by Thrifty Lesley | Oct 4, 2024 | All Recipes, Dinners
I recently made a really good lentil ragu which I thought would work well as a lasagna. It did and it was very good indeed. This led me to think of other vegetable based mixes that I could substitute for the lentil ragu layer. The first one is a mushroom ragu,...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 25, 2024 | Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Lunches, Poaching A Whole Chicken
This Coronation chicken jacket potato recipe is part of a plan, starting the week with a whole poached chicken, to stretch a medium chicken to last a family of four all week. Twenty eight portions! What do I need to make Coronation chicken baked potato For 4 portions,...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 24, 2024 | Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Lunches, Poaching A Whole Chicken
This red cabbage and chicken Waldorf salad is part of a plan, starting the week with a whole poached chicken, to stretch a medium chicken to last a family of four all week. Twenty eight portions! What do I need to make red cabbage and chicken Waldorf For 4 portions,...
by Thrifty Lesley | May 3, 2023 | All Meal Plans, Meal Plan 14, Meal Plans For 4
The Fourteenth Meal Plan – wow, that’s three and a half months worth! Plus all the celebration and 5 day ones! This one, as per usual shows 3 meals a day, plus some cakey extras to fill any gaps, for 7 days, for 2 adults, and this time, two 15 year old...
by Thrifty Lesley | Mar 27, 2023 | All Recipes, Dinners, Lunches
I bought a 200g packet of smoked mackerel fillets and wondered how I could stretch them into lovely meals for 2. The first one I tried was this recipe for mackerel pâté that is super simple and very delicious. What do I need to make mackerel pâté smoked mackerel...
by Thrifty Lesley | Mar 24, 2023 | All Recipes, Dinners, Lunches
A mixed vegetable quiche is a classic British dish that comes out very cheap with a bit of frugalisation. If you think quiche or flan sounds like something your granny makes, you could always call it a tart and feel all contemporary. If you decide to use the oil...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 21, 2022 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Lunches, Stretch A Chicken
This spicy carrot and lentil soup uses chicken stock made when processing a roast chicken carcass. The stock brings a great deal of flavour to the soup. If you don’t have any home made stock, use a good quality stock cube, or a vegetable one if you’d like...
by Thrifty Lesley | Nov 29, 2021 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Meal Plan 2
Post first written in September 2013. Refreshed and updated November 2021. This recipe makes a generous portion of pasta, dressed with olives, tomato puree and soft cheese. Very quick to make, just taking as long as the pasta does to cook through. How To Make This...
by Thrifty Lesley | May 3, 2020 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Lunches
These peanut butter noodles don’t take too long and are really yummy, we’ve had them several times now. You can really stretch out a few shreds of chicken with this. I’ve done it with noodles and spaghetti, both worked well. Ingredients for Peanut Butter Noodles...
by Thrifty Lesley | Aug 29, 2019 | All Recipes, Breakfast, Less than 500 calories, Lunches
Do you have cheese sandwiches for lunch? Are you a little tired of them, or maybe wanting to ring the changes a little? How about making a potted cheese. I have lots of little bits and pieces of cheese stashed away in the freezer, things left over from various events,...
by Thrifty Lesley | Aug 18, 2019 | All Recipes, Dinners
I picked up a couple of heads of celery on yellow sticker this week. I wanted to make something main coursey with at least one of them. I had a little google and looked at Pinterest and came up with this vegan vegetable bake using celery, swede and chickpeas. Celery...
by Thrifty Lesley | Dec 8, 2018 | All Recipes, Christmas, Dinners, Vegetarian Christmas Meal Plan
A savoury christmas crumble, chestnuts in the base and walnuts in the topping. One of the recipes from the Vegetarian Christmas meal plan. Savoury Vegan Walnut and Chestnut Crumble Base mixture Priced at Asda December 2018 100g red cabbage, chopped not in the shops...
by Thrifty Lesley | Feb 6, 2018 | All Recipes, Dinners, Lunches
I bought 2 packs of yellow sticker pork mince recently. There was a post on the Facebook group talking about some meatballs from Waitrose which had added vegetables and pearl barley. I thought these sounded lovely, so decided to use some of the mince to experiment....
by Thrifty Lesley | Mar 22, 2016 | My Diary
chapatti Had a lovely play in the kitchen yesterday. Made some chapatti using some Approved Food flour – do you remember those huge, massive, giant bags I got ages ago? Yes, I’m still using them. Chapatti made with chapatti flour rather than wholemeal...