A week of dinners made simple (and cheap)
 
Do you struggle to decide what to cook for dinner each night? Do you end up reaching for the freezer or just chucking spuds in the oven and having them with baked beans from the can? We’re going to bring you a week’s worth of meals on a budget. The only thing you have to promise us is that you’ll go and find yourself a fresh market to get your veggies from. Not only will they be fresher and last longer in your fridge (saving you precious shopping time), they’ll be heaps cheaper too.
 
We shop once a week. A quick fly around Coles/Woolies/IGA for the essentials such as bread, rice milk, school lunches, cans of beans and frozen peas, on to the Asian deli for tofu of varying kinds and some spices and then to the fresh market for a trolley full of veggies. It’s about 15 mins further to drive to the fresh market rather than just going to our local Coles/Woolies/IGA but the fact that we can shop just once a week and have everything we need (plus the amazingly cheaper prices) makes that extra time totally worth it and still a massive saving when it comes to time AND those precious dollars that we all work so hard to earn.

This is the most simple, tasty comfort food recipe and it’s pretty damn healthy too! It’s quick to put together, and then you can get on with life while it cooks away in the oven.
 
You’ll need:

• A few leeks (2-4 depending on how big you’re making your dish)
• A handful of sweet potatoes
• Salt and pepper for seasoning
• About a cup and a half to two cups of breadcrumbs
• A small handful of rosemary, chopped
• And a dash of oil

Salad dressing is pretty basic. You want a bit of acidity, a bit of sweetness and a little saltiness. Then add any other flavours you want to go with the salad you’re dressing (like herbs of varying kinds etc.).
 
If you use a screw top jar, you can just add your ingredients and shake. Easy. If you want to use fancy ingredients like herbs you can use a blender or small food processor to grind it all up. Otherwise it’s elbow grease and a mortar and pestle (or just a knife and a chopping board!). Chopped or crushed herbs make a great addition, though they will go a bit manky so you'll have to eat it a bit faster. No hardship there.
 
Here are some ideas for each of the elements you need…

There are a few tricks to eking 7 days out of your shopping but if you use these clever tips you'll save yourself time and money. There are also some tips on how to hide those 'oops' moments when cooking so your family and friends still love what you produce, even when it's actually gone completely pear-shaped!

Firstly, be clever about what meals you plan for when. We don’t have a strict meal plan for the week, but we always have the salads early on, when they are fresh from the market. Don’t leave your salad eating till the day before you shop again because chances are the salad will have begun to smell rather like the bottom of a manky river bed and some of it will be trying to become what I like to refer to as ‘liquid salad’. Seriously, it’s gross.

If you’re trying to make life easy and produce quick, simple meals that are healthy and tasty, you’ll want to stock your cupboard up with some of these essentials that will get you out of trouble every time.

This dish is endlessly adaptable… Have the stew over quick cook polenta or serve it over rice, on tortillas, in baked potatoes or on pasta. It’s up to you! It looks as though there are a lot of ingredients but, there’s a good chance you’ll have them all in your pantry already. We adapted it originally from the Savvy Vegetarian Vegan Chilli recipe… much kudos to the clever ladies over there.
 
Have a go – it never fails to delight! And if you are into that sort of thing, take a pic and tag us on social media #sustainableequitation.

We always cook these two recipes one day after the other because when you make the stir fry you’ll cook too much rice which you’ll then use the next night for the fried rice. (The secret to really fantastic fried rice is to use cooked rice that’s been cooled, preferably overnight.) You can substitute pretty much any of the ingredients, they are both really simple dishes and easy to modify to suit your own tastes. The fried rice is served in lettuce leaves (let everyone you’re feeding do their own, it’s fun and quite messy) which means you don’t even have to bother making a salad.

​Don’t let the cooking time on these beans put you off! They are so, so so worth the time and effort it takes to cook them. They are completely simple to make and absolutely delicious, not to mention full of fibre and protein. Plus, with this recipe you’ll have enough to serve 8 hungry people, which means you can use the left overs for lunch or repurpose them as the base for a vegan shepherd’s pie or as pie filling.
 
You’re going to start this recipe the night before or in the morning of the day you’ll need them.

​This is it! This is the recipe I am most proud of… the holy grail of vegan GF recipes! I have tried so many and had so many fails that I’m sure the children have PBSD (post baking stress disorder). So many doughy, sandy or totally flat lumps of dough… But this one has a crunchy crust, a slightly cakey centre and it tastes like bread. If you’ve been craving fresh bread, hot from the oven since going gluten free, this is for you.

​There are lots of ingredients and if you only ever plan to bake once a year you’ll probably be better off with one of those GF bread mixes you can buy at the supermarket. But, if you think you might bake more regularly it’s totally worth the effort to source the ingredients from either an online store like 2brothers (www.2brothersfoods.com) or your local Asian supermarket.

Probably more of a Thai curry than an Indian one, this is a really yummy curry for all occasions. Sometimes we serve it with our favourite brown basmati rice, other times we’ll have it with rice noodles if we’re making it for a quick lunch and haven’t time to cook rice. It’s really simple and versatile.

​You’ll need:
A head of broccoli
An onion
Coconut milk
Green curry paste (you can make your own or buy a good one, we like to make our own but let’s face it – we’re all pretty busy so we often buy one, we just make sure it doesn’t contain any seafood as they often have fish sauce or shrimp paste in them.)