Recipes and Cookbooks: Food, Stories, Histories

Government Documents

Crowdsourced Recommendations from the Library Staff

Recipes and Nutrition

• 25 Best Frugal Recipe Blogs to Help You Cook on a Budget
• Allrecipes.com
• BBC Food
• BudgetBytes
• Central Area Food Bank Recipe Finder 
• Easy Budget Recipes
• Frugal Nutrition
• Gluten Free on a Shoestring
• Spend with Pennies
• This Gal Cooks

Recommendations, Tips, Recipe Generators, and Apps

• Run an online search for ingredient combinations (and/or special dietary needs) + the word "recipe."
• Ask ChatGPT for a recipe based on the ingredients (and cooking tools) you have on hand. You can also specify things to avoid or request specific diets (e.g. nut free or vegetarian), but please be sure to double check the ingredient list closely. You can always revise the prompt, or request changes.
• You can also use a search engine or ChatGPT to get ideas for ingredient substitutions (e.g. "what can I substitute for eggs in cookies?"). 
• 9 Ways to Stretch Meals Further – Meal Plan on a Budget - tips for ways to use common ingredients to stretch meals.
• Cooking With Pantry Staples: 7 Tips for Budget-Friendly Meals shares tips for using common food shelf items in creative ways.
• Check out ideas on Reddit: Eat Cheap and Healthy (r/cookingforbeginners/ ; r/cooking ; and  r/mealprep may also be worth a look). 
• Budget-Friendly Meal Planning: A $100 Week of Wellness Meals (4 people/meal) - from the Western Health Advantage.
• SuperCook Recipe Generator (type in the ingredients you have to see a recipe for them). 
• Plan to Eat: this app is  not free - it is a subscription based service, but it is an aid for both meal planning and meal prepping.