for a chilly day!

Bean nachos! Very yummy.

Spent the day swapping rooms around so ended up throwing 3 different dinners together from random stuff (can't justify expense of a takeaway at the moment) at the last minute.
DS2 had homemade shepherd's pie that I'd frozen ages ago, with Sprouts and gravy.
DH and DS1 had pasta and red pesto, with a tin of mackeral and some jalapeños stirred in and a couple of fried eggs on top (looks and sounds gross to me but they loved it!) and I had celeriac fries with bacon, cheese and jalapeños (low carb).
Bonus here is this wasn't on my meal plan so it's like a 'free' dinner.

I had reduced chicken fajitas, that weren't that cheap in the end. They were mini fillets with a 30% off sticker but once I got home and checked my receipt, they were originally 4€ something, not whatever I thought the shelf label said. But, I've got loads left over and might even get tomorrow's dinner out of them too which will make them very cheap in the end.

That was yesterday and tonights dinner, and maybe tomorrow's.