by Thrifty Lesley | Aug 24, 2025 | All Recipes, Dinners, Meal Plan 7
This recipe uses a one third portion of an easy beef ragu made for use in Meal Plan 7. The picture shows my portion, which is a quarter of the finished dish, not a half, so this dish could feed 4, and not the 2 originally thought. What do I need to make beef ragu...
by Thrifty Lesley | Nov 3, 2024 | All Recipes, Dinners
This is recipe I made when looking to use the vegetables in the vegetable box one week. I had a couple of aubergines and a huge lovely firm winter squash and used one aubergine and a wedge of pumpkin. This recipe, for 2-3, uses an aubergine / eggplant and a wedge of...
by Thrifty Lesley | Sep 12, 2024 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories
If you are like me and grow tomatoes in your garden, you are likely to have large amount of them at this time of year. I was looking for ways to use a lot in one go and came up with tomato risotto which used 400g for me and my husband. Oh my goodness, was it good! The...
by Thrifty Lesley | May 20, 2023 | All Recipes, Dinners, Lunches, Other
Wild garlic pesto This recipe is for pesto made from wild garlic, or ransoms, which is in season in the early Spring in the UK. The pesto is pungent, delicious and made from wild garlic foraged from the woods, or Allium triquetrum which is what I have growing in my...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 17, 2022 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Meal Plan 11, Stretch A Chicken
Risotti are incredibly useful to use up all kinds of bits and pieces. Or, as here, using leftover roast chicken and a couple of vegetables to make something truly delectable. How to make Italian chicken risotto This leftover chicken risotto uses meat leftover from a...
by Thrifty Lesley | Oct 14, 2021 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories
Barley, Mushroom & Spinach Risotto I had the cookery group round recently and we explored making risotti. We did a tomato and sausage risotto, a beetroot risotto, and this barley, mushroom and spinach risotto. Well actually, it was barley and mushroom risotto, I...
by Thrifty Lesley | Aug 13, 2016 | All Recipes, Dinners, Other
Another variation of pesto today – rocket, watercress, basil and sunflower seed. ingredients I’ve been tidying up out in the garden today and the rocket is one of the few things doing well this year. It is hanging over the bed in profusion, and getting in the way. So...
by Thrifty Lesley | Aug 4, 2016 | All Recipes, Dinners, Lunches, Other
I really fancied something made with a lemon from the fridge and lots of mint from the garden today. But the mint is straggly and chewed. An alternative would have been lemon balm, but that was even worse, every single leaf had multiple holes. So I cut both of those...
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 | Apr 8, 2016 | All Recipes, Bready Things, Cakes and Bakes
I was looking round the Internet last week, as you do, and came across lentil flour. What’s that, thought I, sounds intriguing. I started off with lentil flour and ended up with a loaf made with fizzy water! What I hear you say? That’s what I thought too....
by Thrifty Lesley | Dec 7, 2015 | Lunches
Tried the first experiment with reviving dead bread stored as breadcrumbs today. Had a look in the fridge and found a few bits and pieces that I thought would work, got a bag of breadcrumbs out of the freezer and had a play. I have set out below what I used to give...
by Thrifty Lesley | Nov 19, 2015 | Bready Things, Dinners, Love Your Leftovers, Lunches, Round Up Post
Went to a U3A meeting this morning on Science. One of our number talked about Astronomy. We discussed the immense distances involved and moved on to the possibility of life elsewhere. The presenter is a chemist, so we had a very interesting discussion around why...
by Thrifty Lesley | Aug 11, 2015 | All Meal Plans, All Recipes, Dinners, Meal Plan 9
This is dinner on day 2 and 5 of Meal Plan 9 Pasta & Tomato Sauce serves 2 60g cheddar, grated,Asda 350g/£1.55, 27p 100g onion, Asda 1kg/59p, 6p 300g tinned tomatoes – NB, not a whole tin, 23p 150g value pasta, 500g/29p, 9p 20g veg oil, Asda litre/89p, 2p...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jun 23, 2015 | Dinners
Arrgh, the pictures simply won’t size properly, it’s driving me nuts! Doing some gardening today, I pulled up a self sown Pink Fir Apple potato that was in the way of the spinach and it had several little potatoes on, so I had those with my lunch. They were really...
