Please help me out with some *CHEAP* but tasty recipes!

[MerryXMoss]

Atm dh does about 95% of our cooking. Don't get me wrong, his meals are lovely, but they are so so so expensive. We spend about £70 a week on the supermarket shop and I reckon about £35 - £45 of this is on food alone (i.e. not booze, not pet food, not toiletries or anything like that).

Dh is into everything being prepared from fresh, it's all organic, free range, that kind of thing. Whilst I have no problem with this it is very expensive, especially for meat.

What I would like are some recipes for things that taste really delicious, use minimal amounts of meat (as that's the expensive stuff and tbh meat every day is hardly healthy) and are very, very filling. (Oh and if they contain anything in chunks or finger-food esque that would be ideal as we're doing BLW too.)

Oh, dh is fussy - hates fish, cauliflower, chickpeas, not that keen on lentils (though if they're disguised well he'll not balk) etc.

Can anyone help?

Anyone? Or have I made it needlessly complex?

here

Oh wow there are loads! I am a pretty novice cook; which ones would you recommend to start with?

hi mossy- make soup as the baby will eat it- my ds loves cauliflower, just dont season it til you have separated a bit for your baby.
cut up the cauliflower and an onion and sweat them in a bit of butter to add flavour, then either use milk or water or a mixture of the two, fill pan til just covering them (about 1.5-2 inches) and boil. wait til cool, whizz in the mixer, and voila a lovely soup- you can grate in some cheese as well. left over bread can become croutons, just toast in a pan with a bit of garlic

you can make stew nice and eke it out by bunging in some barley and making dunmplings- it freezes as well.

best tip is think of menus for a week, and do a shopping list.

Can you get your meat from a local butcher - would be much cheaper. Choose a good butcher and they'll know exactly where their meat comes from etc.

Also - double up on recipes then you can freeze another meal - cheaper to cook a large amount as you can bulk out sauces/casseroles/chillies/curries etc.

Mossie... I'm not sure that my suggestion will help with your budgeting but I love the bbc food website. You can search by recipes or up to three ingredients - then it comes back with possible meals.

I usually do my shopping weekly (but have got out of this routine recently) and we write the menu for a week so I have a shopping list to go by. It has sped things up and economised my shopping because I'm not buying lots of extras.

Good luck with this. It's great that your dh is a fab cook .

I bulk up mince dishes (ie bolognase) by adding an extra tin of tinned tomatoes, i don't think the amount of meat we eat either is very healthy and try to dilute it iykwim with extra sauce.
Saying that organic free range chicken is the best i've ever tasted and you only need half the amount for taste and filling you up as you get from the budget (my usual) chicken.

Also, 'apparantly' veg that needs to be peeled (please don't quote me on this), isnt any worse than organic as you are peeling off the outer skin that the pesticides are on.
I don't have the luxury of organic everything but if you can afford it, go for it. I am hoping to have my own wee veg patch in the back garden this year so I can be more 'organic'