Wednesday, 26 August 2009
-
Favorite Recipes On The Cheap...
Settling into my new apartment on campus, I'm starting to stock the kitchen and it's got me thinking about budget meals. There's always ramen (which I just bought in bulk!), but a girl needs some variety, even if she doesn't want to spend a fortune on food.
One of my favorite budget-food techniques to make sure I utilize all the food in my fridge. Even if you got a great deal on something, if you only use it once and waste the leftovers, you're wasting money. So I like recipes that I can use to clean out the fridge using the random small amounts of ingredients floating around the fridge.
One of my favorite things to do is throw together either a quesadilla or roll-up using whatever leftover meat and vegetables I have in the fridge. I toss in a little cheese, because cheese makes everything tasty, pop it in the microwave and I'm set. It's something that's hard to mess up, but it always tastes good.
And of course, there's stir fry. It doesn't require large amounts of the ingredients, so it's great for cleaning out the fridge as well, but you can even buy the vegetables outright for practically nothing if they're in season. In the winter, I usually just pick up a bag of frozen stir-fry veggies for under $2 at the grocery store that lasts several meals for me. If I have a little bit of meat or tofu around I'll throw that into my wok too and have at it. My favorite stir fry shortcut is to just toss in some oyster sauce instead of adding in the individual sauce ingredients. You can find this in the Asian food aisle of most grocery stores nowadays. It's nice and thick straight out of the bottle and I think it tastes much better than the stir fry sauce in a bottle.
When I'm feeling stuck, there's this blog called Poor Girl Eats Well that is absolutely fantastic. It's really amazing what this girl can do with a limited food budget. And the best part is that her recipes are usually really easy and come out super tasty.
What are some of your favorite cheap meals or recipes? How do you save on food?
-
recommend
- recs 0
-
share
-
email
- sent 0
Related Posts
Post a Comment
- Back to dollarish's Dollarish Site!
- Note: your comment will appear in dollarish's local time zone: GMT -05:00 (Eastern Standard - US, Canada)
About the Author
-
- From: Cara
- Name: Cara
- About Me: I'm a 24 yr old back in the Midwest for law school. I've survived the first semester as a law student after working as a paralegal for two years. Let's see how the rest of the time goes!
Stats: This Week All Time Posts: 7 151 Views: 3298 107694 Comments: 80 2189 View all posts by Cara
Comments (6)
Ramen + Eggs + Veggies = Super easy and tasty.
Omelets are always simple as well.
Oatmeal + PB (I prefer almond butter :]) + blueberries = low GI carbs + healthy fats + protein + antioxidents!!! Just heat up the oatmeal with however much water you like and mix in the rest. Really tasty sweet treat! Add in protein powder for more protein!
That's all I got for now lol Get a foreman grill? Season your meat with whatever mccormick seasoning and grill that baby!
I eat a lot of eggs and oatmeal- they're cheap and filling!
Beans and rice LOL.
Lots and lots of cheap recipes for you! The cheap chili is a good choice and it lasts (so you don't have to prepare food every day).
I really like the blog linked here!
One of my favorite blogs is http://www.crockpot365.blogspot.com/ where a woman used her crockpot every day last year, so there are over 365 recipes on the site. She doesn't update every day now, but it's still once every week or two, and the recipes are great because they're large portions, cheap, and generally healthy!
My family has a couple of "cheap" meals. One is called Stuff, which is pork and beans, onions, beanie weenies, tomatoes, and whatever else you might want to throw in. The other is Sausage & Taters (hey, we're from Alabama, cut us some slack!) which is smoked sausage or kielbasa cut up and sauteed with potatoes. We eat it with catsup.
Sheapards Pie is always good, cheap and filling.
Mix canned mixed veggies/ whatever left overs you have in the fridge (fresh veggies that need to be eaten, or canned veggies that are left over.) and groud beef, like your making a soup. Drain all the "juice" and excess liquid from your "soup" and put it in a casserole pan. Cover the top with mashed potatos (you can even use instant!) and put a little chesse on top if you like, bake it just long enough to melt the cheese and get it good and hot!
I've seen my grandma use campbells vegitarian soup and browned and seasoned groud beef before to go in it. Its one of my favorite foods, and its so easy. It makes a TON. If you try it out, let me know!