What's your favourite, cheapest home-made meal?

Jacket potato (from allotment) butter,and beans

TheCatWoman said:

hiz it up with a couple of teaspoons of mint sauce

That's a nice piquant touch - thanks for that/

I’ve never had much luck with making polenta that tastes good to me. I sometimes make a mash with a mixture of celeriac and butternut squash with cheese - but it can’t compete with ‘regular’ potato imho. Roast potato, chips, jacket potato - I used to adore them all! But everytime I’ve tried going back to potato or tomato to ‘test’ my reaction I’ve had the same problem: incredibly itch skin and sore joints. So I just accept I can’t have them. My eldest son has a dairy allergy - I think I’d find that even harder as cheese is an absolute favourite food for me. 

What an amazing looking plant!  I think in the uk eating healthily on a budget is a lot harder now - there are so few genuinely cheap foods in the supermarkets. I’m sure markets are cheaper but the local markets to me are not great.

Boiled pasta with some sauce.   20p

It would be a toss up between cheese on toast or fried egg on toast. I also like plain pasta with a little bit of butter and cheese which is pretty cheap.

I was going to say cheddar as well. !!

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Definitely beans on toast with Red Leicester Cheese on top. My other fave is Goats cheese on Rosemary and Seasalt crackers.

Mweekie xx

I used to love going to the market around packing up time, there were so many bargains, like a sack of carrots for a pound, and boxes of mushrooms.

A lot of markets have closed down, pitches have becom really expensive, some councils have come under so much pressure form supermarkets threatening to pull out of town centres that the councils shut or limit the numbers of stalls, what they can sell and stuff like that. We used to have a good market here, every thursday and saturday and a friday one in Bangor, I don't think there they exist anymore on the island and the one in Bangor is a shadow of it's former self with only a very small Asian veg stall.

Vegetable lasagna using lasagne sheets, tinned tomatoes, a squirt of lemon juice, grated carrot, green lentils*, grated cheddar cheese, salt & pepper.

Layer the oven dish with the ingredients in quantity according to personal preference and availability, just make sure the juice from the tinned tomatoes covers most of the ingredients. Use some of the grated cheddar to sprinkle on top of the final layer.

Put the dish in the oven at about 180°C for 40–50 mins, depending on the size of the dish, until the top is beginning to brown.

Serve with a green salad or a green leafy vegetable.

*Tinned green lentils don’t need pre-cooking. Dried green lentils need prepared according to the pack instructions.

When I was in London there were lots of markets that had fruit & veg stands that did this sort of thing - especially for the end of day.

When I lived near Tower Bridge in London, Watney Market was my favourite - it had a big Bangladeshi population in the area and they got a lot of fruit from that region so when in season the mangoes from that region were hard to find elsewhere but were awesome. Not fiberous like normal mangoes but meltingly smooth and sweet.

Where I live now (Sao Paulo) there is a local fruit and veg market with (I kid you not) about 120 stalls selling such a range of stuff that I get to try new stuff every week even after being here for years.

Prices are in the broad range of £1 for a bowl of fruit, and less at the end of day or when the fruit is really in season.

My seasonal favourite is jaboticaba- looks lind of like a big blueberry but has a really tough skin with a creamy soft fleshy centre with a hard seed. You pop it in your mouth, pop it and suck out the insides and swallow it (not the skin though), stone and all (the stone is pea sized but quite attached to the flesh).

It grows straight from the trunk of the tree which is a bit odd.

The flavour is hard to describe - somewere between a lychee, grape and blueberry.

Porrige made with salted water and a splash of milk on top, nothing else, certainly nothing sweet.

If it's dinner then pasta and pesto with a few mushrooms, some courgette and brocolli.

Pea and mint soup, soak a packet of dried peas over night, cook until soft, and a big chopped potato and cook that down, whiz it up with a couple of teaspoons of mint sauce and season to taste and make it the consistency you want.

I love all those things! Porridge is so versatile - nice with cinnamon and ginger, also chopped up stem ginger. Sad about you can't eat potato - another favourite is instant mash with grated cheese. Could you eat polenta instead of potato? 

Kate Kestrel said:

a banana baked in the oven

That sounds yummy - I'll try that today.

Iain said:

4 big mangos for £1

Gosh, wish I lived there. Mangoes are always expensive here.

Lonehare12 said:

with the addition of a fried egg on top

Oh, yes and also a bit of grated cheddar.

*dessert*

I think you can do that too -  but I just slice them in half lengthways and put them on a baking tray (to make washing up the baking tray easier I put them on a piece of baking paper on the tray). Bananas are super healthy apparently - so it’s an unusually healthy desert (I think anyway!). 

I like to visit the local fruit market towards packing up time and buy the fruit that is in big bundles - things like 4 big mangos for £1, big bags of apples / pears / plums or whatever is in season. Bruised fruit is also good as you will cook it straight away.

Take it home, clean it, boil it up in a big pot until everything softens - sweeten to taste and this is great to freeze in batches for later and use either as a topping or as a dessert on its own. Full of fibre, vitamins and natural sugars.

I like to add Greek yogurt - having this as a biggish dessert means I only bother with a starter beforehand.

Ooh nice..the banana thing sounds good..I might try it.would you wrap it in foil as if you were cooking it on a BBQ?

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