What is your go-to end-of-the-month budget meal?
What is the most creative, weirdest-but-strangely-satisfying meals that you’ve come up with at the end of the month? Do any of you have any stories to share? Anything from things you came up with as a broke youngster or student, to how you deal with the end-of-the-month-salti-crack situation now?
Eggs in purgatory is one of my go to’s at month end.
Just simmer tinned tomatoes up with whatever spices you like and when it’s hot make little wells in the tomatoes and crack eggs into them.
It’s fantastically cheap and the best part is you can throw whatever veggies you have languishing in your fridge in with the tomatoes. Not only will it bulk it up but you’ll be able to use those last two mushrooms and half a pepper that we all always seem to have in our fridges at month end!
A soft fried egg sandwich using buttered fresh white bread, finely diced onion, green chilli, salt and pepper. Yum!
I’m a student currently and my favorite end of the month meal is a frittata or a super cheesy mac n cheese. They both so simple and I always have eggs,pasta and cheese at the end of the month.
Smoke beef chips on fresh buttered white bread. Smoke beef still my golden oldie chip. ;-)
I love gem squash, steamed, just with a knob of melted butter and salt and pepper in the centre. I eat them with lentils, stewed in tinned tomatoes and tomato paste. When I was a student though, I once inherited a whole lot of frozen quorn products and a can of mushy peas from a departing flatmate. (This was in the UK, where that kind of thing is acceptable). I tried making a curry. Less successful.
Student horror stories: Having only a ‘TV grill’ for an oven – then blowing it up after wrapping it in tinfoil to create an oven in which to bake really horrid frozen pies. Attempting to then fry said pies out of desperation. Not hugely successful. End-of-the-month soup made with the only 3 things left in the fridge/pantry – carrots, butternut and brown rice. Also not a success. We had not yet discovered spices. One success was tuna ‘casserole’ – tinned tuna, canned mushroom soup & frozen peas – mixed together, topped with crumbled salt & vinegar chips, and cheese if there was any left at that stage of the month, and then baked. Wouldn’t touch it now, but it was good in the student days. These days it’s more about digging in the freezer for the treats bought on special mid-month and stashed away. My freezer and I have ‘domestic goddess’ moments when I make more than what’s needed for one meal and freeze the rest (you have to love Ziploc bags). When I’m cooking, I also freeze excess ingredients like chopped onions or roasted tomatoes, meat or veg leftovers from roast dinners, chicken carcasses and meaty bits after making roast chicken (collect a few of them to make stock), parmesan rinds, herbs and veggies that haven’t been used and are almost past freshness (a lot of these don’t need the whole blanching routine that used to be considered essential to freezing veggies) – then at month-end I have some flavourful goodies for making soup or stew, or adding life to basic ingredients.