Lili K

I find food shopping, budgeting and eating healthily on a budget is very difficult and time consuming. It is even harder to meet special dietary needs, dairy free, low saturated fat, vegetarian & no artificial sweeteners, colours or flavours. Recently the significant cost of cooking has to be taken into account as well as the cost of ingredients.

I cook 1 healthy meal a day that meets every body's dietary requirements and we all eat together in the evening.

We enjoy meals like 10 veg lasagne, veggie sausage pasta bake, cauliflower & chick pea madras, spicy bean stew, broccoli & stilton soup, chilli and veg burgers.

We get treats for the weekend from the local pantry and sometimes try new foods from there as it isn't an expensive mistake if no one likes it. Us adults have cut down on the amount of food we eat and just eat one snack and the one meal a day. Our daughter has 3 meals a day and snacks. We all get to choose a couple of meals to go on the menu each week.

It is my priority for my family to eat nutritious home cooked food every day to maintain our good health. I choose to eat one high quality nutrient dense meal rather than cheaper foods more frequently and this has benefited my health dramatically.

I batch cook, use leftovers, substitute with cheaper ingredients, plan ahead, portion control and offer no alternatives. Eat it or go hungry are the menu options in our house, just how it was when I was a kid.