I sometimes cook, just because I want to. It's rarely a chore and I know we'll enjoy the end result. It's currently all a bit veggie at our house and we certainly don't eat meat every day; in fact as prices go up, meat is only in half our meals. If anyone wants to save money on their food bill then vegetarianism is cost effective.Yesterday's supper comprised of the butternut squash and sweet potato burgers I had made and frozen before; with a huge helping of homemade coleslaw. This is a great thing to take to a BBQ as a contribution as you can make almost kilo of coleslaw for £1. I use a food processor but you can make all of this with a grater. I grate 4 carrots, I then switch the attachment to a thin slicer and then shred half a white cabbage and a large onion. It gets too mushy if you grate it all. I then mix it with the cheapest mayonaise I can buy and that forms the salad part of my meat. I grilled the veggie burgers and had them with the mayonaise.
Today, I made spinach and mushroom lasagne. I use frozen spinach that costs £1 a kilo from either Asda or Lidl. I finely chopped onion and fried that with some garlic, grated white cabbage, finely chopped carrot and when fried I added the spinach,a tin of mushrooms, a tin of sweetcorn and a tin or chopped tomatoes. I added some lemon and corriander spice mix (I always have some for adding to cous cous........it comes from Asda......huge pot for £1).
I then made a litre of cheese sauce. I kept almost half of it and will freeze that for another meal requiring a cheese sauce. I then made some lentil burgers. I cooked a few lentils I had lurking in a pack at the back of the cupboard, mixed in some fried onion and garlic, a tin of mixed bean, some grated carrot and a good spoon of tahini and a small spoon of dried chilli flakes, they were too wet when I finished making them so I added a 19p Asda stuffing mix (mainly bread crumbs and dried onion) which gave them the right consistency. I part cooked them in the over and then allowed them to cool. I will freeze these for another day.
I made two lasagnes. One will be for supper with the rest of the coleslaw left over from yesterday and one will go into the freezer for another day. The lentil burgers are really chunky and tasty and I'll serve them with salad some other time. Each lasagne will feed us twice and will become two meals in one day so each portion along with accompaniment is well under £1.