Meal Ideas on a Budget

Pork ribs. Cook 'em slowly in the oven for a few hours in BBQ sauce or another marinade of your choice (homemade or otherwise). Eat with a salad or veggies. One rack feeds 2 people and costs £3 ish from Morrison's.

Noodles and chicken with veg is also cheap and healthy.

I'm a poverty stricken student and my advice is to go veggie. I made a weeks worth of dinners for £3! I don't know if you like curry but here's a tasty recipe for potato and lentil curry. (serves 5, 239 calories without rice)

Ingredients:
1 x onion
2 x big potatoes chopped into large chunks
2 x carrots
3 x tomatoes
1 cup lentils
4 cloves garlic
small piece of ginger
1 x tsp salt
2 x tsp cumin
1 x tbsp curry powder
Peel and chop up all yer veg.
Dice the onion and finely chop ginger and garlic.
Fry the onion in pan along with the spices & salt until onions are softened (the spices stick to the pan but dinnae worry too much cos it comes off once you add the boiling water).
Add chopped veg and lentils to pan, mix all together so everything's coated in the spices.
Add 5 cups of boiling water.
Leave to cook.
Et voila!

I need some ideas on how to eat healthy when I have $50.00 a week to spend on food for two people. We've been relying on a lot of cheap food and it's taking a toll on our health. I am a lousy cook and I get so depressed because everything tastes like crap. I love healthy food. I am looking to avoid carbs and sugars.

My criteria:

Cheap
Healthy
Easy to make

The only way to stop being a lousy cook is to practice. Go to allrecipes.com and put easy in the title of whatever you want to cook. I feed a family of 6 on $150/week. My diary is open, go look at what we eat. Disclaimer: my doctor swears it's not healthy, but all of my lab numbers make her happy. I say it's real food the way God made it grow, it's just not conventional wisdom on nutrition. I eat gluten free so it can be done cheaper than I do it as far as breads and breaded items go. Don't be afraid of canned vegetables, they are better than nothing when you are on a budget. If you know you are going to eat it today or tomorrow, my grocery has a rack of reduce price produce, get it and eat it.

Easy meal that will stretch a long way for two people:
1 lb lower fat ground beef (85/15 or 90/10) or you can use ground turkey, whichever is cheaper.
8 oz tomato paste (If you like chunky tomatoes, you can use a can of diced. Drain it if you like thick chili. My kids aren't fans of chunks of tomato and the paste gives the flavor and enough in terms of nutrition.)
2 cans Chili Magic

Brown the ground beef over medium high heat in a 2 qt sauce pan and break it up into small (but bigger than for a taco) pieces as you brown it. (I use a wooden spoon for this. It works better than plastic.) When the meat is all browned, reduce the heat to medium and stir in the Chili Magic and tomato and cook to a low boil (just begins to bubble on the surface). Reduce to medium low and cook another 10 minutes stirring occasionally. Serve with crackers or tortilla chips and shredded cheese

That feeds my whole family one meal. You can buy freezer safe containers, cook it freeze some and microwave it when you are in a hurry or just ready for chili again.

P.S. Don't let cost talk you out of extra virgin olive oil and real butter. Big flavor for a small amount of fat. I use less of both of those than I do other oils and margarine so it evens out in the budget.

Easy, full-proof and cheap. I'm pretty sure they even sell frozen onions and peppers together to save even more...you can even make your own chicken broth (or use veggie). Only about 160 calories a serving and really filling.

Spicy Slow Cooker Black Bean Soup (serves 6)
Ingredients:
• 1lb of dry black beans, soaked overnight
• 4 tsp of diced jalepenos
• ½ onion, chopped
• 6 cups of chicken broth
• ½ tsp garlic powder
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• ¾ tsp black pepper
• ½ tsp hot sauce

Directions:
1. Drain black beans, and rinse.
2. Combine beans, jalapenos, and chicken broth in a slow cooker. Season with garlic powder, chili powder, cumin, cayenne, pepper, and hot pepper sauce.
3. Cook on High for 4 hours. Reduce heat to Low, and continue cooking for 2 hours, or until you are ready to eat.

I like to make Steel Cut Oats, in a slow cooker, for Breakfast. A 24oz bag costs something like $5 at the grocery store and I can get 2 batches out of a bag (Almost 2 weeks depending on how large a serving you portion out - I like ~1.5 cups).

I'm really picky about fruit and won't eat apples or bananas if they have been sitting around too long. The Steel Cut Oats are great for this as it allows me to use up fruit that might otherwise go to waste. Even if you were to buy fruit specifically for the oats, the meal is pretty inexpensive and goes a long way.

Try this blog site - http://cheaphealthygood.blogspot.com/
The site also has a recipe index.

I buy ground turkey on sale and then freeze it. Some ideas:

Turkey Burgers
Turkey Meatloaf
Boiled Eggs
Stuff Peppers
Rice
Beans
PB&J on whole grain

Here's a great idea for a whole chicken - makes 3 meals for a family of four. I serve with extra veggies to serve 6 people and I use corn starch instead of flour in the first recipe. I also use corn tortillas for the second recipe.

http://leanneely.com/2009/rubber-chicken/

We shop at save-a-lot, roughly 50 a fortnight for food. We buy the cheapest chicken and sausages and sometimes mince meat, frozen veg, what ever is on sale for sandwich fillings, cereal, pasta, rice, flour, pasta sauce, bread, a couple bags of easy quick frozen meals for days where I'm busy and even beer for my husband. With that list I can make a whole variety of meals.

http://www.supercook.com/ will allow you to put in the ingredients and show you what kind of meals you can make out of what you have.

I love my crock-pot, I'm not a great cook so just combining everything and whaking it into a pot that cooks everything for me, and still tastes great, is so helpful. You can make so many cheap meals with a crock-pot, I usually make enough to last for lunch the next day for my husband, that way the bread and other assorted bits and pieces last longer in the house.

I buy some things in bulk and then freeze it so it doesn't go bad. Fresh vegetables tend to end up costing too much as I use them in every meal, so we stick to frozen or canned. We never go hungry and always have plenty to eat even on that tight of a budget for food. I'm lucky as family here grow some fruit and veg in their gardens, so every so often we'll get a treat, this week we got star fruit! Yummy. So perhaps starting your own garden will be helpful.

Oh...meat markets, they tend to have cheap meat in bulk too