TGIFood

All wrapped up — a month of thrifty recipes all in one place

Very British: A slice of fish pie, after having been baked in an air fryer. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

31 Jan 2025

A month’s worth of our Thrifty January recipes are done and dusted, but it begs the question — shall we just carry on with thrift in mind?

At midnight tonight (if you’re reading this on 31 January, 2025), Thrifty January will be behind us, and Januworry will be done and dusted. But — shall we take all this further and think of next month as Februworry? Tactically, that is.

My thinking is that if we can get a sixth of the way into the year before loosening our belts a little, we’ll all be in a stronger financial position for the 10 months that follow. And, well, by then shopping with thrift in mind may have become somewhat habitual, and we might just forge through the rest of the year having adopted a slew of budget-beating habits. And why not…

For the past four weeks and more, we have brought you daily Thrifty January recipes, and the numbers show that there’s been a lot of interest in cooking less expensively while eating food made with some imagination and effort. (Not too much effort — I like to keep things comfortable for your elbow.)

I’ve trawled through all the thrift to find key themes that could help us to be careful as a matter of course when planning meals and food shopping lists.

But never fear — just because I will keep thrift in mind as we venture into February doesn’t mean I won’t bring you a mix of thrift and not-quite-so-much thrift… let’s find a balance.

Here’s a handy recap of all the Thrifty January recipes of the past month — and more advice about how to proceed into the rest of the year with money saving in mind.

Set a daily budget and stick to it — and use your leftovers

(Photo by congerdesign from Pixabay)

To kick off the month, we used leftover rice to make waffles. I explored all my kitchen cupboards, the fridge and the freezer. I tried to use up things that had been paid for last year, and employ them in creative ways. This brought us more than 20 recipes, which I shared with you daily in January.

I shopped the French way — buy only what you need for tonight’s supper. That helps us to keep on track once we’ve set a daily food budget.

This is interesting: having worked my way through things in tins and packets, through pasta and rice and cans of tomatoes and beans and some of the frozen items, most of the meat that was in the freezer is still there. Including a leg of mutton that is (still) waiting for a late summer’s day when we can invite some friends around to share it with us. The can of chickpeas is still on the shelf too. So I thought: maybe we should just carry on in the same way, and regroup at the beginning of March? I don’t see why not.

The tomatoes growing in my side garden have been used up, and collectively that must have saved us something. I’ve harvested seven gem squash, and I’ll be cooking them soon. There are still three or four sizable marrows, and I’ll pick those in the next week or two. I love to halve a large marrow, remove the seeds and pulp in the middle, stuff it with garlicky spinach and feta, wrap it in foil and cook it in the coals. But that will be the end of anything “free from the garden”, to paraphrase the late Lannice Snyman’s classic book Free From the Sea.

My first thrifty tip at the beginning of January was to use leftover rice to make a new meal the next day. (You shouldn’t keep cooked rice longer than that.)

I used leftover spiced rice to make bacon and egg waffles. Okay, spiced-rice bacon and egg waffles. They were really good, and so easy to make. Here’s the recipe.

I followed that up with leftover pasta salad. Red onion for tang and crunch. Cucumber, capsicum, spring onions and chillies. A dressing of lime juice, oil, soy, mustard, and garlic or ginger. A touch of sweet soy or honey adds interest.

My third recipe had an element of farce about it, yet was so successful and popular that people wrote to me to rave about it. My roasted carrot and onion lasagne was supposed to have been a risotto. But when I was about to start making it and checked the cupboard, there was no arborio rice to be found. It was meant to be about using what was in the cupboards, and there were some lasagne sheets, so I quickly sidestepped to Plan B.

That’s a thrifty move too — don’t go out to buy what you don’t have; choose something else that you do have.

My other two thrifty recipes for that first week of the month used leftovers too — pesto pasta (use whatever pasta you have, it doesn’t matter) and crunchy potato croquettes. For the pesto pasta, use fresh basil if you have it, or a combination. Rocket is great, but don’t use too much as it is bitter and the bitterness can be overwhelming. Or use both basil and rocket — for the recipe shared here, I included fresh fennel fronds as well. The anise factor adds some interest.

The A to Z of thrifty food shopping

(Image by Matthias Böckel from Pixabay)

I put together an A to Z of thrifty food shopping. As I wrote, even the J, K, Q, X, Y and Z. And you contributed — I’ve collected your own input in this piece.

The most important letter of the alphabet in this context, for me, was: B is for Bargain Bin.

I wrote: I’m not ashamed to be seen perusing the bargain bins of supermarkets, because I know the truth: much of what is in there is perfectly fine and safe to eat. And much cheaper than it was the day before they moved it from its usual spot to the bargain bin end of the fridge.

A sell-by date does not suggest a product has gone off. It’s a part of how supermarkets manage their perishable goods. I’d say there’s as much as a 90+ percent chance that the goods are fine. So rather see it as an opportunity to save yourself a bit of your food budget. Just don’t stick it in the fridge when you get home and forget about it for a week. Use it.

Chicken, eggs, frozen goods, offal, “special offer”, canned goods, and water (yes, water as a cooking agent) are all invaluable ways to save money in the kitchen.

Potatoes, rice and beef mince — thrifty ingredients to the rescue

Smashing potato breakfast: Potato shells are stuffed with cheesy mashed potato, topped with fried onion and finished with molten cheese and a rasher of bacon. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

For a Lekker Brekker Monday in early January I published a recipe for baked potato boats. This has been a massive hit and is still being read and saved. Meatballs and beans (a variation of chilli con carne) was equally popular.

I also made risotto, with bacon, blue cheese and baby spinach, the point being that these might well be in your cupboards and fridge. Maybe not the baby spinach (but check the garden for grownup spinach?). Two more potato recipes were winners — simple baked potatoes cooked in the air fryer, and my shoestring chips, also an air fryer version. But they can be deep fried too.

Potatoes in any form are always huge hits when I deliver another air fryer recipe for spuds. I try to leave a gap between potato recipes, but then I think why? … you clearly want them. Not sure how many there are that I can still come up with, but I’m ever inventive. Feel free to point me to potato recipes.

From coleslaw to curry

Quick fix: This chicken coconut curry is made in little more than half an hour. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

I made breakfast muffins, and they are an excellent way to make a lot out of a little when surviving on a tight budget. These were cheese and ham muffins, and you can choose the cheaper options of both of those if you need to. Both can be pricey items, but similarly, both do have thrift versions.

And inevitably, coleslaw and curry cropped up, both as dishes that can be made on a budget. I made a coleslaw with a difference, as I do once in a while — this one was made with cabbage, radishes and white grapes from my back garden.

I made a quick midweek chicken coconut curry, which cost little more than a few chicken portions and a can of coconut cream. There were green beans, chillies and button mushrooms in it, and spices and rice from my cupboards.

Chicken two ways and a beef shin potjie

Family favourite: old-fashioned roast chicken with gravy. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

In the last days of Thrifty January, I brought you two chicken recipes — old-fashioned roast chicken with gravy (which really brings a roast chook to its old-time essentials), and my newest invention, a cardamom spatchcock chicken, which I braaied.

Both of these have proven highly popular — no surprise, chicken recipes being up there with those for potatoes. Which is why you do see a lot of chicken recipes here — it’s my mission to give you what you seem to want.

But, even though this has been Thrifty January, we needed to have a potjie in there somewhere. So I cast around and came up with a really cheap cut that would do the job — beef shin potjie. You don’t have to buy a whole shin either — just ask your butcher to slice them for you, fairly thickly, so that you have plenty of meat, as the bone does take up some of the weight you’re paying for. But don’t discard the bones, that’s where much of the potjie’s flavour comes from.

For something completely different, last Monday I brought you savoury French toast, but I did not use any sugar or other sweet ingredient, at which many Americans (and French I imagine) would throw up their hands in horror. Some of which would probably be directed at the use of a “u” in savoury, without which the word loses something of itself.

But I don’t want sugar in my French toast, so it would be more accurate perhaps to call them Britain’s “eggy bread”, which just has absolutely no cachet about it.

Talking of eggs, I also brought you Welsh rarebit, the ingredients of which include hot English mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and beer. It’s a fine breakfast and if, like many people, you have a beer in the fridge, this too is a budget-friendly meal.

A fishy ending

Very British: A slice of fish pie, after having been baked in an air fryer. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Our resident K@K Cook Ray Mahlaka also came to the thrifty party with his Bolognese pasta, flippin’ lekker Dutch pancakes, and spiced tuna cakes.

On a similar theme, I wrapped up Thrifty January with a very British fish pie, air fryer style, which for my money is our best thrifty recipe of the month. I hope you like it — and you can do it tout de suite in your air fryer too. DM

Categories:

TGIFood

Tags:

DM is much better if you are signed in...

TGIFood