My freezer is always full (Cooking on a Budget!)

Member Name: mizzy

Product:	Cooking on a Budget!
Date:	31/10/08 (98 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Healthy cheap food

Disadvantages: Takes a while to make

As a student I spend many an hour thinking of ways to save money, and one of these is how I can save less with my cooking.
I like a home cooked meal, but am unfortunately not very good at it. On the rare occasions that my boyfriend agrees to cook you can have a very good veggie lasagne for not very much.

Just buy tesco value lasagne sheets, use half a bag of the shops own brand veggie mince, buy all the veg at the end of a market day and get it reduced or even sometimes free! Make your own white sauce and get tesco value tomatoes and a few herbs and you have a great lasagne.

Another way to increase this meal size is to put lentils in. Make sure they are half cooked otherwise they taste too hard. You can double the amount of tomato sauce that goes in and then freeze what you dont eat. Youve got 2 meals in one.

Anything tesco value such as, sausages, veggie sausages or chicken can be put into a casserole with again some cheap market stall veg. Then make loads of stock and freeze what you dont use in portion sized bags. These can then be heated in the microwave at work or for a quick dinner with some potatoes.

Soup is another easy thing to make. Its best to make if you have some leftover meat or if your veggie then you can just put in vegetables about to go off to use them up. Then a few stock cubes arent expensive for flavour. A lot of left over meals can be pureed as part of the soup such as meat from roast dinner with the potatoes and the veg.

It really is easy to live from left overs or making bigger portions. The cheapest way to cook from scatch is to get all your veg at the market at the end of the day or in a supermarket at the end of the day near closing time. Buy cheap meat in bulk and freeze it so you can use it when you need it.

Summary: Always make more than you need and freeze it