Stocking a pantry with nutritional, dried foods and making sure to use everything you buy lead to frugal meals and zero waste cooking. Combining with fresh and frozen ingredients, using whatever is readily available will make you a better cook and save you money. What do you do with vegetable scraps like the ends of carrots, celery, onions and various stems? It might not seem like much to toss a few away each time you prepare a meal, but you would be surprised how useful they are if you collect them. Keep a big, zippered plastic bag in the freezer for this purpose. Toss all your scraps in there each day and before long, you will find that you have a bag full of free flavor waiting to happen.
Once your freezer bag is full, dump it in a stockpot and fill with water. Let it boil away until you have a rich, flavorful veggie stock. Cool and freeze for later or use in soup, rice or beans. The possibilities are endless. How about cooking a bag of red lentils with it? No waste cooking never tasted so good.
Your imagination is the only limit on how to season the lentils. In this case, I decided that my homemade veggie stock was so full of flavor that I simply added some turmeric and saffron and simmered for 20 minutes. Salt to taste before serving.
A Note on Frugal Meals
Pictured above, I plated the lentils with sautéed fresh spinach and sea scallops. I wouldn’t exactly call the scallops an inexpensive protein, but relying on pantry staples like legumes or rice to bulk up your meal means that you can serve fewer of them per person. Therefore you stretch your dollar on the more indulgent items. I finished these seared scallops with a drizzle of truffle oil, which is another splurge, but a little goes a long way. So I think it deserves an honored place in my pantry as well.
While being very low in fat, a quarter cup of dry red lentils offers 4 grams of dietary fiber and 8 grams of protein. They’re quick cooking and require no soaking, which makes them a cinch to cook up anytime and serve throughout the week. Add them to a salad or turn them into burgers.
For a very frugal, vegan meal using red lentils, try this easy and filling stew.