Easy dinner ideas - help!

With moving into our new home in a couple of weeks, I've decided that I'm using it as a new start. There's a couple of things (house organisational) stuff I'm gonna change, and one of them is dinners and shopping.

I'm going to write meal plans (for lunch and dinner) for 2 weeks ahead, and then write the shopping list according to what we need. DH does the shopping and he's really good cos he only buys what we need. He's doing the shopping tonight so I want to plan our meals for the next 2 weeks before I write the list.

We'll be paying a mega mortgage until our rental property sells, so I'm looking for cheap as well as healthy and easy (as when we're tired and can't be bothered cooking, we fall into the trap of getting takeaways... this isn't an option anymore as we actually won't have any $ to do so, which is a good thing in alot of ways but means we have to be organised!).

So I would love to hear your dinner ideas that are
- cheap
- easy
- healthy

We're going to have a meat free meal once or twice a week.

Here's my ideas so far:

Dinner
-Spag bol with spinach
-Spaghetti and meatballs
-Homemade burgers
-Steak, salad and an egg
-Chicken (crockpot), salad and pasta salad
-Chicken, Beef or Vege rice risotto
-Fish burgers on pita bread
-Omelette

Lunch (always take fruit and yoghurt too)
-Leftovers
-Filled rolls
-Salad with canned tuna or chicken, or leftover meat
-Baked beans on toast
-Cottage cheese and tomato on rice cakes
-Toasted sandwiches

Any ideas appreciated! Thanks heaps

Oo yeah burritos that's a good one! Do you use a mix, or do you have a recipe (spices) you use for the mince?

What about Bacon Cabonara? Maggi have a real simple one that you can make using penne pasta and some bacon. Easy peasy.

Nachos
Sweet & Sour Pork
Rice Risotto (put in your own meat & Vege in)
Homemade Pizza using Pita Bread

Pasta bakes are cheap. Omlette/frittata is good and very quick which is good for lunch or dinner

I sometimes do a baked potato (just microwave it) and fill with stirfry... quick, easy and cheap

Other cheap and easy's are a sausage stew (you can do a great one with apple cider and mustard, or with a tomato and paprika based sauce), risotto, or... send DH fishing and make fishcakes

Edited by AzzaNZ

SallyBelly, would you post your chilli con carne recipe? I'd love to try make some

I do a lot of things with cous cous as well - its so quick and easy.

Roasted veges with cous cous

Cous Cous salad - chopped capsicum, red onion, fresh parsley, pistachio (or any other nuts), chopped apricots, feta....just toss it all together with your favourite dressing.

Morrocan lamb / chicken - cook up the meat, onion, a tin of moroccan tomatoes, a tin of chickpeas, and whatever other veges you want...I often do this in the crockpot. Sometimes I throw in prunes or apricots too. Serve with cous cous or rice.

thanks SallyBelly!

Chicken breasts stuffed with ham and cheese then tin of diced tomatoes poured on top plus lump of cheese and put in oven for 40 ish mins

Chicken pie
pastry (flaky puff pastry best)
chicken cut up
can campbells chicken soup
mix vegies

stir last 3 ingredients together , put in pastry , put another sheet of pastry on top and put in oven for half an hour

After reading your post you inspired me as well, so i wrote out 2 weeks worth of dinner meals

corned beef
the first chicken recipe i said
spag bol
bacon and egg pie
home made pizza
chicken pasta
sausages (probably in a casserole )
chicken pie
mince on toast
home made florentines
home made hamburgers
omelettes

the chicken florentines (which arent really florentines unless you have spinach ) are just diced chicken, mushrooms cheese etc rolled into puff pastry and cooked for 30 mins, i usually put tomato paste and sweet chilli sauce on the pastry first

a few other faves here are bacon carbonara, nachos and burritos .

also , if you count the meals you will see that there is only 12 meals, thats because on fridays we have takeaways, old habits die hard ...