Simple, cheap & healthy recipes

Taken from the ‘Hungry Bachelor’s Recipe Book’.

Explore the world of quick, cheap, healthy meals and snacks for people who don’t like spending too much time in the kitchen or washing up dishes.

Quick fix to turn a boring old pub side-salad into something about 10X more nutritious…add a liberal sprinkling of spirulina powder to it. Spirulina is a micro algae that grows in warm water in a spiral shape (hence the name), it’s so packed full of nutrients that you only need a teaspoon per day to get just about every mineral you need. Tastes nice as well.

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Well I must confess to being somewhat excited this afternoon cos my old buddy Chris is traveling all the way here by train from London to see me -) To celebrate I’ve just made a big old super-salad! Rocket, fresh basil, olive & hempseed oil, mixed seeds, mixed sprouts, almonds, carrot, red onion, pepper, avocado, ginger, garlic, halloumi, spirullina and veg-pepperoni. Forgot to photograph the salt, pepper & balsamic vinegar.

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Meze Madness! What better way to celebrate a lovely day under the Brighton sun than to whip up a plate full of delicious nibbles. Clockwise from top: Sauerkraut, red onion, onion bhaji, organic brown toast & butter, gourmet mushroom pate, mozzarella,’ Sabra’ humus, marinated tofu, rocket, mixed sprouts, extra virgin olive oil.

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Another Salad Success Story: Rocket, sprouted mung beans, tinned mixed beans, organic carrot, red pepper, black olives, mozzarella, soaked almonds, salt, pepper, chile flakes, olive oil, balsamic vingear and red wine vinegar. LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT! (And I love that I can bring a tub to my local pub and eat it as I sip beer and chatter).

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Smart move, pop into Tesco at 8.30pm and pick some DEEP discounts 🙂

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Naughty I know, but sometimes I get waylaid in the pub. I love beer, I love rum as well…but what to do to balance the acid-overload? One answer is water, just water from the tap…with a little bit of cucumber for flavour…lurvly.

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A little afternoon drink and snack on my day off. I’m painting a portrait of a friend and really fancied some sprouted mung beans with smoked paprika and a little Himalayan salt. Delicious with a glass of white wine. Cheers!!

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I got a bag of bannanas half price and two avocados for 50p so blended one of each up with a bit of hempseed oil to make a nutrition packed smoothie this morning. Total cost = approx 60p, preparation time = 3 minutes.

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Simple, cheap, quick…and best. POWERHOUSE of nutrients in a £1 box of mixed sprouts, a liberal sprinkling of himlayan crystal salt and…that’s it! Preparation time = 5 seconds. Nibble, eat, gorge…whatever, it’s all TOP NOTCH GOODNESS.

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Superfood smoothie par excellance. Bannana, organic apple, organic almond nuts (soaked in water over night), hempseed oil, organic yoghurt and a dash of water. Totally delicious and packed full of nutrients.

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A half priced pizza winked at me earlier in Tesco so I did something I very rarely do, I bought one. Unsatisfied to simply eat a pizza, I jazzed it up with garlic/chile infused oil (makes the pizza go crispy without drying it out) and covered it in my beloved sprouted mung beans. I must confess it tasted rather nice actually. The chile was strong and made my nose run which was pleasing as well. After I snotted all the mucous out I packed the remainder in some take-away containers to eat in the pub garden later. Preparation time = 9 minutes, cost = £2.50

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Springtime fruit salad.

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Bank holiday salad BONANZA! Had a lovely time in Sainsburies earlier, scoring some decent fresh produce at a sensible price. Opted to celebrate when I got home by making another triumph of a salad to go with my vegetarian chorizo sausage burger thingy. Boxed up the excess salad for another time and re-potted what was left of the basil plant and put on the wall to join the others growing under the gorgeous Cornwall sun. Nice!

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Jazzing up the left overs from last nights curry take-away. Added loads of sprouts, tahini, hempseed oil, mozarella, organic carrot, fresh basil and some Nando’s chile sauce. Also a couple of bits of bread/wraps and some locally made samosas from the wholefood shop. Turned out nice again.

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It really was a lovely salad today. Loads of basil leaves, loads of lemon juice, sprouts, red onion, tomato, hempseed oil, salt, black pepper, cayenne…mixed in with some couscous. Fried up some Quorn chunks with onion, garlic, chopped red chile pepper, tahini as well so decided to mix some of it up in a wrap for quick/convenient download. Saved the rest of the salad in some used plastic containers for the next couple of days.

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I love a bargain! It often pays to go snooping around larger supermarkets mid-late afternoon…nice discounts be lurking. Ended up putting half a packet of basil leaves on my vege burger tonight, tasted great but made me sneeze a lot. Felt like a cool breeze was blowing through me.

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Snack attack! Really hungry but don’t want to be wasting time in the kitchen when I could be in the sun. The solution? A wholesome vegetarian cheese/tomato/onion/mung bean/hemp oil/vegan mayo roll. So filling and nutritious it almost counts as a meal in iteself. The chunk of onion to the side is what I ate before tucking into the roll. Eating a bit of raw before cooked food stimulates the digestive juices, preparing them for the more difficult task of digesting cooked food (such as bread rolls and cheese).

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I felt like something nice and healthy for lunch today so I went to the local organic farm shop and got £1 worth of veg, a 45p brown roll and 2 discounted high quality vege burgers. As ever, I went heavy on the home made mung bean sprouts and added lashings of hempseed oil. Also some salt, black pepper and some organic balsamic vinegar. It was too much to eat so I saved a bit for later (and still have one of the vege burgers in the fridge). Total cost = about £4. If I’d used non-organic ingredients and the cheapest vege burgers it would have cost around £2.40 but I always try to get organic if possible cos their are so many more nutrients in it and it tastes so much nicer. (PS: I decided not to use up the humus in the photo, it would have a been ‘overkill’).

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Sprouted mung beans are a great example of what I call ‘high intensity ultra quick-cheap superfood farming’. 500g of organic mung beans costs about £3 and lasts for ages. Soak the beans over night in water, drain and leave to sit. Rinse at least once per day (twice per day in the summer) so they stay damp. In 2-3 days they will be ready to add any number of recipes – from salads to soups to pastas to curries. Crispy, fresh and loaded with more minerals/vitamins than you can shake a stick at. Keep in the fridge in an air tight container.

When I lived in the Czech Republic I would take a tub of sprouts with me to the restaurants and add them to whatever I was eating. Works nice on pizza…and curry…and pretty much most other things. Yogis call mung beans ‘food of the Gods’ for a few reasons, not least because they clean the blood. God bless mung beans.

I was asked how I prepare the mung beans so I replied thus: “Easy, soak them overnight, or through the day, I put them in a pint glass. Then put a sieve over it and pour the water out. Keep them wet by flushing once or twice per day and in a couple of days they will be ready. Then just store them in an airtight container in the fridge.” I should have added “mung beans respond well to being kept in a dark place and with pressure on them. I put another pint glass on top of them as they are sprouting and keep them in the cupboard. They sprout more vigorously like this and look whiter.”

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The basics of a healthy diet are Water-Salt-Oil. Table salt is usually found in cafes/restaurants with extra virgin olive oil only if you are lucky. That’s why I often carry my own proper salt and hempseed oil with me in my bag. The hempseed oil will be drizzled on my toast and the salt will be sprinkled on the scrambled eggs. Suffice to say I had a nice long drink of water before I left the house and will get another glass to accompany my lazy Saturday morning latte.

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Let’s call it brunch. 38p for a large organic carrot. Cut into chomp sized chunks and put into a zip sandwich bag. It’s a good idea to start each day with a bit of raw food, even if it’s just a bite or two. By doing this you prepare your digestive system for the day ahead.

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