by Thrifty Lesley | Apr 7, 2024 | Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Lunches
These chicken and roasted pumpkin tarts are quick to assemble once you have roasted the pumpkin or butternut squash. A tasty dinner with a little salad of whatever you have handy, and you can have any extra ones in your lunchbox the next day. The chicken and pesto...
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 | Aug 6, 2022 | All Recipes, Lunches, Round Up Post
School packed lunches – the dreaded chore! Can you feed a hulking teenager for 30p a head? Ideas for school packed lunches – many people with school aged children need them. Packing up a lunch box for children or an adult packed lunch is bad enough. It can...
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 | Nov 8, 2017 | All Recipes, Dinners, Lunches, Things You May Never Need To Buy Again
Pesto Pesto is one of the most favourite things for a rapid and tasty tea. And although it isn’t wildly expensive to buy a pot of pesto, make it at home and a whole world of inexpensive pesto’s opens up to you. I have found that a delicious pesto can be made by adding...
by Thrifty Lesley | Aug 6, 2017 | All Recipes, Less than 500 calories, Other
If you grow runner beans, you may well have times, like me, when you are a bit overwhelmed with them and don’t know what else to do with them. Personally, I think home frozen runners are vile. I’ve tried numerous different ways of preserving them and haven’t liked...
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 | 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 | Nov 23, 2015 | Lunches
Long day today. Had a film crew here all day today from Bold Content Video for the Money Advice Service. They arrived shortly after 9:00am and didn’t leave until nearly 7pm. We worked all day, doing all kinds of shots, stills and video. An unbelievable amount of...
by Thrifty Lesley | Oct 31, 2015 | Dinners, Meal Plan 10, Meal Plans
Had this for lunch today. It’s a dinner from Meal Plan 10. I used a potato rather than frozen chips, as on the plan, as that is what I had. I chopped it up into chips, skin and all and dusted it with a pinch of garlic powder and tandoori spice, my favourite. You...
by Thrifty Lesley | Aug 5, 2015 | All Recipes, Lunches
We both had this for our lunch today. I had bought a pack of value ham for recipe testing, so now I need to use it up. I use a George Foreman grill which I’ve had for, ooh, 15 years? We’ve been in this house 8.5 years now, and I’d had it years and...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jun 27, 2015 | Meal Plans, No Power Meal Plan, Recipes Using No Power
Well this first recipe tested ok, good start. It has quite a lot of oil in it to get the calories in. If you don’t need that, you could cut the oil down quite a bit. If you have it, you could use olive oil here. There are 2 servings of fresh vegetables per person. It...
by Thrifty Lesley | May 19, 2015 | All Recipes, Puddings / Desserts
That delicious looking pudding was what I had yesterday at Galin. Peanut mousse with banana cake and caramel sauce. It was wonderful and inspired me to see if I could recreate the mousse. It was super smooth, mildly peanutty and a bit buttery. I asked the owner when...
