I'm skint - what dinners can I make for £2.50?

Have you seen this website:

http://www.cookingbynumbers.com/

Put in your ingredients and it gives you a list of stuff to cook.

We did couscous and roasted veg for under that the other day.

Chicken breasts wrapped in bacon (which you have) with more veg?

This thread should inspire you.A meal for 2 for 50p.Some sound grim but it gives ideas.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/326929/meal-for-two-for-50p-suggestions

Have you got stuff like onions and garlic too?

From what you have posted I reckon I could do a few meals out of that little lot without spending anymore.

Chicken in a tomato sauce with Pasta
Chicken wrapped in bacon with Pots
You can make a cheatey type Carbonara - Fry some bacon til crispy
Cook pasta and tip it into a hot dish with the bacon mix it up
addsome parmsean to the 2 eggs and whip up - stirl quckly into the pasta and bacon - it might sound grim but is lovely.
Can you make some sort of soup with the carrotts pots and some other store cupboard bits?

Baked spud, scooped out with an egg cracked in, Then back in the oven till the egg's cooked. Pile the scooped out bits of spud (mixed with something scrummy on top. Good with just about anything.

Bean cuisine! - The humble baked bean can be mixed with loads of different things and they're cheap.

Sausage, egg & chips is yummy.

I do a tuna pasta bake which can't cost much money.

Cook a big pan of pasta

Make a white sauce (flour, butter and 1/2 pint of milk, salt & pepper)

Add a tin of tuna to the sauce

Stir sauce into pasta and serve

Or, if you're not in a hurry, tip the pasta and sauce mixture into a shallow dish, top with grated cheese and crushed walkers crisps and chuck in the oven for 20 mins until the top is golden and bubbling.

It's not classy in the slightest but it's brilliant comfort food!

Puss has a nice paprika chicken recipe which she shares if you ask nicely.

I'd like that one please Puss.?

It is one of the staples we use out of a very old Delia book called Frugal Food (My mum bought it me when I went off to be all studenty at Uni)

A rather nice stodge dish is roast potatoes smothered in tomato sauce; you make the sauce with tinned toms, stock, flour for thickening and herbs.

Anything with pulses in it

a can of kidney beans is about 14p, but if you splash out and get a can of white beans too (which are about 40p) it makes 2 meals for two, mixing the beans in both recipes

so i may made bean burgers one day (other ingredients, breadcrumbs, and egg, finely chopped and fried onion and carrot, splash of passata or tom puree and a chilli/chilli powder)

and the second day, bean tacoes. just chooped onion, beans, passata/tin toms, chilli/other spices and a splash of lime juice. if tacoes are out of price range use pittas instead

chick pea curry is cheap too

Bacon Chilli Pasta:

Cook 3 rashers of bacon and chop, slosh of chilli oil or a tsp of easy chilli or a chopped chilli, pasta and a small pot of cream.

Paprika Chicken:

1 onion sliced
1 red pepper sliced
2 Chicken breasts sliced
tbsp good paprika
1 tin of tomatoes
1 good squirt of tomato puree
1 chicken stock cube
pinch of sugar
seasoning
sour cream

Fry onion & Peppers in a little olive oil when they are cooked fry off the chicken breasts until browned, put over the paprika and cook for another minute. Add in the tin of toms, tom puree, stock cube and a pinch of sugar (takes the bitter aftertaste out of the toms) simmer until chicken cooked through and the sauce is nice and thick and bubbly. Season to taste and put in sour cream to taste just before serving. I usually serve with rice.

Our dinner tonight will qualify I think. Very vegetably pasta with chorizo. Chorizo is great - a tiny bit goes a long way and it's cheap as chips. But the whole loops of it from a deli or from Lidl. Other ingredients are onion, garlic, chilli, grated carrot and courgette, tinned toms.

Jacket potatoes scooped out and mashed with cheese and served with a salad are fab too.

My favourite cheap comfort food (apart from tuna pasta bake, but I cheat and use a tin of campbells condensed mushroom soup instead of a white sauce!) is corned beef hash. Fry an onion. Cook and mash some potatoes. Mix cubes of corned beef, onions and a tin of baked beans with the mash. Put into oven proof dish, sprinkle with cheese and grill. A tin of corned beef is about 75p.

Oh, and also risotto. It needs good stock but a chicken carcass is effectively free if you're roasting a chook, or you could ask your butcher for chicken bones or wings, which make fab stock. Then just add the rice (ldo) and whatever veg you have - leeks, mushrooms etc, a bit of pancetta... Fresh parmesan is expensive but goes really far.

Can I please say, those two dishes that Puss posted are delicious ?

Another pulse one

don't let the fact its veggie put you off, its really nice. you could use normal spuds with it too