Cooking on a budget Recipe: Vegetarian

Always take the trouble to store food in the optimum conditions and use the most perishable food first. Don't buy more than you need, but shopping every day could take up a lot of time, so keep a balance.

Small amounts of ready-made meals and packaged foods can cost substantially more than fresh fruit and vegetables. If you have the time, then you don't need these ready-meals, and in many cases they take as long to prepare as fresh food.

There is no nutritional need to have high protein foods with every meal, and a lot of evidence that suggests that one protein rich meal every two or three days would be more healthy!

Low cost meals need not be monotonous with a wide range of dried herbs and spices available in the supermarkets. You use so little of these that you can afford to include them in the lowest budget meals.

If times are really hard then eat potatoes cooked in their skins, brown rice, sprouted beans and seeds, and a little olive oil together with herbs from your windowsill and spices. The cheapest vegetables, like carrots and cabbage are also the healthiest and require the minimum of cooking.

Fresh wholemeal bread also remains excellent value for money.

Copyright Peter Thomson 2012-February-5