I guess it makes sense to start a series on frugal food, cheap and easy meals with a look at cheap quick meals for breakfast. If you are a serial cereal eater at breakfast time, consider these cheap quick meals as brunch recipes instead!
With our purse strings tightening we have been consuming far less bread than usual. The bread in our local village bakery is baked in wood fired ovens and tastes divine. In fact, we believe it may well be the best bread in the world! But, it costs to get good bread, so rather than eat it every day we gorge on it at weekends only.
This is saving us trips out in the week to the bakery, which is great because one of the easiest ways to save money is not to go out to the shops. A trip out for a loaf of bread inevitably ends up with you spending a little here and a little more there while you’re out. Stay at home and make do with what you have in your cupboards! The cheap quick meals I love are those which are based on the contents of my store-cupboard. Long-lasting ingredients are the keys to success with any frugal food or cheap quick meals. Avoid the store at any cost!
It is good for us to be eating less bread anyway, but it did leave me with a conundrum of what on earth we could eat in the mornings!
If you have a 9am to 5pm job, you probably have little time for cooking in the morning, even cheap quick meals. None, of these recipes take much of your time, but even so I know how rushed things can be. That’s why lots of the mixes can be made the night before. Or, alternatively some things are great cooked en-mass on a day when you feel like some simple pottering in the kitchen, and then stored for future use. Either way I have made suggestions where appropriate.
In any event all these cheap easy meals for breakfast make fabulous weekend frugal food when you have a little more time to spare.
The following are our favourites so far.
- Homemade Yogurt with the cheapest Muesli
- Homemade Crumpets, toasted with cheese & poached egg
- Vegetable chapatis with cheesy egg & re-fried beans
- Spiced Citrus Muffins
The plan is that I can update this page as more cheap easy meals that we are enjoy for breakfast or brunch come to mind. As the recipes get written up the links will appear!
It all depends if this turns into Frugal Food Week or Frugal Food Month or Frugal Food Friday. I don’t know, we’ll just see how it goes…
For a more self sufficient future
Thanks for this… although I’m a bread addict, I do understand that we need to take a break from it from time to time! Great article…