Dieting on a budget?

Soup is your friend if on a budget! If you're in the UK Aldi does a bag of pre-chooped vegetables for £1, stick that in a pan with some stock and a sweet potato/butternut squash and you have 5 lunches worth of soup for £2.50!

Lentil and bacon soup is also cheap to make and filling!

Frozen chicken is cheaper then fresh and you can cook a big curry to last a few days.

Unfortunatly it is more expensive to eat healthily, however with a bit of preperation and frozen alternatives it can be cheaper.

Spices make anything tasty.
That once a year when I grill a steak, it doesn't need anything to make it delicious.

The rest of the year I spice.
I make a lot of curries. Curry comes in many flavors as they are made everywhere from India to Indonesia, and every region has their own multitude of flavors. At the heart of it, a curry is just a stew or a stir-fry with lots of flavor. And now that you can get low-fat or no-fat coconut milk even the sweet green curries are not hard to make, nor do they have to break your calorie count.

I have a pretty good budget Breakfast for everyone....

Ingredients:
6 eggs
1 cup liquid egg white
3.5 oz roasted red peppers (or any other vegetable you like, the original recipe that I adapted used mushrooms)
3.5 oz of Cheese (you pick, I used Monterrey Jack which is reflected in the stats)
Salt and Pepper (to taste)
Cooking Spray

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Spray a standard 12 muffin pan with cooking spray.

In a bowl mix together the eggs and egg whites, season with salt and pepper if desired. Distribute the egg mixture evenly amongst 7 muffin cups (it took me about 1/2 cup per). Then put 1/2 oz of both peppers and cheese into each of the 7 cups.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes after removing them from oven. Muffins will shrink slightly as they cool, this is normal. Serve by themselves, or make a sandwich out of them. Store left overs in a Ziploc bag in the fridge, they should last about 5 days.

Stats:
-Calories: 124
-Carbs: 0.5g
-Fat: 5.0g
-Protein: 11.5g
-Sodium: 236.8mg
-Potassium: 169.3mg

Original recipe can be found in Matt Fitzgerald's, Racing Weight Cookbook.

Oh, and one more tip. next time you go shopping try just shopping the perimeter of the store. That is where the featured sales and endcaps are as well as dairy, meat and produce are located (at least they are in Walmart). You will end up buying less prepackaged and more whole foods. the endcaps are any variety of things, but are almost always on sale.

Beans are a great way to cut down costs. I make a big batch of a recipe similar to this and freeze part of it for later http://www.skinnykitchen.com/recipes/skinny-taco-chili-crock-pot-or-stove-top/. I put it in the crock pot, add a can of pintos and use stewed tomatoes instead of diced, can of mexicorn instead of frozen (it has little peppers in it) and add a can of mild diced green chilies and garlic. Sometimes i forget to add the garlic and onions. I also use a homeade taco seasoning so it doesn't have all the salt.

I started shopping once a month and doing a ton of freezer cooking. About half of my food is just prepared and frozen and the other half is cooked and frozen. I took my $900 -1,100 food bill down to $500-600 for a family of 3.

Another favorite in our house is cilantro lime pesto chicken - cube chicken and cook then marinate in pesto (cilantro, lime, garlic). Great tacos or on a salad and freezes great

I've shopped around for who has the best prices for the foods I eat. I also pick and choose what I'm going to eat each week so if something is on sale that's what I'm eating that week. Also I'm not sure how prices run around the country but I have found several good things in the freezer section at Whole Foods. Their brand 365 Organic has Chicken Fried Rice, Gnocchi Quattro Formaggi and a frozen line of organic quinoa. All are just $3 or $4. Each bag feeds 3 people but my husband and I share a bag. I've also found several different frozen vegetables like edamame 1 lbs bag for $1.99. I also buy some items at Sam's like spinach, mushrooms and other produce. I buy only what I will eat for the next week or 2.

These are all great suggestions! Also-look at 100 Days of Real Food. They have a whole section on eating well on a budget. It's not a "diet" website, it's a healthy eating site. I second (third??) the crock pot suggestions. I make beans almost once a week--a bag of dry beans is super cheap and I can get many meals out of one crock pot of beans. One night beans and rice, the next night mexican eggs-scrambled eggs with beans and salsa, with or without a tortilla, another night mashed up for nachos or with quinoa for stuffed peppers or with quinoa for a cold salad for lunch. And that's just one pot of beans. I do lots of different kinds of grains--polenta, quinoa, spelt, farro, and brown rice--with various veggies for dinner or for lunches. Pancakes, frittatas, whole grain pasta with tons of veggies--frozen are totally fine--house brand or generic--all fine and cheap.
It's actually kind of fun if you look at it like a game--how cheaply can I feed myself and my family well???

I go to the local market every sunday afternoon when they sell off their fruit and veg in bulk. Whatever is available, I grab, and create my menu for the week around whatever is in season. Last two weeks was eggplants- stuffed eggplants, eggplant in curry, eggplant lasagna, etc etc.


I'm also a massive fan of the frozen spinach cubes from supermarkets. Very good at getting some bulk for very cheap, spinach curries with added chickpeas and chicken = cheap as.

I hope Chloe comes back. I remember the days I cooked on a budget.