In my search for SNAP Challenge-friendly recipes, I headed to Budget Bytes, a blog dedicated to eating well on a budget. With each post, writer Beth M. posts a recipe, a shopping list with a breakdown of prices and photos of the whole process. She shops conventionally, but I think her recipes and approach — plan your meals, cook from scratch, portion and freeze your leftovers — translate well using organic ingredients. For two meals this week, I cooked up her Quick Curried Chickpeas. Preparing the recipe with organic ingredients cost me roughly $1.03 a meal — fifty cents more than the conventional list she had quoted on her website, but still quite affordable.
A simplified version of the Indian dish Chana Masala, the dish is full of flavor, fiber and protein. This week, there was no cilantro in the budget, but I added some rainbow chard for color and nutrition. For those of you who eschew long-winded cooking projects at the end of the workday, this no-fuss curry requires only 10 minutes of hands-on time and a single pot.
You’ll find the recipe for Quick Curried Chickpeas on the Budget Bytes website, along with dozens of others. Bon appétit! See the recipe>>
