Description

I have written this recipe collection as a result of an experiment I ran while I was seriously short of money.

There came a time when I was looking at quite a few weeks of paying out for large bills that would put a serious dent into my monthly spending budget, and after the normal monthly expenses of essential household bills were deducted, this left me with very little money to spend on food for my son and myself.

So I vowed that for a period of three months, that I would go back to basics and prepare meals from scratch using basic ingredients, supermarket deals, and any reduced priced items I found along the way that could be worked into our eating plan.

Out went the boxes of fish in batter or breadcrumbs, ready meals, and those other products that come wrapped in plastic, frozen or chilled that required zero effort, and need no more than reheating for 20 minutes in the oven, including oven chips!

In came fresh and frozen raw meat, fresh and frozen vegetables, bags of bargain potatoes, sauces I made from scratch, and home-baked cakes, biscuits and puddings.

I have always liked to experiment in the kitchen, and as luck would have it my kitchen note pad had well over 2 years worth of recipes, notes and ingredients scrawled in there in my illegible handwriting.

My plan is to write a few recipe collections focussing on a different main ingredient, or topic such as beef, pork, and baked goods, and this is my first recipe collection on my favourite frugal ingredient – chicken!

Chicken is one of the main staples for frugal family meals, and this is a compilation of my favourite chicken recipes used during my three-month cooking experiment, and also from my sacred kitchen notebook.

I hope you enjoy them!