What other awesome frugal cooking blogs are out there?

December 30, 2009 10:21 PM

I've just discovered 30 Bucks a Week and I love it. What other awesome frugal cooking blogs are out there? (more detail inside on what I'm looking for.)

What I love about 30 Bucks and what I'm hoping to find in other blogs:

• Focus on cooking frugally. I'm NOT interested in other aspects of frugality right now.
• Focus on fresh ingredients and very little processed food. No coupon clippers since they almost always are using lots of processed food.
• Simplicity. I like recipes that don't have a long list of ingredients. Also prefer cooking to baking as baking often seems to require more time, more measuring, more precision, more ingredients.
• Eclectic influences, including Middle Eastern, Asian, Indian, Mexican, etc, etc. Emphasis on interesting flavors.
• Looking for meals with little or no meat, but would prefer not strictly vegan. I still enjoy eggs, yogurt and occasionally cheese.
• I like lots of recipes and enjoy enticing pics of prepared food and/or food prep.
• I really like it when the blogger explains how and where they shop and how much they spent and what they are eating for every meal, including breakfast, packable lunches and snacks, not just dinners.
• Looking for blogs. I'm not asking for your own frugal ideas. Lots of other AskMe posts cover this.

posted by marsha56 to Food & Drink (12 answers total)

Best answer: The One Dollar Diet might be similar to what you're looking for.
posted by TooFewShoes at 10:29 PM on December 30, 2009 [2 favorites]

Budget Bytes
posted by dhammond at 10:32 PM on December 30, 2009

Best answer: Cook For Good

- Mostly fresh ingredients, right down to making your own bread.
- Very simple recipies
- No meat
- Exact breakdown of the monthly shopping budget and menu for each meal of the day, +snakc
posted by Midnight Rambler at 10:54 PM on December 30, 2009

The Hillbilly Housewife has a lot of good ideas, including an emergency menu that can feed 4 to 6 people for a week on $45 (this assumes that you have a completely bare pantry and no food in the house).
posted by christinetheslp at 4:10 AM on December 31, 2009 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Two of my friends in NYC write Diet for a Small Apartment. They don't explicitly focus on the cost of food, but they are both living on grad student stipends and they shop almost exclusively at farmer's markets in the city. They do a good job of talking about what interesting things they picked up at markets and what you do with the weird greens you can buy. Also primarily vegetarian (though they will occasionally have meat) and though they often just kind of figure it out themselves, they link recipes whenever they can.

Also, the photography is pretty.
posted by olinerd at 4:12 AM on December 31, 2009 [1 favorite]

101 Cookbooks fits some of the criteria: whole fresh foods, eclectic influences, meals with litter or no meat, lovely pictures. Sometimes she gets into the love of cooking and baking which are a little more involved but she has tons of different recipes and categories including vegan, vegetarian, whole foods and quick recipes to name a few. Worth checking out.

Some of these may veer away from your request a little bit but this mefi thread has some great food blog recommendations.
posted by dog food sugar at 7:45 AM on December 31, 2009

Best answer: If you like to use a crockpot, take a look at A Year of Slow Cooking.
posted by valannc at 1:45 PM on December 31, 2009

Best answer: SeeFood. She's been on a bit of a hiatus with a cross-country move, but it's a lot of the things you're looking for.
posted by donnagirl at 2:05 PM on December 31, 2009

Best answer: PoorGirlEatsWell is along the lines of your listed criteria. Thanks to her, I discovered one of my fave sandwiches: the SHAT (Spinach, Hummus, Avocado and Tomato). She calls it something else, though.

I like her blog b'c she'll break down how much she spent at Trader Joe's or the local green market and will sometimes take photos of what she purchased. Usually, her weekly budget is $25 (and I can't believe she eats as well as she does for that amount!).
posted by LOLAttorney2009 at 8:59 PM on December 31, 2009 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I marked best answers that hit the sweet spot for me of frugal, simple, appetizing, fresh and healthy, but all the suggestions were great and much appreciated.

Looking forward to lots of reading and cooking.

Thanks so much everybody!

And if you've got more, keep 'em coming.
posted by marsha56 at 9:46 PM on December 31, 2009

Best answer: I like cheap healthy good. Quite a few vegetarian recipes and the recipes are broken down by cost/calories/fat/fiber.
posted by ephemerista at 5:25 PM on January 1, 2010

Best answer: A friend of mine writes the excellent Not Eating Out in New York, which I think hits all of your points. She explains what each ingredient costs (rarely more than $5), almost all of her ingredients are fresh and local, her tastes are extremely eclectic, and her recipes are largely vegetarian.
posted by coffeeflavored at 9:26 PM on January 1, 2010