Cost of living crisis: Easy vegan chickpea stew with spinach recipe on a budget

Lee Anderson, a Conservative MP, recently said in the House of Commons that meals could be cooked for as little as 30p a day during the cost of living crisis.

The Tory backbencher suggested struggling Brits are only using food banks because they “can’t budget” and “can’t cook a meal from scratch”.

Mr Anderson’s comments have been criticised as highly offensive to many families struggling through the cost of living crisis and chefs slammed him for being extremely unrealistic.

In light of this, LondonWorld decided to come up with some meal ideas to keep costs low - while scrapping the unrealistic 30p cost.

For our first meal, we came up with a simple lentil stew with baked potatoes and broccoli, which came in at around 75p per portion.

Now we’ve decided to put together a chickpea stew with spinach, for another easy cheap meal.

Once again, this doesn’t include seasoning or spices, which you can add yourself, which shows how unrealistic Mr Anderson’s 30p claim was.

Chickpea stew with spinach recipe

White rice 1kg - 45p

Chickpeas - 35p

Chopped tomatoes - 28p

Yoghurt - 45p

Spinach - 75p

In total, this shop from Lidl cost £2.28 which will feed at least two people, but bare in mind that the bag of rice will be used for multiple meals.

• I begin by boiling the rice - one part rice to two parts boiling water - for 15 minutes.
• I will then chop the onion which I have left over from last weeks meal.
• I will cook the onions fully and then I will add the chickpeas with the water from the tin into the pan.
• My top tip would be don’t drain the water from the tin, it has lots of benefits and is a good source of protein and acts as a stock in this case.
• Then put the tomato sauce into the pan and stir together.
• I will then finely slice the spinach and add that into the pan.
• You can then either stir in some yoghurt to make it a thicker curry, or in my case add it as a dollop on top.

Costs per portion

15p per spinach

14p per tomato sauce

9p per yoghurt

17p per chickpeas

4p per rice

7p per onion

This equates to 66p for this meal.

Let us know your favourite cheap eats to make at [email protected].