Polenta is very very filling - and inexpensive. For a change of pace from the usual pasta and sauce, try making a simple meat sauce with some bulk Italian sausage and ground beef cooked together with your favorite inexpensive jarred tomato sauce. Top with a generous amount of Romano or Parmesan cheese. Use mushrooms instead if you are vegetarian. Plus you can save the leftover polenta and cut it into slices and pan fry it in the morning with some butter, then top with more butter and maple syrup for breakfast. I also love to keep egg noodles on hand. You can microwave them in a bowl of water for 8 minutes then drain and toss with butter and Romano or Parmesan cheese. To make this into a bigger "meal" I will toss in some steamed frozen vegetable medley, and some grilled and sliced pieces of some inexpensive cut of meat - such as pork chops, or beef round steaks, etc... If you've got some boneless skinless chicken thighs, slice them up real thin and sautee them with some frozen peppers and onions for the base of a Chicken Philly sandwich. Then just put it on a large roll with some cheese and throw it under the broiler. In the meantime, thinly slice some iceberg lettuce and dress with oil and vinegar to top your sandwich. In many dishes, such as fajitas, or the chicken philly sandwich above, or pasta sauces with meat - I will swap out some of the meat for a less expensive can of mushrooms, to help stretch out the meat. There are a ton of things you can make with a pork or beef roast. Especially if you have a pressure cooker. Simply cut the roast into large chunks and pressure cook them in some water for about 35-45 minutes on high. Then you can chop and or shred the super tender meat up for whatever purposes - toss some of the beef with some prepared beef gravy, mushrooms and egg noodles together. Or mix either meat with some BBQ sauce for pulled BBQ sandwiches. Or even season it up for taco/burrito fillings.
My go to quick dinner is either Mac and Cheese from the box or a grilled cheese sandwich. i am not to picky. I am one of those people that can eat literally the same thing each day for a very long time. I got like that from calorie counting to lose weight, now there are many things I just simply will not eat at all. Soup is good, and I do cook full meals when I know someone is around to eat them, which is a good thing because otherwise I eat like a bird. Lots of nuts and fruit.
My favourite cheap and easy meal has to be baked beans on toast. I do like Heinz but have been experimenting with generic brands recently. I'l also put a bit of grated cheese on top if there's any in the fridge.
As unhealthy as it is, when I need a quick meal I grab a ramen packet and alfredo sauce. Ramen itself isn't that great when you want a 'real meal' so instead of using the flavoring packet provided with the ramen noodles I instead mix it with alfredo. Mixing the noodles with alfredo fancies the meal up a teeny bit. To me, it tastes as if I took the time to boil regular pasta rather than stuffing a ramen-filled bowl into the microwave for a few minutes. Again, this is a nice, quick and easy meal that's cheap yet satisfying.
I'm big on canning in the summertime, so I almost always have some homemade tomato soup in my cabinets. That plus a nice grilled cheese sandwich with a crisp pickle (also homemade) on the side is one of my favorite quick and easy meals. Even if the soup and the pickles weren't homemade, I'd still find this to be one of my favorite quick and easy meals. It's been a long time favorite as it is one of the meals I grew up on, so to speak.
1) go to grocery store, look for cheap/on sale cuts of meat. Something boneless (chicken thighs) or with large bones (pork) works best 2) grab carrots and/or potatoes 3) put meat, chunks of carrots, and/or sliced potatoes in the crock pot and cover with water 4) add salt, pepper, spices to taste 5) put in fridge over night, in the morning pull crock out and turn on. 6) 30-60 minutes before you want to eat it, pull out the bones if there were bones and add a few handfuls of noodles. * you can opt to use canned or frozen veggies instead of fresh. In that case, add them when you add the noodles.* *if desired, you can eat the meat and veggies alone the first night. Then put leftovers in the fridge. The next morning, put the crockpot back on it's lowest setting to warm. Add noodles, a scoop of butter, and some cheese an hour before you want to eat to make it casserole like* I'm a lazy cook. This is cheap, easy, and can last multiple meals.
Being somewhat health conscious and loving spinach....I'll prepare a delicious spinach salad, it's easy, healthy and fast to prepare. I'm also a fan of green drinks prepared in my ninja 1000 blender....the drinks are quick to prepare, healthy and delicious as well. Yum Yum!
I always go with good old egg sandwich. It's very easy to prepare and all of the ingredients that I need can always be found at home. Eggs, mayonnaise, salt and pepper, and voila! I still toast my egg sandwich though because I love my bread crispy and crusty lol!
Omelets are always good or just scramble some eggs and add the extras. Using leftovers is great too. You avoid wasting food this way as well. If we have leftover meat, I usually make it into a stew or add some barbeque sauce to it and make sandwiches. @Lushlala, I was surprised to see all the Ramen Noodles posts too. My kids always loved the stuff, but it's not my favorite. Yeah, it's cheap and quick, for sure. I have used it to make a heartier soup with or used it without the packet and added another sauce before.
Rice (jasmine scented rice) with anything. Cooking whatever veggie and meat I have, put it to rice. Just cooking some garlic and onion and adding rice and an egg to the pan. Making a potato curry and eating it to rice. Eating rice with spicy sauce. Eating rice with any sauce. It's not my most culinary experience, but the question did not ask for a simple dish or a dish at all, just about go-to quick and simple. Put rice in rice cooker. Cook anything on the side, or don't cook something on the side... Hahaha, I'm a simple person.
