Ideas for a weeks worth of cheap healthy meals

[bebemad]

I am trying to save as much as possible in all areas of my life and meals are an area I really want to spend less on but I also want to continue to eat healthy making sure we get the right amount of nutrition.
We have started having the mumsnet vegetable tagine which is great, healthy tasty and cheap, and then we have a leek potato soup which to is cheap and healthy. Do you have anymore ideas or recipes you use?
I am trying to bulk cook to save electricity and keep freezer stocked for the same reason as well.
Many thanks

You could make a dhal. Cheap and tasty!

Everyone on here seems to be recommending it right now, but the River Cottage Veg book has some fabulous, cheap, tasty meals in it.

I'm a fan of vegetable risotto made from pearl barley (very cheap), or putting pearl barley in soup to fill you up. I am buying more in season too which helps.

I add lentils to pretty much everything. They bulk things out, add flavour, and they're good for you.

bean chilli with rice/jacket in pitta
bean chilli turned into enchillarders
carrot, lentil & tom soup - can leave the tomato out if you want
lentil curry
jacket pot with beans/cheese
beans on toast with cheese/egg
chickpea burgers
lentil bake (made first time tonight & was lovely)
proberly got lots more - i cook with mostly beans or lentils!

Leek and Parmesan risotto
Chicken thigh and vegetable bakes
Tinned tuna pasta bake
Beef and root vegetable stew (mainly root veg)

Soups are a great way of getting the nutrition in cheaply and they generally freeze well too.

Replace mince with green lentils (canned) and you will cut costs and improve health almost instantly. eg veggie shepherd's pie with sweet potato mash Personally I would cook it with good stock and not the wine and it is probably better with potato mash not sweet potato mash but you get the idea.

soups

We've been following sainsbury's meal planner for 3 weeks and it's been great. There are 9 weeks and they tell you what to buy and how to cook. And it's a week's evening meals for 4 people for £20!! We have young DCs so we tend to eat leftovers for lunch too.

And dried lentils are cheaper at asian shops.

BBQ beans with mash tops - on BBC Good Food website

The veggie pie that Carrotsandcelery has linked to is lovely too and a top hit in our house.

Totally agree with drcrab, we have been doing that too. There is only me and DH so at least half of it goes in the freezer each night. Stock piling for when Baby Ugly is born and I won't be bothered to cook!

Nigel Slater's Sweet onion stew is really delicious. You could either cut out the bacon if it's expensive, of only use a bit. It really has lovely flavours.

Maybe pop onto the Old Style board on MSE and join the Grocery Challenge and check the rest of that board There is also lots of other boards with money saving and money making tips for all areas of your life.

Chicken thighs in a casserole with rice and value garlic bread are a favourite cheap tea in our house. The thighs were only £1.79 in lidl last week and was enough for our family of 5. The double pack of sainsburys garlic bread was only 74p. Cooked the chicken casserole in the slow cooker one day last week lovely

We also have a sausage dinner quite often. Sausage, veg and home made Yorkshire puds. Nice sausage are often on offer in the butchers or supermarket. 3 packets of sainsburys taste the difference sausage were only £6 recently and really nice.

Left overs, left overs, left overs.Roast meat can be made into shephards/cottage pie or chilli. Bones for stock, which then makes soup or rissoto. Root vegetable curry is cheap and delicious. Add lentils to everything makes it go further. Macoroni cheese is my absolute bare cupboard stanndby, home made pizza costsnothing (value mozzerella is fine.

When you see cheese sauce on special offer (reduced to like 25p), grab it and freeze it. Then pasta with a handful of frozen broccoli, peas, spinach, green beans, in the cheese sauce. Or you can make the cheese sauce but that is more expensive.

Sausages on special, or just cheap ones. A tin of haricot blanc, 6 sausages, 2 sliced onions, 1 pint stock, a bay leaf: fry the sausages and the onions, tip in the beans and cover with stock and bay leaf. Simmer until suppertime.

Pinto beans, in the slow cooker with a tsp of lard, chilli powder, half an onion, plenty of water. On low for 8 hours min, then you can either freeze at this point and refry from frozen, or refry now and freeze the finished product. Good for wraps, sandwiches, omelettes - bulking of all kinds.

Leftover mash (you can freeze this), a tin of salmon (about 75p at Lidl), a sliced onion, any seasoning you fancy, ananegg (about 25p). Squidge the fish and mash together with the egg. If you have breadcrumbs (in the freezer, aye), you can dab the patties in breadcrumbs, but it's not necessary. Bake in the oven or fry according to taste and serve with a giant pile of green veg (your frozen peas, beans, spinach etc again).

Mash can be any root veg: add in sweet potato, carrot, parsnip, celeriac, whatever is cheap. Sweet potato is cheap in Lidl and asian grocers, celeriac is cheap in farm shops.

hth, sorry for going on

With meaty dishes we use half the meat and add a can of pulses (eg black eye beans) - great for things like cottage pie.

Will be back later, work now - in fact I'm going FT in April so
DH and I are going to come up with a meal plan...

Sausages and roast veg
Roast chicken one night then curry or something the next night
Soup and pudding nights
Broccoli and cauliflower cheese with potato wedges
Spaghetti carbonara
Chilli with less mince and more lentils.

What I'd really like is ideas for simple meals to heat up at work. We don't really eat big meals on weekday evenings now so I'd rather have something bigger in the day, and there's only much soup I can take...