Budget recipes and $saving ideas

Please add your tips/hint/recipes on how to save $$ and still eat well!
Would love to know how to make meals from scratch,..without using pasta sauces/ jar sauces/ meal flavour sachets etc etc

I made pasta sauce last night, much the same as Jo's above but I didnt add any water as they were frozen tomatoes from my garden. Had to thicken with a little cornflour, but tasted yum. You can also make a huge batch (minus the bacon) and freeze it - either leave it lumpy or whizz it up til smooth.

Can you make cheese sauce from scratch? Melt butter in a pot, add flour and mix to a paste. Gradually add milk til its the right consistency then add grated cheese, salt and pepper. Sorry I dont do quantities cos I always make it up as I go.

Edited by aimeejoy

This is what have had for dinner in the last week or so...

* corned beef (in crock pot with onion, garlic. bay leaf and peppercorns), spuds, carrots, broc and cauli
* sausages/chops/cheap steak/chicken pieces, spuds and mixed veg
* mince and pasta (in crockpot - brown mince and onion, chuck in crock pot with dry pasta, chopped tomatoes, mixed veg, water, baked beans... anything really)
* cheap fish and homemade chips
* casserole/stewing steak, lots of veges, beef stock, garlic, onion, tomatoes - in crockpot, stovetop, oven or on fire
* stirfry (either pork, beef or chicken and I dont use much meat, just heaps of veges, usually frozen ones, and rice)

Meat can be really expensive so you need to either have less meat meals a week or make a small amount go a long way with stuff that is cheap like veges, baked beans, rice etc .


Edited by aimeejoy

This is a nice, cheap and easy recipe I use in the slow cooker

Sausage casserole    
Cut up about 6 raw sausages into chunks, add diced potato (however much you fancy) and about 1/3 a bag of triple mix veg (corn, carrot & peas) then either 1 packet of tom soup mix (or cream of chicken is good too) plus 1 cup water or a tin of soup them mix it all about and cook about 5 hrs on low or about 3.5 on high. The sausages come out really tender and it makes great leftovers.

Aha, didn't take long lol. 'Destitute Gourmet'(sp?) is the name of the book. Can't think of the author though.

aimeejoy wrote: Can you make cheese sauce from scratch? Melt butter in a pot, add flour and mix to a paste. Gradually add milk til its the right consistency then add grated cheese, salt and pepper. Sorry I dont do quantities cos I always make it up as I go.

I make a yummy cheese sauce whenever I've sauteed onions and bacon for a different recipe. It makes the best macaroni cheese.

Once onions and bacon are removed from the pan I add a dab of mustard (about 1/2 teaspoon or less I guess), a knob of butter and a spoon of cornflour. Once the cornflour starts going frothy I gradually add a cup of milk. As the milk heats it pulls the flavour from the onion and bacon. Then add the cheese and put it in the freezer for a quick and easy meal later or use straight away.

I've also typed my fruity oat slice into a seperate thread, it's a mix between a muesli bar and a cake and it has dark choc melts in it - mmmmmm.

I am looking at getting that new cook book "4 Ingredients" by those Australian chicks.. Am going to check it out tomorrow.

Then I'll plan our meals and only buy the stuff that we need for them :)

Tomato's are only good for cooking once they've been frozen, you can't use them in salads, but they pratically self peel which is a great advantage if the recipe calls for it.

I've got the 4 INgredients cookbook, haven't used it yet tho

Thanks for the tip re broccoli Aimee coz my girls eat it just about every night. So do you just blanch it in boiling water then freeze? And when you defrost it, do you just boil/steam it as per usual?

aimeejoy wrote: Can you make cheese sauce from scratch? .

Ijust made some for Tom last night. 25gm butter, melted...add 2 tables spoons of flour, stir till thick, add 1/2 cup milk, stir till boiling (or thick) and another half cup of milk/stock/vege water. Stir till right consistency. Remove from heat and add 2 tablespoons grated cheese.

This made enough to mix with his mashed veges and to go over our veges also. YUMMMY!!!!


I buy meat in bulk from a butcher as I am fussy about quality and like to buy organic/free range. For $80 I bought 1kg organic beef mince, 1kg diced free range pork, 1kg diced beef, 8 lamb loin chops, 4 HUGE pork chops, 12 sausages and a huge corned sliverside. This will make at least 15 meals so with a few non meat meals thrown in it should last at least 3 weeks. and the meat is FANTASTIC!

We add pulses to lots of meals like casseroles, nachos, spag bol etc.