Healthy and Cheap Family Meals for Tight Budgets

Spaghetti Bolognese (Classic Spaghetti With Meat Sauce)

9/25/2016

This recipe is probably the very first one I ever learned growing up. It’s a very simple, basic one, yet it invariably produces very satisfying results for even the most novice of cooks, so it’s a logical one for Mom to have started us out on. Besides, it’s one that can easily feed a crowd, and that was always a key factor in our large family.

Of course, in the days of my childhood, we used beef to make this sauce. But as we all know, beef is generally astronomical in price, and red meat is also something we should generally minimize in our diets.

So I made the switch to turkey meat years and years ago in this sauce. I know many Italian purists out there cringe at the thought, but my kids don’t know any other way to eat this, and it is definitely one of their favorite meals of all time. And it’s just so much better for you. The only thing better from a health and budget perspective is a meatless sauce.

And, of course, as always, I am going to advise that you buy your meat ONLY when it's on sale. Otherwise, it's just a major budget buster.

3-Bean Spinach, Tomato and Lime Pasta Salad

9/19/2016

This colorful, delicious recipe had its beginnings long ago in my desire to somehow turn leftover pasta I had sitting in the fridge into a quick and easy meal and avoid cooking over a hot stove in the middle of a heat wave.

That first meal was a haphazard affair, with a bit of this and that thrown in, but it was good enough to keep in my repertoire.

I have used it as a basic starting point for many a meal over the years, and it has seen a few different incarnations.

This particular version is a huge favorite with my husband. He just raves about it. I think it’s the combination of lime and fresh garden tomatoes that appeals to him so much. He is a real tomato lover.

And I like that, too, but what I really like is that it’s so darned easy to put together and involves no cooking at all if you have some extra cooked pasta on hand from an earlier meal.

And I love that I have lunch to take to work for a few days during the week.

Layered Potato, Vegetable, Cheese and Herb Casserole

9/11/2016

This is a brand new recipe for me. I encountered it just a few weeks ago when I visited an old homeschool friend in Maine. Upon entering their lovely lake cottage after a very long drive, the first thing I saw was a casserole dish with the most luscious garden tomatoes layered all over the top. It was gorgeous to look at, and just as delicious to eat, a creation of my friend’s husband.

And all of the produce had come from a local Amish farm market, I was told. Yes, there are several Amish enclaves in northern Maine, which may surprise you as much as it did me!

Of course, I asked for the recipe, to no avail, since the cook, like so many of us, simply put a little of this and a little of that into the pot, and never knew exact quantities to tell people. He gave me a list of the basic ingredients and seasonings, and I was on my own from there.

So, when I came home, I spent the next couple of days trying out a couple of different versions of the meal until I came up with the recipe I have here. It was a huge hit with hubby, and with a small gathering of friends I hosted on my patio, and two of my visiting sons also liked it very much, as did their girl friends.

For that reason alone, it would be a keeper, but it also has even more advantages.

Easy Slow Cooker Whole Wheat Bread

9/6/2016

There are few things more mouthwatering than the aroma of bread baking in the oven, or more delicious than the taste of it, still warm, served as an accompaniment to a meal. Truly sublime. And it’s really so much easier to make your own than people realize.

We began making our own bread on a regular basis quite by accident.

It came about when my husband got a scare about his blood sugar at a yearly physical and decided he was going to do whatever he could to avoid getting Type 2 diabetes, a disease that has struck every other male in his family for 3 generations.

So he set out to cut his sugar intake dramatically.

In the process, we began reading ingredient labels more carefully and discovered that added sugar is present in so many more foods than we’d ever even realized before. And one of the major culprits, for sure, was bread.

Spaghetti Bolognese (Classic Spaghetti With Meat Sauce)

3-Bean Spinach, Tomato and Lime Pasta Salad

Layered Potato, Vegetable, Cheese and Herb Casserole

Easy Slow Cooker Whole Wheat Bread

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