REALLYBROKE

Lots of the recipes in this book are cheap: Cheese and Chilli Dip (made with Cheddar). for instance, which you can eat with crusty bread and crudites such as carrots, celery and baby turnips; Curried Lentil and Mushroom Soup (page 32) is pretty inexpensive; so is pasta with Tomato and Herb Sauce (page 35), at any rate if you grow the herbs; if you do, Pasta with Courgettes and Basil Butter (page 45) will also not cost much in the autumn when courgettes are in season. More obvious are stir-fried and curried vegetable dishes (but, please, not made only with low-protein vegetables: add at least some peas or a few nuts - or follow with cheese). Then there are pulse dishes: few items could be cheaper than Clara's Spiced Lentils (page 97), which I have also recommended for parties. Scrambled Eggswith Cheese and Chives (page 109), ifyou grow the chives, is both cheap and quick; and there are Coleslaw, Carrot and Peanut Salad, and Tuscan-style Bean and Tomato Salad (pages 123, 120 and 118).

Partly because of the much longer vegetarian tradition in countries where rice replaces potatoes, I have so far not given any potato recipes except one in the chapter on salads (and now potatoes for salads are relatively dear). Here, therefore, I have included several. in particular information on and recipes for baked potatoes, not because I imagine that anyone does not know how to bake a potato but to ensure that they do full justice to them and to suggest one or two new ways of stuffing them.

As yoghurt is useful as a cooking ingredient as well as to eat in its own right, 1 have also given directions for making your own, which, if you do it regularly, could make a worthwhile saving. 1 admit that adding strawberries and making yoghurt ices is not exactly economic, but have suggested them on the basis that they are cheap luxuries (and ices represent a saving in that they are a way-I think the very bestway-of preserving seasonal fruit).