Healthy and Cheap Family Meals for Tight Budgets

Shakshuka-Style Spicy Egg, Tomato and Cheese Bake

1/26/2016

Shakshuka - Spicy Egg, Tomato, and Cheese Bake

This is a recent addition to my repertoire. It’s a variation on the traditional shakshuka dish that originated in Tunisia, from what I understand, but is fairly common all over the Middle East. A Moroccan friend made it for me for lunch one day not very long ago, and I found it to be absolutely delicious.

She gave me the recipe, and I tried to make it the way she had, but I was less than successful. The flavor was great, but I didn't care for the way the eggs came out. So I decided to adapt it in order to make it easier for myself, and also to make it more of a full meal as a casserole.

The results were a huge hit with my family.

The savory, spicy sauce is what makes this dish so special.

Hearty Lentil Soup

1/23/2016

Hard as it may be to believe in this day and age of so much food diversity, the first time I ate lentil soup was during my gap year living and working in England after I graduated from high school.

I think it may well have been one of my very first experiences with legumes of any type. While we ate plenty of vegetables growing up, meat was the focal point of our main meals, and U.S. diets and grocery stores were not as cosmopolitan as they are today.

But the year I turned 18, I did what's now called a gap year overseas and shared a house on a farm near London, England with 9 other young people from all over the world. It was an intense, challenging time of personal growth where I learned more than a thing or two about long, hard hours of physical labor, getting along with people, and food.

We had a housemother named Tess who was responsible for preparing meals and keeping the household running smoothly. She was all of 17 years old, a tiny little thing with a lovely, thick Yorkshire lilt and a huge personality, who had taken care of her younger siblings for years after her mother died.

Healthy Vegetable Broth from Food Scraps

1/18/2016

Many recipes list broth among their ingredients, and they usually call for the canned variety.

One of the problems with that is that it’s usually quite expensive. Most of the time, I get around the cost by using the far more economical option of bouillon cubes and water, but sometimes I just use the cheapest option of all - water and salt.

Because the truth is that salt is the major component of canned broth and bouillon cubes alike, with only minimal other ingredients. The sodium content is typically quite high, particularly in the canned versions, with only somewhat less in the bouillon cubes.

One way I work around this and you can, too, is to dilute the broth with extra water.

Real broth - or stock, as it’s also called - is of course made by simmering vegetables and/or some kind of meat for an hour or more on the stove. I use it in almost all of my soup recipes, so I am very familiar with the process.

But until I had the opportunity to spend the day in a professional kitchen during a visit with some of my students, I had never heard of this “poor man’s” approach to making stock.

Dirty Rice with Brown Rice and Collard Greens

1/11/2016

I love the convenience and ease of one-pot meals, and this so-called Dirty Rice meal is even easier than most. However, this particular recipe calls for sausage in place of the traditional chicken parts or ground pork, and we all know that sausage is neither the cheapest protein source – even on sale - nor the healthiest one.

Of course, you can always use use diced, cooked ham leftover from a Baked Ham Dinner as an option, if you happen to have some on hand that you bought on sale and used in a previous recipe earlier. Or you can use leftover chicken from a roast chicken dinner.

But that's not always the case. So when I wanted to double the original recipe to accommodate my teenage boys’ appetites, I added a cheaper protein option by using lentils to augment the sausage and keep the meal within my budget and health parameters.

Avgolemono (Greek Egg and Lemon Soup) (Vegetarian Version)

1/5/2016

The first instance when I tasted Avgolemono, it was a bit of revelation to me. It was so different from anything I had ever experienced growing up, and I immediately loved the combination of the thick, creamy rice and egg soup and the tart, lemony flavoring.

My Greek-Cypriot husband made it for me that first time during our university days in Vienna as international students.

He used the recipe he found in an old Cypriot cookbook and struggled a bit with the decidedly vague instructions, but managed to make a success of it as far as I was concerned. I gobbled it up.

Since that first time enjoying it, this soup has been a mainstay of our family menu planning.

Shakshuka-Style Spicy Egg, Tomato and Cheese Bake

Hearty Lentil Soup

Healthy Vegetable Broth from Food Scraps

Dirty Rice with Brown Rice and Collard Greens

Avgolemono (Greek Egg and Lemon Soup) (Vegetarian Version)

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