Healthy and Cheap Family Meals for Tight Budgets

Warm Lentil and Vegetable Wild Rice Salad

3/23/2018

The recipe for this meal came to me again via Pinterest. It was labeled as a salad recipe with warm vegetables, and looked delicious, so I decided to try it.

Of course, I made some changes. I wouldn’t be me, if I didn’t.

First of all the recipe is originally from one of those home delivery meal ingredient programs.

I'm just going to say right here - that trend in food preparation boggles my mind a bit, and has this frugal, self-sufficient old soul shaking her head in puzzlement and wonder at its very existence.

Honestly, I just cannot wrap my head around the idea that people need recipe ingredients delivered to their door.

I mean, it’s just really, really not that hard for able-bodied people to go to the grocery store, pick out their own ingredients, and bring them home themselves.

Really.

Vast majorities of people have been doing it for generations with no problem.

And I can only imagine the hit to the bottom line that such a practice takes.

So here’s my strong advice to people:

Just do your own shopping already. You’ll save bundles, and you’ll learn and employ some basic life skills along the way.

Just do it already. Seriously.

Okay, rant over.

Back to the recipe in question.

Greek-Style Chickpeas (Chickpeas Plaki)

3/15/2018

Here’s another super easy and cheap recipe from the traditional, everyday cuisine of the beautiful island of Cyprus. It's incredibly quick, too, if you happen to have leftover cooked brown rice on hand.

Dishes like this are what make the Mediterranean diet such a healthy one, unlike the recipes with a heavy red meat emphasis that so many people mistakenly believe are the typical daily fare for Greek households.

Mama Aphrodite, my Greek-Cypriot mother-in-law, would often cook this meal at our request. We would usually ask for it after a weekend of visits to various Cypriot relatives’ homes where they showed their love for us with incredible feasts that invariably resulted in us stuffing ourselves to the point of discomfort.

There's a reason that the first word I learned in Greek (other than a few choice expletives and please and thank you), was the command to eat. In fact, “Fáe, Fáe, Fáe!” (Eat, eat eat!) is probably the most common refrain a guest will hear from any ethnic Greek host or hostess.

And they really mean it.

When entertaining guests, they pull out all the stops, so that as a visitor to a typical Greek home you’ll often encounter a table almost groaning from the sheer weight of the platters of different grilled and stewed meat dishes, pasta and meat casseroles, meat and vegetable casseroles, stuffed grape leaves and zucchinis, small plate “meze” offerings (similar to appetizers or tapas), fruits, and desserts, etc.

The hospitality for which the region is renowned obligates the host or hostess to ply their guests with course after course of food until you are stuffed to the point where you simply cannot eat one bite more.

Cheese and Garlic Broccoli Stuffed Baked Potato

3/6/2018

I’ve enjoyed stuffed baked potatoes since I lived in England several decades ago and experienced them for the first time. They were called jacket potatoes over there and were standard pub fare. Now I see them called “Twice Baked Potatoes” here. It's just different names for the same thing and all its many variations.

Stuffed potatoes are a very tasty and versatile dish, even if I suspect that some of the versions are essentially a heart attack on a plate, loaded as they are with butter, cheese, and often bacon or ham.

This adaptation is much better than that, healthwise, but still contains more fat and cholesterol-laden ingredients than the vast majority of my recipes.

But as I’ve mentioned many a time before, my approach to diet and eating is “everything in moderation”. I would never make a regular habit of this kind of meal, but a few times a year, I'm going to go ahead and enjoy it.

Warm Lentil and Vegetable Wild Rice Salad

Greek-Style Chickpeas (Chickpeas Plaki)

Cheese and Garlic Broccoli Stuffed Baked Potato

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