by Thrifty Lesley | Mar 21, 2021 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Lunches
This curry base recipe is a very useful one to have in your repertoire. Endlessly versatile, you can add pretty much any protein to it. Curry Base Recipe To make the curry base, start by frying off a finely chopped onion. You can use any fat to do it. Ghee is...
by Thrifty Lesley | Feb 23, 2021 | All Recipes, Dinners, Lunches, Meal Plan 14
Today’s recipe, by request, is for Onion Tart. Yet another recipe that I helped develop on the Cheap Family Recipes site. When I wrote this recipe, years ago, in 2013, CFR had disappeared and I made the savoury tart recipe using my notes. Consequently, it is different...
by Thrifty Lesley | Feb 16, 2021 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories
This super tasty dinner recipe came out of a need to use up various items in the fridge. How to make crispy topped miso vegetables For this version, I used a pepper, a third of a bag of bean sprouts, 2 broccoli stalks, a carrot, 3 separate onion halves and some soft...
by Thrifty Lesley | Dec 28, 2020 | All Recipes, Cakes and Bakes, Christmas, Love Your Leftovers, Lunches
Part 4 of our attack on those Christmas leftovers. Chestnuts, and no stuffing Don’t know about you, but I always buy several packs of ready to eat chestnuts. I didn’t even make any stuffing this year. One of the things that I will use a packet for is this wonderfully...
by Thrifty Lesley | Dec 28, 2020 | All Recipes, Christmas, Love Your Leftovers
Part 3 of our attack on those Christmas leftovers. more turkey ideas Using stale, dead, bread, that’s been whizzed into breadcrumbs, use the zombie burgers basics, and add some finely chopped turkey, ham, beef. Add in some stuffing if you have any, a sprinkle of...
by Thrifty Lesley | Aug 22, 2020 | All Recipes, Bready Things, Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Lunches
This is a very simple loaf to make that just happens to be a vegan bread recipe. Just mix everything together and leave for the gluten to develop, then shape, prove and bake. No kneading required If you like, you can mix everything together and leave, covered, in the...
by Thrifty Lesley | Aug 17, 2020 | All Recipes, Less than 500 calories, Other, Sides
I made some lovely caramelised red onion chutney yesterday and I’m really pleased with it. The only problem is, I don’t know whether to call it red onion marmalade or red onion chutney! I’ve been looking at various recipes and descriptions to try and...
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 | Apr 26, 2020 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories
What are Faggots? Faggots are a traditional British meatball made from offal, especially pork, with herbs and onions for flavouring and breadcrumbs to stretch them out. The offal is minced and is usually a combination of heart, liver and fatty pork belly or bacon,...
by Thrifty Lesley | Mar 24, 2020 | All Recipes, Dinners, Meal Plan 1
This post was first written in June 2013 and updated in June 2021. This recipe is one of those extremely variable ones. You can bake this as a pie, leave the top of and bake as a bacon and sweetcorn tart, or steam it as a pudding and change the filling in a great many...
by Thrifty Lesley | Mar 23, 2020 | All Recipes, Dinners, Lunches, Sides
I made these onion bhajis recently and was very pleased with them. In these times of stripped supermarket shelves, recipes using minimal ingredients are even more useful than normaI. I used gram flour (chickpea flour), but if you don’t have that, ordinary flour would...
by Thrifty Lesley | Mar 13, 2020 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Love Your Leftovers, Lunches
I went to Canterbury Christmas Market with the U3A last December. One of the things I did there was to browse in the Oxfam book shop. Lots I wanted, of course, and I bought 3, couldn’t carry any more! One of the books I bought was a very sweary one called Thug...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jan 27, 2020 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Lunches
Just had lunch and made something different. I’ve got some lovely nut butters in the fridge that I got from SousChef.co.uk. I love that site, it’s got masses of lovely cheffy things! I got big 1kg tubs of almond, pistachio and hazelnut. It’s cheaper...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 25, 2019 | All Recipes, Dinners
First published in February 2014, rewritten and re-priced in November 2023. This is a gorgeous, easy to make curry. On the table within 20 minutes, bursting with fruity goodness and stuffed with veggies too. As is usual, there are many options, so you can use what you...