by Thrifty Lesley | Jun 25, 2024 | All Meal Plans, All Recipes, Less than 500 calories, Meal Plan 3, Meal Plan 7, Puddings / Desserts
Sunday Lunch DP and I often have a Sunday lunch at, erm, lunchtime, then in the evening we have a pudding, often a fruit crumble with custard or evaporated milk. I always used to make custard using dried powder and UHT milk. Then one day, having spotted value custard,...
by Thrifty Lesley | Nov 27, 2021 | All Recipes, Cakes and Bakes, Less than 500 calories, Meal Plan 12, Meal Plan 14, Meal Plan 2, Meal Plan 9
Post originally published October 2013, refreshed and updated November 2021 These little biscuits are fun to make, especially if you make tiny hearts or teeny squares. Spice them up with cinnamon or mixed spice at Christmas time. Or see the variations for masses of...
by Thrifty Lesley | Nov 21, 2021 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Lunches, Meal Plan 2
First written in August 2013, refreshed and updated in November 2021. I wanted to try a couscous salad that I have been doing for a while and see if I could get it sub 50p. Well, it worked out at 71p for the dish in the picture, and there is plenty there for two, so...
by Thrifty Lesley | Sep 24, 2021 | All Recipes, Bready Things, Breakfast, Cakes and Bakes, Less than 500 calories, Meal Plan 2, Meal Plan 4
This post was first written in October 2013. Re-written and refreshedin September 2021. If you take 250g flour, some yeast and water, you can add many, many different things to it and get a lovely loaf, with 4 portions, to use for any meal, as an anytime snack or...
by Thrifty Lesley | Sep 8, 2021 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Meal Plan 2
First published in August 2013, revised and updated in September 2021. Have you ever made pesto using fresh vegetables? It was quite a revelation when I discovered it. I’ve found that I can make something that I like to call pesto (Italians wouldn’t!) with...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jun 21, 2021 | All Recipes, Cakes and Bakes, Less than 500 calories, Meal Plan 1
A lovely, slicing, easy to make fruit loaf. Use any dried fruit you have. Cuts into 12 slices at 8p a slice First published in June 2013, updated June 2021 How To Make an Easy Fruit Loaf Line a 2lb loaf tin and heat the oven Stir all the dry ingredients together. In a...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 13, 2016 | Breakfast, Meal Plan 14, Round Up Post
I am a new convert to overnight oats, and I’m loving them. These are wonderful if you are time stretched. You can make up dishes ready to be topped, or a big bowl that can be used over several days, or directly in little pots ready to be topped and carried off...
by Thrifty Lesley | May 5, 2016 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Lunches, Meal Plan 14
The budget cookery group for the U3A were here Tuesday afternoon and one of the things we made was fish cakes. We did one version using a tin of sardines in tomato sauce, and another using a tin of tuna canned in oil. Sardines in Tomato Sauce Fish Cakes Tin of...
by Thrifty Lesley | Feb 24, 2016 | All Recipes, Cakes and Bakes, Lunches, My Diary
low carb soup Still on my quest for nice things to eat on this high fat, now even more low carb, diet my coach has put me on, I thought I’d do some soup. I love soup and have it often. It suddenly occurred to me today that if I didn’t put in my usual scoop...
by Thrifty Lesley | Dec 19, 2015 | Cakes and Bakes, Christmas, Love Your Leftovers
A few days ago, I made some mince pies for the U3A Christmas meeting. I had bought a new large jar of mincemeat, but then remembered I still had 2.5 jars of the same size left from last year. So I dug out one of those and used that. I made some oil pastry, then used...
by Thrifty Lesley | Dec 1, 2015 | Christmas, Other
Had the U3A budget cooking group here, at the house, this afternoon. I was wondering what to do. Thought it needed to be seasonal, but most definitely not mince pies. I ended up deciding to do a few nibbly type entertaining bits. We started off with Nigella’s Union...
by Thrifty Lesley | Oct 11, 2015 | Puddings / Desserts
Dinner with friends and family last night was lovely, of course! Lots of chat and laughter. Got home very late and slept only fitfully, so am pretty tired today. It seems to be that if I miss what my system considers to be my sleeping ‘slot’, it gets all out of kilter...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 13, 2015 | No Power Meal Plan, Recipes Using No Power
This is dinner on 2 days on the No Power Meal Plan. Use this same amount on both days, using the tin of blackeye beans on one day and the kidney beans on the other. Serves 2 half a tin hotdogs, Asda 49p, 25p 30ml oil, Asda £1.25/litre, 4p 100g carrot, Asda £1.18/2kg,...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 9, 2015 | Breakfast, Recipes Using No Power
This lovely Bircher muesli is from Rose Elliot’s book, Vegetarian Cookery, which I’ve had for ever. I use lots of recipes from it and it was one of my standby books when we were both vegetarian. The muesli is wonderfully delicious. Rose recommends having it with...
