The Cheapest Healthy Meal Ever!

newlywed · 4 January 2007 at 6:32PM

spanielsmum wrote:

Is the rice precooked or raw? This would be ideal on a slimming World green day....all free food, just a fraction of a syn for the stock cube.:T

Raw...

Hold on while I search the recipe.....

Put a layer of uncooked rice in the bottom of a greased ovenproof (casserole) dish. Then slice up a large onion and layer on top of the rice, then layer of sliced raw potaotes (one big one should do it just to cover all the onion - overlap the slices a bit if you've got enough). Make up some chicken stock (instructions on the paket) and carefully pour into the dish up to the level of potato. Cover with lid or foil and Gas Mark 5 for about 50 mins.

serve with some meat or some sort.... sausages or chops and gravy poured over.

Serves 4 (with the additional meat)

Diffficult to get this wrong - the rice sometimes goes a bit sticky if you cook it too long but when you serve it an pour gravy over it's fine

doobs_2 · 4 January 2007 at 7:28PM

jennyjelly wrote:

This thread is really bringing out some great sugestions. Love this one.

How about corned beef, for a sort of CB hash type thing? I've never tried it but I bet it would be good.

Hubby cooked corned beef hash last night, never had it before, it was quick cheap and very tasty! served it with pickled red cabbage and pickled beetroot, the best meal iv'e had in ages and the kids loved it, result!:T

coolcol1 · 4 January 2007 at 10:24PM

.......tasty cheapies....italia......
pasta twists,sauce or tin of chopped toms with herbs,onion,garlic,and add anything else you fancy.(meat,tuna,veg)...even fry garlic with olive oil and pour over the bread crusts,and bake for 5mins.lovely!(cheese optional)-£2
.......tasty cheapies....traditional
cold meat(any),mash,pickles from xmas,pease pudding or salad or both!£2.5
.......tasty cheapies....salad days..
do a mixed /tossed salad,fry plenty of tinned pots in olive oil (if not marg)add tyne or chives or any herbs,and fry,serve over salad making sure the oil is now the salad dressing,then throw on tinnedtuna &cheese.....yum..........£2.5
.......tasty cheapies....no smash!
do mash but add olive oil instead of milk/butter,add chopped onion,this goes well with anything-try putting an egg on top,then surround the mash with beans/spegetti,or serve with sausages with either veg,cabbage,coleslaw£2.5

Mice_Elf · 4 January 2007 at 10:57PM

There's a quick and easy one that I do as I've usually got all the ingredients in.. :

Egg Fried (Tuna) Pasta

Make up pasta according to packet instructions
About 5 - 6 minutes before done, add frozen peas (as much as you like really, I don't measure)
Cook until peas & pasta are done.
Drain water from pan and place pasta & pea mix into a separate bowl
Depending on how much pasta, crack an egg into the same saucepan (I tend to use 1 egg per 2 person pasta serving)
Mix up egg until cooked
Add the pasta & pea mix and stir until evenly mixed with the egg.
Add one tin of tuna in sunflower oil (undrained)
Mix evenly with the pasta, pea & egg.

As an alternative to tuna, I sometimes use chopped sausage, chopped frankfurters, bacon bits or chopped tomatoes.

Mice_Elf · 4 January 2007 at 11:00PM

Forgot to add another one that I made up the other day.

Fry an onion in a little oil until soft
Add left over turkey & sausages from Christmas (or any pre-cooked meat)
Add anything else you fancy. I added green beans, some mushrooms & sweetcorn & peas.
Add 1 packet Cup a Soup chicken soup with a little water
Add 1 tbsp plain flour
Add probably about 2 - 3 tbsps double cream
Add herbs to taste. I added some oregano with a little bit of cumin for a mild kick.

Stir all together and simmer until everything is heated through.

I served this with rice, but a green salad or on its own would be fine, too.

falc_2 · 5 January 2007 at 7:21AM

Thanks for this recipe, which has reminded me of something. There's an amazing variation to this where you use stock. It's in Nigel Slater's book Appetite. First you do roast chicken, then with the leftover chicken you make stock, then you slice potatoes and onions in layers in a casserole dish and pour stock over them to cover. Bake in the oven for about 90 minutes or so and you have a gourmet meal for very little money. Eat it with a bit of salami and some crusty bread.

jumbles_2 · 5 January 2007 at 9:10AM

one that was a great favourite suprise pancakes

makes pancakes as usual ( can be pre-made and frozen)
fill 1/2 pancakes with leftover veg and 1/2 with chopped sausages, leftover meat or meat and veg - roll them up

put in a dish, cover with either home-made cheese sauce , or condensed mushroom sauce, cover with grated cheese and bake in oven for 1/2 hour

this way the kids eat veg when they normally wouldn;t and they always want seconds

moanymoany · 6 January 2007 at 12:20PM

Having read about this book in this thread I bought it - cheapest of course - and it arrived today. It is full of wonderful ideas. It was written in 1971 when I was a young wife and brought back memories. Food was relatively expensive then, we have a better choice and MUCH better quality now. Back then it was the greengrocer who decided which apple or cabbage you had and the butcher who made sausages and mince with weird stuff, 50% fat and blood to make it red - no kidding! This was very common everywhere, certainly not isolated to where I lived. Some food did taste better especially meat, if you could afford the good stuff!

Have tried some of the recipes on here and they are very good. I will put the hotpotty thing in a large flat dish next time because we both love the brown crunchy spuds.

Tonight I'm making Jocasta's minestroni and roly poly with suet pastry, golden syrupand custard.

thriftlady_2 · 6 January 2007 at 12:27PM

Just had to agree about The Pauper's Cookbook. I have the new edition (the one with the yellow cover), but I was lucky enough to find a 1978 edition in a second-hand bookshop recently. This has a marvellous chapter called 'programmed eating' where she demonstrates how to roll one meal into the next, and gives menus for 4 week's worth of meals.

Some really lovely recipes;)

thriftlady_2 · 6 January 2007 at 12:36PM

jennyjelly wrote:

I only wish we had a farm shop near enough to make it cost effective. Our nearest one is about 10 miles away, which kind of defeats the object! QUOTE]

The one I use is actually about 10 miles away from me too It's a toss up between driving all over the countryside to get cheap, locally grown produce from friendly people who know me and need the business, or walking to my local shop and buying produce that's travelled all over the country and the rest of the world from a mega-business who treat farmers badly and claim something like 30 % of the country's grocery spend. My local shop is Tesco.

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The Cheapest Healthy Meal Ever!

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