by Thrifty Lesley | Feb 25, 2024 | Dinners, Poaching A Whole Chicken
How to poach a whole chicken to use for multiple meals Why poach a chicken? Two main reasons. Poaching means that your chicken meat will be beautifully moist, much more so than a roasted one, and with little effort on your behalf. And secondly, much less fuel is used...
by Thrifty Lesley | Feb 1, 2024 | All Recipes, Dinners, Stretch A Chicken
How to stretch a chicken to last the whole week Do I need to buy a whole chicken? Buying a whole chicken and jointing it yourself is cheaper than buying ready jointed chicken pieces. If you are going to roast a chicken, then a whole one is much nicer to present at the...
by Thrifty Lesley | Aug 16, 2023 | All Recipes, Dinners, Poaching A Whole Chicken
A quick and simple healthy chicken spaghetti recipe using Sicilian flavours. Juicy chicken, sweet pops of raisins, salty olives, crunchy almonds, luscious sun-dried tomatoes and zesty lemon – delicious! Good hot for dinner, with any leftovers for lunch the next...
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 | Nov 20, 2022 | All Recipes, Cakes and Bakes, Christmas, Christmas Meal Plan 4, Meal Plans
Christmas Week Food. Lots of festive flavours & not many £££’s Christmas Meal Plan If you are on a tight budget, Christmas food can be very difficult, causing stress, and maybe even debt too. Happily, you can enjoy a delicious festive meal, and eat well for...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 20, 2022 | All Recipes, Dinners, Stretch A Chicken
Spicy Chicken Pasta Bake – Stretch A Chicken (4) Got a little bit of chicken to use up? Try it in this spicy pasta bake- make it as hot and spicy as you like! How to make Spicy Chicken Pasta Chop the onion and sauté in a little oil until soft. Add garlic,...
by Thrifty Lesley | Nov 29, 2021 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Meal Plan 2
Pasta with Olives, Tomato & Soft Cheese 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...
by Thrifty Lesley | Sep 8, 2021 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Meal Plan 2
Vegan Broccoli Pesto 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...
by Thrifty Lesley | May 12, 2021 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Lunches
Spiced lentil balls This recipe is inspired by one I found in a recipe book first published in 1994. Amazingly, it’s still in print, and extremely cheap too! There are loads of good recipes in the book, several of which I’ve made since buying it. ...
by Thrifty Lesley | Dec 28, 2020 | All Recipes, Cakes and Bakes, Christmas, Love Your Leftovers, Lunches
Christmas leftovers – part 4. Chestnut Soup; Fruit Crumble Toppings; Mixed Nut Butter; Turkey Zombie Burgers 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...
by Thrifty Lesley | Dec 28, 2020 | All Recipes, Christmas, Love Your Leftovers
Christmas Leftovers – part 3. Turkey Burgers; Cheesy Pasta; Parsnip Dahl; Parsnip soup 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...
by Thrifty Lesley | May 3, 2020 | All Recipes, Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Lunches
Peanut Butter Noodles. Add chicken or fish, or keep it vegan 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...
by Thrifty Lesley | May 1, 2019 | All Recipes, Dinners
I have been exploring swapping out the ragu layer of a lasagna for many other different things. The first was made using a really good lentil ragu which I thought would work well as a lasagna. It was very successful and inspired me to think of lots of other...
by Thrifty Lesley | Feb 25, 2019 | 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,...
