World Food Day 2022 focuses on building a world in which everybody has the nutritious food they need. With the cost-of-living crisis most of us need to find ways to reduce our energy bills and save money on food. Eating food that doesn’t require cooking once or twice a week is one way to do that.

To help your family, we’ve compiled no-cook recipes that use inexpensive ingredients and are quick and easy to prepare. These money saving recipes for World Food Day are delicious and nutritious too!

World Food Day ‘no cook’ dinners

Veggie fajitas

Ingredients

Plain or wholemeal tortillas

1 jar of salsa sauce

2 tubs of chargrilled vegetables, roughly chopped

Hot sauce or mild sweet chilli sauce (whatever suits your family’s tastes)

Handful of sundried tomatoes, finely chopped

150ml soured cream (or crème fraiche – whichever is cheaper at your supermarket).

Iceberg lettuce, finely sliced

Grated cheese (a couple of handfuls)

Instructions

Just place the ingredients on the dining table so everyone can fill their tortillas as they wish!

Save money

The ingredients can be substituted for foods you prefer or food you already have in the fridge. For example, you could use fresh tomatoes instead of sundried tomatoes. You could substitute chargrilled vegetables for sliced peppers, grated apple, finely chopped cucumber – or whatever you like.

You can save money by buying your supermarket’s own brand products, especially for more expensive items like salsa sauce. Plus, once you’ve bought jars of sundried tomatoes and hot sauce, for example, you can use them the next time you make fajitas.

Tuna or salmon salad

Ingredients

Salad:

2 sachets of ready-cooked puy lentils

2 drained tins of tuna or salmon

Handful of your favourite fresh herbs, finely chopped

2 handfuls of chopped cherry tomatoes

1 fresh pepper (sliced)

1 cucumber (diced or sliced)

Dressing:

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp light soy sauce

1 tbsp caster sugar

1 tsp Dijon mustard

Instructions

1. Mix all the salad ingredients together.
2. In a separate bowl, mix together the dressing ingredients.
3. Gradually add the dressing to the salad, tasting as you go.

Chicken couscous

Ingredients

240g ready-cooked chicken breasts (chopped into bite-sized pieces)

100g couscous

198g tin sweetcorn (drained)

1 chicken stock cube

Handful of chopped tomatoes

Squeeze of fresh lemon juice (or a few drops of concentrate)

Instructions

1. Dissolve the stock cube in 200ml of boiling water from the kettle.
2. Add the stock to the couscous and leave to cook for 10 minutes (or follow the instructions on the packet).
3. Once the couscous is ready mix it in a bowl with all the other ingredients.

Save money

If your family doesn’t like sweetcorn, you can swap it for a tin of peas.  Chicken breasts can be substituted with any other cooked meat, and the stock cube can be substituted with a vegetable stock cube (or even a beef stock cube depending on your meat). Tomatoes can also be substituted for other salad vegetables.

Experiment and use what you already have at home as far as possible.

No cook desserts

Fruit ice-cream

Ingredients

125g mascarpone cheese

60g icing sugar

Juice of ½ lemon

Handful of fruit of your choice – 60g blueberries/chopped strawberries/raspberries etc.

1 mashed banana

Instructions

Stir all the ingredients together and press into a dish or plastic container. Freeze for 3 hours or more and then serve.

Save money

You can use supermarket brand mascarpone and frozen fruit instead of fresh. Frozen fruit such as blueberries is often over a pound cheaper than fresh blueberries. Frozen fruit can also provide greater nutritional value than fresh, so it’s ‘win, win’.

Chocolate cheesecake

Ingredients

1 jar of chocolate spread

1 packet of shortbread (about 210g)

360g cream cheese

Instructions

1. Crush the shortbread into crumbs by placing a tea towel over the packet and bashing it with a rolling pin. Children love helping with this part!
2. In a bowl, mix the shortbread with half a jar of chocolate spread.
3. Press the biscuit mixture into the base of a cake tin using your hands or the back of a wooden spoon. Leave in the fridge for 30 minutes.
4. For the filling, mix the rest of the chocolate spread with the cream cheese.
5. When the biscuit base is ready, fold in the filling.
6. Place in the freezer overnight.

You can serve the cheesecake as it is or with a spoonful of plain yoghurt, crème fraiche, ice-cream, or whatever you have in the fridge.

Save money

You can use supermarket own brand products to further reduce the cost of this dessert.

TutorMyKids – helping children to thrive

We hope you have enjoyed our no cook recipe ideas for World Book Day. At TutorMyKids we are dedicated to supporting families and children in any way we can.

If your child needs an extra boost at school our friendly and highly qualified tutors will help them to reach their full potential. We offer tuition in English, maths, sciences, humanities and languages to children in Cambridge, Ely, Huntingdon, Newmarket and the surrounding areas.

To find out more, please get in touch for a chat at hello@tutormykids.co.uk.