Staple Recipes
Cheap and healthy meals from years of cooking on a budget
It took me embarrassingly long to figure out what he was up to. A few weeks ago, Julio started telling me, “This is one of my favorite things you make,” every night at dinner. I guess it’s his new evening ritual.
This year, we will have been married for ten years and I have cooked our lunches and dinners most days for all that time. Before that I was a broke grad student. Julio can cook well, but he is so extra that when he makes dinner, it often requires equipment, a plethora of dishes, and $20 of cheese.1 So, most nights, I cook, trying to stick to our grocery budget. Over the years, I have tried countless recipes and have developed a list of staples that I keep returning to.2 Periodically, friends and family ask for recipe suggestions, so as a follow-up to my lentil essay earlier this week, here is my list of go-tos.
Some Strategies
I meal plan for the month ahead, usually on a Saturday morning over coffee, organizing the plan to use fresh produce before it turns. I’ll do a couple of big grocery runs during the month, but that could be adjusted to fit your schedule and budget. Having a written list of what I plan to cook helps me know what I have ingredients for, again reducing waste. I write the week’s meals on a whiteboard on the fridge, and if I do not feel like making a dinner on the planned day, I just swap it for something easier or more comforting rather than ordering carry-out. It takes some thought and prep up front, but it reduces the mental load and effort for cooking the rest of the month. We very rarely eat out and so we justify eating well at home that way.
Make use of frozen vegetables! I use frozen onions, peppers, and squash pretty regularly. If I am worried about veggies going bad before I use them, I chop them and freeze them first.3 Flash-frozen vegetables are often as nutritious as fresh, sometimes more.
We have houseguests for week-long stays several times a year and if our friends and family are bothered by the meatless week, well, they have been very polite about it. Some of the best dishes for omnivores are the skillet lasagna, chili mac, any of the quesadillas or tacos, and the pasta dishes.
Dinner Staples
All of these recipes are vegetarian or vegan.4 If you can’t find an ingredient at your market, it’s safe to bet that I couldn’t and either omit it or find a substitution.
Don’t sleep on tahini! It is so nutritious and you will see it in several dressings below. One jar usually lasts me a month. I make a tahini dressing for my salad at lunch most days.
Tofu Sheet Pan Meal: The sheet pan meals on this list are good templates you can use with whatever vegetables you have. I have made meals where I chopped up whatever vegetables I needed to use, added a can of chickpeas or some tofu, and served them over quinoa or rice with a tahini dressing. Voila—dinner.
Black Pepper Tofu and Eggplant: I add a handful of cashews.
Creamy Vegan Skillet Lasagna: I substitute full-fat coconut milk for the cashew cream and use Nutritional Yeast instead of making vegan parmesan.
Apple Sausage One Pan Pasta: I substitute in a vegetarian sausage (like from Field Roast) and use veg broth.
Sweet Potato and Black Bean Tacos: More often, I now make a version of these that my mom made me once, which uses refried beans instead of black beans and sour cream with lime and salt mixed in. So good. It's one of my favorites to make because I just put all the fixins in matching bowls on the Lazy Susan in the middle of our table and everyone serves themselves and I find the setup really aesthetically pleasing.
Tortellini: I don’t have a link for this one. I sautee either frozen mixed veggies or sliced peppers and onions, depending on what I have on hand, and then fill the pan with vegetable broth with red pepper flakes and cook the tortellini in that broth with veg.
Vegan Stuffed Butternut Squash with Lentil Apple Filling: I used walnuts instead of pecans because we always have walnuts on hand. They're one of our daughter's favorite foods.
Winter Detox Moroccan Sweet Potato Lentil Soup (Slow Cooker)
Butternut Squash Green Curry Rice Noodle Bowls: I was shocked when I saw the recipe for this one. I made this once and then went a whole other direction from memory. I saute onion, sweet pepper, and chickpeas, then add green curry paste, veg broth, and coconut milk and serve over rice noodles (Simple Truth are great). We love this on cold days.
Easy Tofu Pad Thai: Also using rice noodles. I saute sliced peppers and onions with garlic and then add pressed and diced tofu to the pan. I serve the veggies and tofu over the rice noodles with a sauce I make blending tahini with soy sauce and chili garlic sauce.
Julio’s Pasta: The recipe is at the end of this essay I had in Farmer-ish.
Lunches
Crunchy Cashew Thai-Inspired Quinoa Salad: Save the last bit of a peanut butter jar to mix the dressing in.
Black Bean, Feta & Avocado Quinoa Wrap with Avocado-Tahini Dip: I leave out the Monterey Jack cheese, use regular tortillas, and add some mustard to mine. It goes so well with the feta.
A little fancier
Patates au Vin: French Potatoes and Mushrooms in Red Wine Sauce: I usually get cooking wine for meals like this because it’s cheaper and I don’t have to buy a whole bottle of wine for one meal and—oh no—drink the rest. But, if you have red wine leftover from a party freeze it in little 1/2 cup containers for recipes like this or Mushroom Bourguignon.
Roasted Vegetable Lasagna: I made this Barefoot Contessa recipe as one of the freezer meals I prepped before I had my daughter. We ate it when we came home from the hospital and for a few days thereafter and it was so decadent and restorative. It’s my go-to Meal Train recipe now.
Just for Fun
Apple and Cheddar Crisp Salad: Sometimes I want to eat a big salad for dinner and making the cheese crisp is so satisfying.
Focaccia Onion Board: Fun for when we have company. We pair it with cheese, hummus, olive tapenade (sans anchovies, plus extra capers), or mushroom pâté.
Cookbooks
I love to check out cookbooks from the library to get new ideas.5 Sometimes I write down recipes in a notebook, but occasionally I like a book so much that I buy it. Here are some good ones (with Bookshop.org affiliate links):
He does make our bread.
I usually consult a recipe when I make my grocery list and the first couple of times I cook the meal. From there, most of them get committed mostly to memory and in that process, I often simplify them, omitting ingredients that were expensive or hard to find, blending my own dressings, and minimizing the number of pots I need.
I save take-out containers when we order from our favorite Indian restaurant and reuse them for freezing vegetables, wine, broth, etc. in.
When people have asked me for more plant-based recipes, I usually include a disclaimer that most Americans do not get enough fiber, so eating a lot more plants all of a sudden can cause some tummy discomfort. It should be temporary! On average, my digestion is much better now than it ever was before.
When I worked in a library, I heard a story about a librarian who got salmonella poisoning from a library book. It sounds like an urban legend, but…beware, I guess.
I love this post! Thanks so much for sharing! Can’t wait to try some of these!
Oh my goodness! This is a huge post! Saving it for reference! Love that you meal plan for a month. That is next level.