Fancy on a budget

I know what it's like to have a few days until payday and empty cupboards, I've been there more than once and now stock my cupboards with staples in case that day ever comes again. There are always surprise bills, broken appliances, emergency trips to the vet...the list goes on and on and on and on. It's a worry most of us have, I know it was definitely a concern for my parents more than once when we were young. 

One of the ways I stock up without breaking the bank is to use a site called Approved Food that sells out of date or short dated foods for very cheap. The food is absolutely safe to eat and most of it will stay fine for a long time, such as dried pasta or flavouring sachets - both of which make a big difference when things get tight. Pasta is a wonderfully versatile staple, great for whole meals or even bulking out other ingredients and the flavouring/sauce sachets can make even the cheapest, blandest food something much more appetising.

Most of the recipes I post here are low budget, as part of the chronic illness community I know that money is always short. Being chronically sick or disabled is EXPENSIVE, coupled with the fact that working in a way that provides enough of a income to live from is incredibly difficult and benefits don't bring in much, this means that finding a way to get enough nutrition on a budget and usually avoiding trigger foods for allergies or symptoms is an almost insurmountable task.

Anyway, onto a couple of budget and energy friendly recipe ideas that hopefully feels like an indulgence. Everyone deserves to feel a little fancy after all.

Poached fish and new potatoes - 
This was one of my favourite things to cook for my mum, when we were younger she would buy those awful 'cod in parsley sauce' frozen bags that you boiled in water because she thought they were cheaper. In reality, they're much more expensive than buying frozen fish fillets and poaching them yourself!
For this recipe you simply need frozen white fish fillets, you can buy cod or haddock but, I find the 'white fish' to be just a tasty and much cheaper as long as you don't mind which fish you're eating. White fish is essentially a blanket term for any white meat fish such as cod, polluck, whiting or hake and allows the manufacturer to choose whichever fish is cheapest at the time. 
Boil whole baby, new or pearl potatoes in a pan of salted water until a fork will stab through them with little resistance, when cooked add a small knob of butter to the pan. I like to add dried chives but that's just my personal preference.
If you only have large potatoes you can serve this fish with potatoes cooked in basically any way, mashed, fried, roasted...
Poach the fish fillets, still frozen, in milk. Just enough milk to not quite cover the fish is all you need, cover the pan for around five minutes until the fish is flaky. 
Remove the fish from the pan and decide how much effort you want to put into the sauce.
Minimal effort is to now add a parsley sauce sachet and whisk.
More effort is to make a roux with butter and flour, add milk then parsley and simmer for 10minutes. 
Return the fish to the finished sauce, spoon some sauce over the top and serve up with the potatoes and any veg you fancy.
Done.

Belly pork-
Belly pork is the king of cheap meats, it does need some love when cooking so you're not just chewing fat but I LOVE it and find it so versatile. Often replacing chicken or pork steak in our kitchen! Some of our favourites are to use a 'chinese' marinade and grill it until almost burnt, or to fry it up in chunks with soy sauce and noodles. 
For this recipe a sheet of pork belly works the best but if you can only find strips then you can absolutely use those too.
Dry the skin with kitchen roll then rub generously all over with salt and pepper. You can add sage and thyme to this rub if you have it. Roast this for 25 minutes on 250'c then turn the oven right down to 180'c for 1hour.
Chuck roughly chopped apples and onions into the bottom of a clean roasting dish - this could be the one you use before with the juices emptied out, throw in some sage and pile up into a little mound that you can fit your pork on top of. Pop back into the oven for another hour to make sure that pork is beautifully tender inside and gloriously crispy on top.
Serve on it's own with gravy though it also goes great with dauphinoise potatoes or a creamy mash.

Also a quick heads up...soak belly pork in a mixture of the flavour sachet from a super noodle packet and water for a few hours then either slow roast and slice or thinly slice and dry fry before tossing into the noodles cooked with extra water for an upgraded supernoodle/ramen thing-a-majig. 

Eat well, give back

This post is inspired by the LDS church's #lighttheworld campaign, December 7th's prompt is too feed people. One of the suggestions is to eat at a restaurant that gives away surplus food and I realised that I didn't know of any! It has to be one of the easiest of the suggestions to follow, just change your dinner plans a little and job done! I know that not everyone can just pop out to a restaurant for dinner and there are plenty of other suggestions for differing budgets such as donating food to a hostel, sharing a low cost recipe or praying for those who are hungry.
Another option is to use an app such as 'Too good to go' which enables restaurants to list surplus food to sell at below £5, but they tend to be around £2 a portion. You could buy some of these portions and then hand them out to those you see in need or even deliver them to a family who's budget doesn't include dinners out, it's fancy restaurant food for them without breaking the bank for you too.

So here's a vague list of the ones I did find in a ten minute google search that had information on their websites about giving away food, I can't comment on their actual practices or how valid their statements are so it's up to you to make a judgement call on who you feel is the best choice.

• Nandos UK 
• Deliveroo UK
• KFC UK
• McDonald's
• Darden Restaurants including: Olive Garden; Longhorn Steakhouse; The Capital Grille; Bahama Breeze; Seasons 52; Eddie V's and Yard House. 
• BaxterStorey UK
• Camino UK
• ED's diner
• Fourth
• Carluccio's UK
• CAU
• Harden's
• Jus' Rol
• Pho
• CGA peach
• Champagne Taittinger
• Shake Shack
• Cinammon Cultrue
• CocoFina
• Innocent