What do you consider a "cheap everyday meal"?

[FloopyZebra]

Just made a pasta bake for 4 and decided to cost it out as I like to keep a keen eye on my shopping costs, we spend on average £100 per week for 3 adults and 1 teen (that's for everything including beer and wine)
It was a veggie meal tonight wholemeal pasta with a creamy tomato sauce, onions, courgette and mushrooms topped with grated cheese. The total cost was £4.50.
Tomorrow we are having pulled pork with spicy rice and salad, which will be a bit more at £10.00 but there will be meat leftover.
An ulta cheap meal for us is a thick homemade veg soup served with warm bread.

so restrictive eating I have to do but I still miss cheese

@Dullardmullard Why can't you eat cheese? Is it because it's high in calories and you're trying to lose weight or...?

If you can, have a little bit of what you love. x

@BarbaraofSeville I have some salmon because we're supposed to have oily fish at least once a week, and other oily fish I don't like as much. I have salmon for my fish portion twice a week. But I don't have meat much, so my budget turns out ok.

If I was really broke I'd have sardines instead for that time. But a little 'luxury' is nice sometimes.

Sounds really tough 😞
It’s hard enough just cutting out gluten and cross contamination.

Baked potatoes with beans, cheese and salad

Spaghetti bolognaise or lentil ragu. Mince is getting ridiculous!

Build your own burgers with frozen own brand chicken or/and beef burgers. With your own choice of extras on top. Getting more expensive too though.

Pasta pesto

Pasta bakes. More popular here if some sausages through it.

Mexican one pot fajitas. Onion, spring onion, peppers, can of Mexican beans (both Asda and Tesco do good cans of taco spiced beans), paprika and chilli powder. If we need more (eg for dh to take to work when he's on-call) just add another tin of beans. If feeling flush, add chicken! Serve with wraps and rice.

Come on. There’s no need to make fun of meals people are providing for their family during these difficult times.

If you know anyone with an allotment, they will probably give you courgettes! It's that time of year, I'm taking another huge bag of courgettes and cucumbers into work to distribute tomorrow. I've picked an absolute mountain of blackberries the last couple of days too, I can't stand seeing them go to waste.

Dal and rice costs pennies if you make it from scratch.

For summer, tabbouleh with crusty bread and some feta or grilled halloumi is super-cheap if you grow your own herbs (bulgur wheat, value tomatoes and cucumber, spring onion. Add homegrown parsley and mint).

Vegetable soup, lentil soup, pea and mint soup, broccoli and blue cheese soup if you use frozen broccoli and Danish blue cheese…

Vegetable cha han (fried rice), if you use frozen mixed veg. I put a couple of eggs into it.

Potato cheese and beans is one of my favourite but having to downsize the beans.

Heinz beans 1.40 a can!! Tescos is a good substitution

I love salmon but it's soooo expensive

I do need to rejig what we eat though

@porridgeisbae

Coeliac with extras so can’t eat it anymore along with diabetes which is now being investigated as lada not 2

Im also underweight due to my restrictive diet.

I loved all the quick cheap meals but the above put paid to that sadly.

@Elderflower14 thank you !

Beans on toast and grated cheese on top

Or pesto /Tinned tomato sauce in pasta

Cheap filling yummy

Bumping for ideas.

A cheap meal we have most weeks is spaghetti carbonara. 23p Asda spaghetti, Asda cooking bacon £1.30 or so, more like gammon you need to cut it with scissors as it goes in the pan. Sauce of a couple of eggs which we always have in the fridge, parmesan ditto, salt and pepper and a cup of the pasta water. Sometimes I add broccoli to the spaghetti cooking.

This is one of the meals we do to try (and fail) to get our food bill down

I worked out we spend anywhere between £10 and £20 a night usually on the evening meal 😱 to be fair that's usually 3 different meals a night due to various dietary requirements. The above carbonara is one of the few meals that suit us all, although I have to cook the bacon seperate for veggie DC so they have it without bacon

Meals made with what's reduced at the supermarket!
Time the trip to buy carefully.

I also haunt salmonella corner at the supermarket, and stock the freezer up with stuff I don't need immediately. One of my ways of stretching food is to make a huge pan of roast veggies when I have the oven on. We eat a portion with whatever protein we're having one night. Another night I open a tin of black beans and mix them with the leftover roast veggies and a slug of taco sauce then fill tortillas and chuck grated cheese on them and bake them and call it tacos. Cheap and quick and easy - win-win!

@Decafflatteplease If you make the carbonara with mushrooms soaked in a dash of soy sauce and fry to slightly crispy it's a surprisingly good bacon replacement.

This sounds delicious 😋