Christmas Appeal: Cookbook will simplify low-cost food

Volunteer Gillian Tustin with the Easy Meals cookbook. Photo / George Novak

A new, free cookbook has been created to help people on low budgets cook cheap, nutritious meals.

The Tauranga Community Foodbank, with Mount Maunganui District Lioness Club and Tauranga Budget Advisory Service, created the Easy Meals cookbook, to be given free to foodbank clients working with community agencies.

The book has simple recipes that make use of common food parcel ingredients.

Foodbank volunteer and former public health dietitian Gillian Tustin said the cookbook would give people ideas of how to use common foodbank ingredients, such as beans and lentils, that they may not be so familiar with.

"It gives ideas for easy meals without too many ingredients," Ms Tustin said. "I think people are often stressed when money is tight. It's really just a reminder that there are some easy, simple things to do to make food more enjoyable for them."

The idea was born when a woman who received a parcel returned to the foodbank saying she did not know what to do with the creamed corn. A suggestion of corn fritters was made and the woman was shown what to do.

Ms Tustin collected recipes for the book and organised them into different sections, including using canned vegetables, sausages, canned fish and vegetable-only meals.

Her favourite recipe in the book was for a couscous salad with roast vegetables.

"Couscous is really useful. People aren't really familiar with it. It's a very fine pasta."

Ms Tustin said Christmas was a time of year when families gathered, putting pressure on food and what to eat.

"It's just trying to make that a little more enjoyable for everyone."