We at Evolve:Lyfe have been down and out, desperately trying to feed ourselves or a family on a budget where choosing what was and wasn’t food waste sometimes meant the difference between getting to eat (even if things weren’t the freshest) and not. We know it’s hard, so we are testing cheap dinner recipes in our own kitchens and releasing them into the wild to do some good for others.

It is our mission to be as transparent as possible with this process, so we’re going to include completely untouched photos of the final product (even if it includes our kitchens when they’re messy). We also want you to have information on what kind of nutrition you’re getting, so we’re going to let you know what kinds of vitamins, minerals, and so on you’ll be looking at with each recipe. In this way, we are hoping to help you find options available for healthy cooking, even if money’s tight!

This meal is vegetarian (not vegan, it does include a small amount of cheese). Aside from the health benefits of eating lots of vegetables, the environmental value of eating foods lower on the food chain and thus less resource-intensive… VEGETABLES ARE CHEAP, AND CHEAP IS GREAT! We like cheap. Cheap is nice to our pocketbooks and budgets. This is what our plate looked like when we were done cooking, and hopefully, yours will look even better. We froze a boxed meal, and when we let it thaw overnight then microwaved on high for 2 minutes and 30 seconds it came out pretty well. The other boxed meals we parceled outlasted well in the refrigerator alone, as well. We can say for sure this set of batched recipes is a great one for meal prepping if you only have a few hours each week you can set aside for cooking.

Onions

History time! You can eat like a medieval knight or an 18^th century noble with this one; it’s a simple recipe that anyone can make with an oven that hits at least 350 degrees F. And it’s an easy make that stores well for later use, so you can make a large batch and save it for later or add it to other recipes. We wish we came up with this one ourselves (because it’s so simple we literally cannot believe we didn’t think it up on our own), but this recipe is actually from one of our favorite historical cooking channels—Townsends! This recipe made 3 servings of 1 onion each, plus 2 servings of 2 onions as shown on the full menu plate. Onions are a great source of Vitamin C, Vitamin B9 (also known as folate, and very important for pregnant folks), Vitamin B6, and Potassium.

Instructions:

• Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
• Place your raw onions on a baking sheet (you can line with foil for easy cleanup, but don’t have to)—don’t remove the skins!
• Roast them for 30 to 45 minutes, until they’re sort of soft and squishy to the touch.
• Pull them from the oven and let them cool.
• Once cool enough to touch remove the root ends and skins, slice in half, and top with salt and pepper to taste for serving.

Tomatoes

This recipe is an original, but based on some recipes we’ve had before. We just pared down the ingredients list and kept it to things more easily available for a low cost than say, fresh basil. This recipe made roughly 8 servings of a quarter cup each, though when we parceled it out we were a little more generous and wound up with 5 servings total. Tomatoes and orange bell peppers are both excellent sources of Vitamin C, Vitamin A, and Potassium.

Instructions:

• Remove the seeds and white veins from the bell peppers, then slice and mince into small cubes.
• Cut the tomatoes into quarters, then slice.
• Add the peppers and tomatoes to a bowl together with the salt and toss, then let sit about 5 minutes to “sweat” the vegetables.
• Once the vegetables have rested, pour off the liquid (if you want you can save this to add a little zing to soups or sauces).
• Add all the other seasonings and the grated Asiago cheese. Toss well and serve.

Veggie Casserole – Great Cheap Dinner Recipe

This is also an original recipe, but pretty easy. The biggest thing on this one is the prep time. We’ve put the menu in the order we have to make sure everything is ready to serve all at once—when you have the onions cooking in the oven and have made the Tomato Pepper Salad, start in on this. By the time you’ve finished the prep work on this one the onions will be ready to come out of the oven and can cool while you cook this!

We got 5 very generous main portions (about 1 1/2 cups worth each) out of this, but it would stretch farther with smaller portions as a side dish and is very filling. Brussels sprouts are:

• High in fiber;
• Have lots of Vitamin K and Vitamin C
• Contain decent amounts of Vitamin A, Vitamin B9 (folate), and Manganese
• Have small amounts of Vitamin B6, Potassium, Iron, Thiamine, Magnesium, and Phosphorus.

Carrots also have fiber and contain Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Potassium, Calcium, and Iron. Portabella mushrooms are relatively high in protein and are good sources of Riboflavin, Niacin, Iron, and Copper. (Yes, you do need soluble copper in your diet but don’t go eating pennies please!)

Instructions:

• Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F while you’re preparing your vegetables. Rinse your Brussels sprouts, then chop off the stem ends of all the Brussels sprouts and slice them as thin as possible.
• Take a dampened towel and gently wipe any dirt from the mushrooms. Chop the portabella mushrooms into roughly half-inch pieces.
• The carrots are already cut for you if you grabbed the crinkle-cut; if they weren’t available and you grabbed baby carrots or whole carrots instead, wash and slice them a quarter-inch thick.
• In a gallon baggie, place the Brussels sprouts, carrots, and mushrooms, then add the canola oil and lemon-pepper seasoning. Seal the bag and squish it around for about 5 minutes or so, making sure to rotate the vegetables as much as possible, until they are completely coated in oil and seasoning.
• Spread them evenly in a 9×13 (9 inches by 13 inches) baking dish, cover with foil, and bake for 45 minutes to an hour (longer for carrots that are softer, shorter for firmer carrots).
• Remove the foil and let the casserole rest about 10 minutes outside the oven before serving.

In the end, this is what we wound up with—two plates just like the one shown (which wound up being 3 meals, our admin couldn’t eat as much as her partner and saved half for the next day’s breakfast) plus generously portioned prepared to-go meals. Again, each of these recipes could go a little farther, but 6 meals for under $15 factoring in rough amounts for ingredients we already had on hand isn’t bad… especially when they pack such a nutritious punch! Hopefully, all of you enjoy these recipes and find them useful for stretching your dollars just a little farther here in the Inland Empire. Go forth and thrive!

Contributor: L. Smith