Thriftiness in cooking

I'm feeling very 1950s as I write this! Trying to save money at the supermarket has been going well (which is helpful at the moment!).

Here are some more cooking ideas that have been working for me:

1. Reduce the amount of meat meals you have. People often eat a lot more meat than necessary, and it tends to be the most expensive element of a meal. They say (the infamous they...) you don't need meat every meal.

2. Try tofu. No, I'm serious. For those who haven't cooked it, it can be offputting I know, but you need to use the right kind - I find firm tofu (or nigari) is the easiest to cook. It soaks up sauces well, so it's great in stir fries and laksa. It is cheap, and a very good source of protein. Also can be cut into thin strips, fried and then soaked in soy sauce - quite yummy.

3. Try tinned fish. I've been substituting tinned salmon in salmon recipes.

My greatest budget triumph was tonight's meal - last week I found 1kg of carrots on sale for 99c so I bought them on spec. Tonight I cooked 500g of them into soup for 2 of us - just add stock, half an onion (which was hanging round in the crisper about to go off), one garlic clove, bay leaves, parsley and season. We had it with sourdough bread that had been on special. Not entirely sure what that ended up being per serve, but I'm guessing under 1.50 each. The leftover bread is in the freezer to make croutons later this week.