Congrats on your success so far, WebyJ. Don't worry if you don't lose 2 or 3 stone by the end of the month, that's a huge goal! Just keep up the good work and make sure you are getting enough to eat or you will run out of energy to chase after your little one. 
I should be looking after myself right now. I keep thinking I should be eating fruit and drinking lots of water and trying to make myself well. But somehow, feeling poorly has had the opposite effect and I've just been eating junk. 
How can I motivate myself to do better? Also, we are really trying to scrimp on our weekly budget and I'm having a hard time coming up with healthy meals that are cheap. Any suggestions? I don't want to keep eating frozen fish and chips, but it's so important to save money right now... 
I was really thinking of starting a 'cheap ass gourmet' blog as I think that cheap + healthy is something lots of people struggle with and something I really enjoy doing, even when I was super poor I always ate pretty well. Although I know there's a few of those around, but some are pretty awful, like the menu someone posted from hillbillyhousewife :/
One thing I might recommend whilst you're ill is to make lots of clear soups. They always make me feel better and they're jampacked with veggies and super easy, you can add some wholewheat (or otherwise
) pasta towards the end or serve over rice to bulk up but essentially what I do is -
Olive oil/Onions/garlic and any other type of onion based vegetable like leeks
Add some meat or chicken (Stewing steak or chopped thigh meat, no skin), brown the meat.
Add Water and bring to simmer, you will need to top up now and then. Throw in whatever herbs you have, rosemary or parsley are ideal, or coriander if you want it a bit asian.
Low sodium stock cube if you think it needs it (can be a bit bland if you don't, remember to season).
After about 15 minutes add your veggies, suggest carrots, parsnips etc but add whatever you want, you can even buy pre-chopped "winter vegetable" mixes from the freezer section.
Continue to simmer until everything is cooked through. Season with salt and pepper. Add some pasta or sever over cooked rice.
I also find there's lots that can be done with frozen veggies, frozen petit pois are cheap and delicious. I make a feta and lemon cold pea salad and serve a grilled rosemary lamb chop on top, or a grilled chicken breast.
Look at the cheaper cuts of meat, the boy and I had baked spinach (creamy garlic spinach, topped with panko breadcrumbs and parmesan baked in the oven), peas and a piece of pork belly slow roasted last night. The pork belly took 2 hours to roast but was delicious, a really big piece of meat, total cost £2:10, then spinach and peas from the freezer, a drizzle of cream and garlic, store-cupboard breadcrumbs and a small amount of parmesan.
I'm super into squid at the moment, as it's a cheaper way to have seafood, 300g of Squid is around £2 and will make enough calamari to feed an army. With a rocket salad, it's really good.
You get 4 squid tubes for that money, which you can stuff with sausage meat and serve with a tomato based sauce. It's also good stuffed with chorizo and served with a spicy tomato sauce over brown rice.
Risottos are a good cheap option, risottos go a long way as you only need about 75g - 100g of risotto rice per person for a generous portion which works out about 30p of rice per portion, I make a great pea, lemon, mint and ricotta risotto. The peas are frozen, lemons I always have on hand, fresh mint from my mint plant and I just buy the ricotta which is about £1.25 and I use half a tub.
Just a couple of ideas off the top of my head
Poll
