You can do a lot with the humble potato. Try slicing four medium spuds as thinly as you can then add a layer to a greased baking dish. Dot with butter or margarine, add salt and pepper and a small amount of fresh or powdered garlic. Continue to add layers of the potato, seasoning in the same way until you have used them all.

Dissolve a stock cube in a small amount of water and add milk to make about half a pint of liquid ml. Pour over your spuds, then add grated cheese to cover. Eat as it is or, ideally, with a green vegetable. I have made this in my slow cooker, which is more economical to run. I add the cheese for the last 20 minutes or so.

You can make it really cheaply by using a packet sauce, stirring it into your macaroni or any pasta and topping with extra grated cheddar, browned under the grill.

Because they have such a strong flavour, a can of sardines in tomato sauce is lovely mixed with hot spaghetti. Add some of the pasta water to loosen it a bit.

If you have a pepper, fry that up and add it too. It may be a bit of a stretch to call this a pie, but it goes down a treat with some baked beans! Cook and mash as many potatoes as you think you will need, and mix in some fried onions.

If you have any leftover cooked veg, that can go in too. Grate some cheddar and mix half in with the mash and put the other half on top. Bake for about 20 minutes. Very similar to the dish above. Yes, there is a theme developing!

Mix a can of tuna in with some mashed potatoes and fried onions. Top with cheese if you have some and brown under the grill. Eggs make a cheap meal, and omelettes are a super quick and easy way to eat them. Add thinly sliced cooked potato, peppers, peas, cheese, mushrooms, canned sweetcorn — whatever you have to hand.

Fry some onions and garlic for five minutes, then add any other veg you have available. Throw in a can of chickpeas, a can of tomatoes and some seasoning and cook for 20 minutes to combine the flavours. Serve with rice, pasta, potatoes or bread. I regularly add cooked spinach or tinned potatoes to make it more substantial.

My recipe is here. This is an old one, from my copy of a s frugal cook book called the Goode Kitchen, by Shirley Goode. If you ever see this second hand, I heartily recommend you purchase it. Parboil the rice for 5 minutes, drain, then return to the pan.

Add the tuna and the soup, then the peas. Bring to the boil and simmer until all of the liquid has been absorbed about 10 minutes. Season and serve.

If you have a family, it is worth buying your spuds from the farm shop in sacks, so that you can pull out the larger ones for baking. Pretty much anything is good as a topping: cheese, tuna, baked beans, leftover chilli, bolognese or any kind of casserole.

You could add cheese and sweet corn to this basic meal if you have them. Season well with black pepper and mixed dried herbs. Make a tin of baked beans more interesting by adding 1 tsp of curry powder and a tablespoon of raisins as you heat them through.

You could also fry an onion and garlic and mix them in too. Serve with some crusty bread or on toast. I deliberately make too much rice when I am cooking some, so that I can make the leftovers into egg fried rice.

Chop up a small onion and fry in some oil for five minutes. Add the cooked rice — about g is enough for two people — and fry a further five minutes. Add a little more oil and two beaten eggs. Allow to set for a minute and then stir vigorously. We enjoy this with a simple stir fry of whatever veg needs using up, soy sauce and some vegetable stock.

Dumplings are great for filling you up an, when you are aiming for a cheap meal, vegetable stew is a cheaper option than meat. Add some pulses to your stew to make it more substantial.

This is a good basic dumplings recipe. People baulk at the idea of eating offal these days. However, meat such as kidneys and liver are still very cheap in comparison to muscle meat. So perhaps now is the time to try a liver and bacon recipe, such as this one from the Hairy Bikers.

Think tofu, maybe some type of brown rice bake, a stir fry, a pasta dish. Think wonderful salads, gazpacho or wraps. Other meatless options perhaps not as healthy could be potato pancakes and applesauce, pastas, grilled cheese and tomato soup, scrambled eggs or cheese rarebit.

Waffles or pancakes can be a good choice, but if I do something like this, I do try to health it up with whole grains of some type. Smorgasbord Night: Late in the week, we pick and choose our favorite leftovers and reheat or reinvent. Fish Night: Unless fish is featured in another meal, I work in at least one meal featuring fish or seafood.

While fish can be a pricier option, it is one option where the potential health benefits outweigh the price. The other two nights I base on bringing in another type of meat or protein. If big meat night is chicken, then we might have chicken salad for one night, hamburgers one night and pork chops the next.

If big meat night is a pork dish, like pulled pork, we might have pulled pork sandwiches again one night, and then chicken another night and some type of fish another. It becomes almost second nature after a while to fill in the blanks on these meals. Cooking takes time, a precious resource, and the better use you can make of yours, the easier it is to get meals on the table.

Here are a few examples:. Get your spouse, roommates, kids, etc. Like this: Like Loading Tweet Pin Share Hearing from you makes my day! Comment below. Cancel reply This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Menu Inspiration Tweet. Vary the starches throughout the week to include some type of potato, beans, rice, and noodles or bread.

Serve at least two vegetables each night, paying special attention to the healthiest ones and the ones in season. These are usually the most colorful veggies, and generally the least expensive. Double and freeze items on your menu when you make them, things like soups, casseroles, lasagna, sloppy joes, taco meat, etc.

Calzone Chickpea and Pumpkin Curry Mushroom Risotto

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