Back to thrifty eating….

I’m rather conscious that from my last posts it looks as though I have been wining and dining and living the life of luxury. Far from it, the recent extravagances have been rare forays into the world of ‘eating out’ and meals at home have been the thrifty norm. Conveniently there have been a number of articles on cheap and healthy meals in the press recently (probably in response to the never ending down beat news regarding the economy – everyone is feeling the squeeze). The January edition of the Observer Food Monthly was a special issue dedicated to eating well for less and was a useful and interesting read. Fellow blogger Miss South wrote an informative article on surviving on benefits and provided a fantastic menu for two for one week for £40. With a few tweaks here and there, we followed the menu and will definitely be using these recipes again. Poaching a whole chicken (rather than roasting), as she suggests, is something I have done very often before. It’s a great way to utilise the whole bird, giving fantastic moist meat and leaving you with a wholesome stock for further meals. Even leftover mash became a stack of potato farls, some eaten for breakfast with a fried egg and the remaining forming a satisfying stack, interleaved with grease proof paper in the freezer.

I used the leftover chicken to make the chicken and vegetable cobbler at the beginning of the week. This was delicious and warming on a cold night (although I didn’t make enough ‘cobbles’ to cover the whole of my dish!). There was enough leftover cobbler for lunch the following day with dinner using up the last bits in a spiced up version of rice and peas (again with enough leftover for a salad for lunch with the addition of some raw peppers and avocado). Midweek meals consisted of beetroot and goat’s cheese risotto (glamorously pink) and winter vegetable and pearl barley broth (both using the stock from the chicken and you guessed it, leftovers for lunch) and Friday’s meal was a spicy and very simple to make smoked fish chowder, using smoked mackerel and coley with some more of the stock (plus I still have more in the freezer). As I don't drink milk, I substituted an unsweetened oat 'milk' very successfully (the original recipe calls for 570ml milk). These are great recipes, costing very little with just some forethought and prior planning required.

Lentil dhal is something eaten very often in our house and is again, a very low cost but delicious meal. Normally I made a sindh mung dhal using de-skinned mung beans. I have yet to find these in any local shops so stock up at the Indian Spice Shop in Drummond Street (if you like Indian food then this place is heaven) on my way home. Last week, as a variation, I tried a red lentil dhal from Urvesh Parvais (the co-owner of Gujarati Rasoi in London) from the same Observer magazine. Eaten with a bowl of brown rice this is real comfort food. Another dish to add to my ever-growing (and already long) list of favourites!