Cheap Dinner Ideas: 10 Easy Recipes from 15p/person

Learning to grocery shop, let alone cook in a new country is an adventure. New foods, different ingredients and incongruous price tags can leave you feeling a little lost. You may feel like some of the recipes you brought from home are suddenly not very practical anymore. Below are ten recipes made from ingredients readily accessible in the UK and available for less than £1 per person: in some cases, considerably less. Most are fairly quick and easy, though if you're not used to cooking from scratch, they may take a little adjustment.

Pizza with Bacon & Caramelized Onions
Spicy Indian Dahl with Mashed Potatoes (vegetarian)
Grilled Open-Faced Sandwiches
Curried Lentils Over Rice (vegetarian)
Delicious French Onion Soup in Thirty-Minutes
Couscous Salad with Black Beans (vegetarian)
Creamy Pesto Pasta
Lentils San Stefano
Thai Peanut Chicken with Coconut Milk
Spiced Bacon and Lentil Soup

Note 1: I have included a rough price per person at the bottom of each recipe. This is an estimate of how much it costs me to make the dish, though, as I'm always saying, it will likely vary a little depending on your location.

Note 2: You will be able to see that I'm caught between two worlds right now. Some of these recipes use American measurements and others use British. One or two may even include some of each! I'll continue updating to try to make sure each recipe includes both British and American measurements. Just leave me a comment if you have questions.

Money Saving Tip #5: Buy a Magic Jack

I previously wrote about the money-saving benefits of using Skype for calling home while away. Of course I'm still a big Skype supporter, especially for totally free video calling and calling other Skypers for free. However if you need to call a land line from Skype, you are subject to their international calling rate of something like 3 cents/minute. While this is a still a really good deal, there is something better. The Magic Jack. (Thanks, Wes, for the suggestion!)

The Magic Jack is a small, simple device you plug simultaneously into your computer and your phone. It then enables you to pick up your phone and start making free calls to the US and Canada. It's pretty simple. Here are a couple things to know.

1. The Magic Jack service costs $19.95/year. There is a one time fee of $20 to purchase the device. So, the first year, your total cost will be $39.95. Subsequent years will be only $19.95. (By way of contrast, we spent about $60 last year buying Skype credit.) You are entitled to make and receive as many phone calls as you like--your total annual cost will still only be $19.95.

2. You will be given a free phone number with an area code that you get to choose. This means people can call you too. We chose our parents' area code in Washington State. That way, though we live in the UK, they can call us and it's a local call for them.

3. According to the website, you can make calls only to US and Canadian numbers for free. However, registered users can also purchase low cost minutes for international calls.

4. Along with the free local number, the service also includes free voice mail, call waiting, three-way calling and call forwarding.

5. This may just be a personal thing, but I thought the Magic Jack website looked kind of sketchy. If we hadn't known people who've used the service successfully, I would have been inclined to think it was a scam. Check it out, though, for more information and to order. Note, they do not currently ship to the UK--only to the US and Canada. If you're already in the UK, just have it shipped to family or friends and have them forward it to you.

Money Saving Tip #4: Don't Pay for Housing

One of the best ways to save money is to reduce your major monthly expenses, and one of the expenses at the top of the list is definitely housing. Just think of the money you'd save if you could eliminate that expense! Not to put too fine a point on it, but it would be somewhere between £5,400 (£450/month) and £9,600 (£800/month) per year depending on the housing prices in your area. And that's to say nothing of utility costs which might be around £1000/year.

The trick to eliminating this expense is to find a live-in position that offers free accommodation as either your entire compensation or part of your compensation. In my experience of looking, these jobs are actually in plentiful supply, you just have to know where to look. I recommend Gumtree, Craigslist and caretaker.org as good places to start. To give you an idea, below are three different positions that I was offered when we moved to Edinburgh. All were willing to accommodate both my husband and me, though two out of the three weren't willing to house a baby too.

Nanny: I was offered free accommodation and utilities along with £200/week payment and plentiful holidays. The work expected was 5 days a week, light housework and minding children who spent most of their day at school. The accommodation was an entire flat in the basement of the home, including our own bath and kitchen.

B&B Caretaker: Free accommodation and utilities with very limited additional pay (probably enough to buy groceries). Accommodation consisted of a double bedroom with shared bathroom and kitchen area. Work was helping prepare breakfast, cleaning rooms and looking after the front desk when the owners were away.

Homeless B&B Caretaker: Free accommodation and utilities plus £200/week. Work required serving breakfast to select homeless people staying in the B&B, light cleaning and locking up at night. Accommodation consisted of spacious flat with own kitchen, but shared bathroom.

As you can see, there are a variety of different options. Others that could be explored are caring for an elderly or disabled person in their home, doing gardening/landscaping on an estate or helping as a farmhand on a nearby farm. These are all opportunities that I have seen available in exchange for housing. Often the position will include a car. Sometimes it will be outside the city center and you'll have to evaluate whether the commute would be worth it. The point is to get you thinking outside the box for solutions to one of the biggest regular drains on your bank account. Happy house hunting!

Money Saving Tip #3: Use Skype

Most of you probably already know about Skype. For those who don't I'll give a brief overview plus a couple tidbits you might not already know.

Skype is a program that allows you to make calls from your computer to other computers so you can talk online for free. All you need to do is download the program to your computer and make sure that whoever you want to call has also downloaded it. It is then completely free to make international calls. You must, of course, have a microphone on your computer. If you don't, though, you can always buy one separately and connect it.

The other perk, is of course, the video feature. If you and the friends you're talking to have cameras either on your computer or installed separately, you can talk "face to face".

In addition to the free computer to computer calling feature, though, Skype also has a very cheap rate for calling phones. You still have to call from your computer, but you can call phones in the US for a little under 3¢/minute (that's USD, not GBP). This is a much better rate than you'll get with many phone cards here, many of which will expire within a month of purchase. Here are a few things to note:

-You can set up your Skype account with your payment info, so that if you need to buy more minutes, you can just click a button rather than fishing for your credit card info every time. Especially nice if you're running out of minutes during a phone call.

-Your minutes will not expire as long as you make a call every 180 days. This is from their website: "Skype Credit remains active for 180 days after your last use of a product or feature that uses credit. So making a single call, or sending a single text message will ensure your Skype Credit is active for a further 180 days."

Happy Skyping!

Money Saving Tip #2: Get to Know the Local Cuisine

While you are certainly going to want to bring your own recipes with you--especially for those times when you just need some comfort food--you will end up saving money if you're willing to branch out into the local cuisine. For example, as much as you may love chicken burritos and as cheap a meal as they may be at home, you will likely find them to be on the more expensive side of a meal cost in the UK. The reason is that most burrito fixin's here are specialty food items. Taco shells, tortillas, refried beans, black beans, tortilla chips, salsa--these are not part of a standard UK diet (at least as far as I can tell!). Even if you can find cheap substitutes for things, your burritos are not likely to taste how you had hoped. Black-eyed beans do NOT taste like pinto beans and a cheap jar of salsa may taste closer to a syrupy tomato jelly than a satisfying, fiery salsa.

By contrast, most Indian-style cuisine is remarkably cheap to make here. At little Indian stores you can buy a 5 kilo bag of lentils for so cheap that the cost per serving ends of being something like 6p. And, lentils are healthy, a good source of protein and quite tastey when prepared well.

Couscous, when purchased in bulk at Asian food stores is also a great deal, not to mention a great thing to have on hand because it's so quick to make.

"Cooking bacon" (quite a bit different from American bacon) is a really cheap way to get meat--if you're making soup, quiche, pasta or pizza, you'll find it's a great flavour booster.

These are just a couple of ideas. The cheap items in your area are likely to vary, so look around. The point is to try to incorporate the cheaper ingredients into your diet, rather than to stick to all your American recipes which may very well end up costing more.

Money Saving Tip #1: Make Use of Charity Shops!

One way that you could really rack up the expenses on your arrival in the UK would be to go out and purchase a bunch of household stuff brand new. This is especially true if you decided not to ship anything, but your flat is still not furnished with everything you need. Our first month in Edinburgh, I was down at the T.K.Maxx every couple of days. (Yes, that's T.K--not T.J. Don't ask me why!) While I didn't have that many things to get, I look back now with dismay at the price I paid for the few things I got.

The antidote? Charity Shops!!! The charity shops (i.e., thrift stores) here are wonderful! I have noticed them in every town we have visited in Scotland, and I imagine they are just as prolific in England. Unlike the typical Goodwill in the States, the shops here are often quite small, which is why I missed them at first. Keep your eyes peeled as you're walking down the street--they will likely just be little hole-in-the-wall places.

Here are a few examples of some savings:

Blankets: I paid £20 for a new blanket at T.K.Maxx. (We were really cold when we got here and the single comforter on our bed was not doing the trick.) In contrast, later on, when we had visitors coming I was looking around for more blankets and found a charity shop selling really nice, good quality blankets for £1-2 each. I threw them in the washing machine and, presto! They were good as new!

Kitchen Stuff: I found the cheapest teapot I could at T.K.Maxx for £6. I have since seen them at charity shops for under £1. Recently I was at a charity shop and bought a large handful of silverware (forks, knives, spoons), salad servers, a cheese knife, a butter knife, an hors d'oeuvre fork, a beautiful creamer and sugar bowl and a large wire fruit bowl for £2 total.

Wall Hangings: When we got here we spent £10 on a picture for our very bare walls. You can buy them for 50p at charity shops.

Those are just a few examples. You can also look for bedsheets, curtains, clothes, baby items, CD's, DVD's, books, children's books, kitchen appliances, etc.

All charity shops, however, are not created equal. I have two on my street and one of them has significantly lower prices than the other. In fact, the cheaper one often feels more like a garage sale than a typical thrift store. They will often offer a cheaper lump sum for several items purchased together. Be sure to shop around for the best deals!

Money Saving Tips

I'm going to start publishing regular money saving tips to help you think about ways that you can reduce your expenses during your stay in the UK. When you arrive in a new place it can be very difficult to know where to look to find good deals or even to know what things should cost. I'll try to offer some guidance here. Click on the following links if you're looking for cheap budgeting help on moving to the UK or on living in the UK. Have any great tips yourself? Feel free to pass them along. We'd love to hear from you!