Embracing rising food costs, rise of the omnivorous .

Effician

I know for many that the rising cost of food is causing serious problems & we certainly have noticed the rise in cost of many of the staples but it's had a positive effect on our diet diversity.

We're now starting to look at cooking a lot more Asian type foods as a way to cut our food bills & with a local P*k foods store close by it makes it a lot more accessible , If you don't like spice it's easy to modify recipes to suit your taste whether it be Indian /Chinese or something in between or even a twist on an English dish.

Lots of countries around the world base their diets on the most basic & cheapest of foods to great effect & something i'll be looking more into. It also helps that the recipes can often be adapted to cater for what can be found cheap or reduced

Right i'm off to eat dinner of homegrown salad , cooked but served cold ( homegrown )French beans  & (homegrown French bean & courgette)  pakora, this is becoming a favourite  & very cheap cold lunch.

joedenise

I make a lot of rice based dishes like risotto, rice with chorizo and chicken.  Also quite a lot of vegetarian curries served with rice.  All these are fairly cheap to make.

If I can get hold of cheap diced beef or lamb then it's likely to be turned into a stew or curry.

Effician

We use quite a lot of basmati rice but i must admit to being something of a blasphemer in the way i cook it, please look away now if of a nervous disposition , i don't rinse the rice first but microwave it for 10 mins in just enough water to cover it & normally make 2l of cooked rice at a time, i then rinse & dry before storing in fridge or freezer.

This makes a great fried rice in the actifry or wok either on its own or even better with finely chopped veg ( cooks quicker if you nuke the veg for a few mins first), we would normally add some meat but of late we rarely bother as it's as nice without , surprising how close it is to takeaway rice .

If using the rice with curry we normally add the cold rice to the cooking curry sauce for a biryani type vibe.

We do have a chest freezer full of meat which will be our go to in winter for slow /pressure cooking on top of the log burner but for the time being really enjoying the mainly salad & veg rich diet.