Sugar Free For £1 a Day: Great Recipe Resources

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This week, me and my family are aiming to “Live Below the Line” on £1 a day while still eating a balanced, varied, healthy diet. It’s challenging, but going pretty well so far, as I’m sure those who have been following it all on Instagram know. 🙂

Now it is true that we usually feel it is worth spending a little more when our budget stretches to include healthier things like organic, free range foods, slightly less carbs, more ethically sourced products, and more variety (think “eat the rainbow” at pretty much every meal!).

Still, the recipes we have chosen are pretty healthy, veg-packed (although there is less veg than we usually consume), and could even be made healthier with just a couple of simple swaps or additions that would not up the cost too much if your budget stretched more than £1 a day per person.

So where are the recipes from? How do we keep our costs as low as possible? Do we use the recipes just as they are or tweak them?

I have decided to put together a recipe resource page of some of my favourite books, websites and programs to keep our family eating healthily as cheap as possible. I hope that you will find them helpful for your family, too!

Recipe Resources for Healthy Eating on a Budget

I Quit Sugar – great recipes (and articles), and I trust the source. They really really get how to up the nutrients in a dish, and their sweet recipes all contain only fructose-free sweeteners (but please bear in mind they are still “treats”!). It can cost a little upfront to stock your pantry well, but once you do, these recipes are, for the most part, really affordable and delicious. (*I Quit Sugar has now shut down but their recipes have been moved to Sam Wood’s website and are still as wonderful as ever*)

I Quit Sugar books – as above, but containing even more yummy recipes as well as some great information. Mostly really cheap recipes. Personal favourites include: Healthy Family Meals (the Butter Chicken and the Leftovers Shepherd’s Pie are particularly yummy!), Slow Cooker Meals, I Quit Sugar, I Quit Sugar for Life, Kids Cookbook and Simplicious.

I Quit Sugar Ambassador’s blogs and Instagram feeds – IQS Ambassadors (I am one) are people who have been through the I Quit Sugar 8-Week Program before. They have usually been living sugar free/low sugar lifestyles for a little while, and most of the time, if they have a recipe website, those recipes will be fructose/sugar free and nutrient-rich, as they take the IQS philosophy and apply it to their own lifestyle. I particularly like You Totally Got This from Rani, Dreaming of Almonds from Erin, and Crave Real Food from Elise. There are lots of them on Instagram (look out for IQS Ambassador in their profile). Elise’s feed is really great, as is her teenage son’s @_sugarsucks_ which I find really inspirational as a mother trying to imagine what sugar free will look like for my kids when they are older.

Budget Bytes – these recipes sometimes take a little tweaking. Mostly it is just replacing, reducing or eliminating sugars, and sometimes it includes adding in extra vegetables (as a side or in the dish) when I feel it is slightly lacking. Beth also has a great recipe book: Budget Bytes.

Don’t Waste the Crumbs FREE Real Food Meal Plans – these take more time and effort than signing up to Tiffany’s Frugal Real Food Meal Plans (see below), but if you don’t mind a little extra effort to save the £8 a month the full meal plans would cost, these are really useful. Again, as with Budget Bytes, you will need to do a little tweaking to reduce or eliminate sugar and to up the nutrient content a little, but on the whole, I find if I skip the dessert and sweet breakfasts (and choose some of my own or ones I trust/have already adapted for the week) and eliminate any sugar used in other recipes, then I generally don’t have to change much, although I do sometimes replace a recipe or two and reduce the carbs/up the veggies a little.

Frugal Real Food Meal Plans – the paid and easier version of the above. The £8 a month it costs you is usually knocked off your food spend anyway (unless you are already really great at meal planning in which case you don’t need this!), and the recipes are delicious. I love that she includes sides and everything that some meal plans don’t, and although (as above) I change some things around, on the whole I find it filling and healthy.

Save with Jamie – I love this book. It is one of the most used on my recipe book shelf. The recipes are very cheap and easy to make, and it is really well thought out. Each chapter is based around a roast (veggie/chicken/beef/lamb/pork/fish) and gives you fantastic recipes revolving around the leftovers. So simple, but so clever. And we have yet to have a bad recipe from it (we’ve made a lot of them!).

River Cottage: Veg Everyday – another fantastic book full of cheap and easy recipes. This is not meant to be a vegetarian book (you can easily add meat to many of the recipes if you wish), but the point of it is to help people fall in love with vegetables and see them as the starting point of a dish rather than an add-on you’d rather not have. This is very much the way we try to think about food, so I really love it for that.

5 Ingredients, 10 Minutes – A brilliant little recipe book full of quick and cheap recipes and beautiful photos. Does what it says on the tin. No more than 5 ingredients. No more than 10 minutes. Perfect.

Pinterest – I get a lot of inspiration from Pinterest for food, whether it is a recipe that is great just as it is, or whether I pin it with the intention to tweak it a little to make it healthier or sugar free/low sugar. Follow me on Pinterest to see what these recipes are.

Paprika App – this is not an affiliate link. Primarily because I have not actually tried this app myself yet, so I am not solely recommending this from my own experience. I merely mention it as a side-note because I have heard of a lot of people (and especially families) having great success with it. Paprika basically helps you to store recipes, plan your meals and develop shopping lists. It is really handy and supposedly easy to navigate. I have considered purchasing it myself in the past, but it is not a priority right now. I have bookmarked it for future use though, due to the number of recommendations I have received regarding it!

I hope some or all of these resources will help you as they have helped our family!