You really can’t get much more frugal than lentils.
They pack a punch for nutrition and are insanely cheap per bag. Put them in soup, eat them as dal, use them like beans.
I have a confession though: as much as I love the humble lentil I haven’t made them in -years-. I have a bag of yellow ones, and every time I cooked them for the recommended length of time, they were still hard. So I put them in a jar and put them in the cupboard. I would glare at them every so often. That would be the full amount of use they would get-move the jar around, glare.
I found this recipe on Pinterest. It’s simple-lentils, onions, garlic, curry spices, a little bit of salt. But the kicker is that it calls for twice the amount of cooking time-which assures me that it’s not me or my lentils, it’s the stuff that I’ve been reading.
So my hack on this recipe, though I do fully encourage you to go read and use the original:
I put 1 cup lentils in a pot with about four cups water. Placed on medium heat.http://www.nyfjournal.com/2014/02/chana-dal-tadka-yellow-lentil-curry-with-sauteed-onions-garlic-and-spices.html
I added about two tablespoons rogan josh powder because Mid will only eat lentils with a heavy flavor profile. Use whatever curry powder you have in the house, or mix yours fresh. Add a little salt.
Cook for about 40 minutes, and while cooking the lentils fry some garlic and onions. Stir into the lentils.
Holly wants to add chicken when she tries it. I think that adding another protein source would be lovely, but this is crisis cooking in our house-two days before payday and my s.w.agbucks gift cards haven’t come in yet, so no money for meat right now. Lentils are solid enough you probably wouldn’t need meat (or mead, either, since that’s what I wrote first).