Frugal Kitchens 101 - Think Green (Meatless Meals)

Continuing with this month's Frugal Kitchens 101 theme of thinking green this week's topic is meatless meals. Meat is an expensive source of protein accounting for a good portion of any food budget. Meat is also expensive in terms of the environment. One very cost effective way of saving money on your grocery bill is to reduce the amount of meat you consume. Simply reducing the size of the meat serving is enough to see a difference on your food bill but you can do better than than. Each week plan on at least one meatless meal!

Meatless meals need not be boring! One of our favourite meatless meals is spaghetti served with roasted tomato sauce, homemade bread and a garden salad. It's simple to prepare and inexpensive to make but does not taste anything like a budget stretching, meatless meal. Unless you are aiming for a vegetarian dish, meatless meals can take advantage of homemade meat stocks. These stocks are extremely inexpensive to make (about $0.00052 per ml) and can be home canned or frozen. They give the flavour of meat without the actual meat so use them to enhance the flavour of vegetable dishes and soups without adding much in the way of cost. Cook your pasta or rice directly in the stock for a real flavour boost without the price of additional meat! A lot of great soups can be made without the addition of meat. I home can dozens of jars of tomato soup each year that does not contain any meat products. A hearty meatless meal can easily be made by adding cooked long grain or wild rice to the soup then serve with salad and homemade bread or simple grilled cheese sandwiches. This is a real comfort meal during the winter months. Another fabulous winter comfort ,no meat meal is baking an extra large baked potato then topping with home canned old fashioned chili sauce. Oh and you just can't beat toasted tomato sandwiches in the summer months especially when made with sun kissed tomatoes fresh picked from your garden. There are so many possibilities!

As soon as you remove meat from the meal you are bound to save money. I aim for one meatless dinner per week but that's not written in stone. We often have more than one meatless dinner per week including with most breakfasts and lunches also being meatless. So give it a try and see what you think. Hopefully you will be pleasantly surprised!

next week: Think Green (Food Storage)