Another quickie idea for saving money: stay in! From the website Start Making Choices, here is an article titled Stay In For Savings. Start Making Choices is a website that focuses on taking small steps towards a balanced life, including nutrition, activity, and well-being. Points of interest: recipes for $5 Meal Ideas in 10 Minutes and the Budget Box, a rotation of quick tips posted on the home page.

For more inspiration, check out these articles on Creative Combinations for food and Nutritious Gourmet Cooking on a Budget.

Vital Juice Daily is a website devoted to health of the mind, body and spirit. Offering free daily email tips, VJD has a “thirst for a healthy life” and shares this philosophy with readers. One recent post offered a little advice for those stressed by the current economic situation: Recession-Proof Your Mood.

If daily email tips sound a little intimidating or time consuming, don’t worry. The tips are short, sweet, and extremely relevant. The topics vary from fitness to beauty to food to general wellness.

Also check out Freshly Squeezed, an archive of weekly news, information, and healthy living tips from VJD.

Love Food Hate Waste is a UK-based campaign to raise awareness and reduce food waste. The website is full of ideas, recipes, and information on reducing food waste. The website consists of six basic categories:

Perfect Portions: How to adjust recipes to create the portion desired  
Save Time & Money: Meal planners, food dates explained, pantry essentials
Recipes: Cook Once, Eat Twice and Rescue Recipes
Top Tips & Storage: Keep food fresh longer or revive food past its prime
About Food Waste: Why cutting food waste matters
Add Your Voice: Add your opinion to the campaign

Users can also share suggestions for saving money. Many of the recipes are in metric measurements, so if metrics are a foreign language to you, use a good Conversion Calculator.

For additional information on preventing food waste, check out this article from the Guardian on how to break the habit of wasting food (it even mentions LoveFoodHateWaste.com).

Here’s an Econofest Quickie from the folks at Ideal Bite: Turn off your dishwasher’s “heated dry” option and save approximately $25 a year in electricity costs, which is great for your pocketbook and the planet.

Want to sign up for Ideal Bites daily bite-sized ideas for light green living?

www.idealbite.com

Looking for cheap meal ideas? Wise Bread has the answer! One of my favorite sites, Wise Bread has an awesome archive packed full of frugal ideas for house and home. It is a treasure chest of goodies for those looking to save money and possibly help save the planet. Most of the articles have a green twist for those of us wanting environmentally friendly options for cooking, cleaning, and living.

Check out Lentil Love: How to Sex Up a Simple Staple and Save, loaded with recipes centered around the humble lentil. The author includes links to recipes for dips, soups, salads, and even lentil bread in a variety of ethnic cuisines such as Moroccan, Ethiopian, South African, German, and Mediterranean.

Once you’ve had your fill of lentils, hop over to Cooking with Cabbage: Ten Cheap Meal Ideas. This article includes ideas for slaws, soups, and Chinese favorites low mein and egg rolls. Also check out the author’s Survival Mode Produce List, which includes (what else?) cabbage.

Still hungry for more? Look up 8 Meatless Dishes for Meat-n-Taters Lovers, great recipes for those who favor meat and potato meals but are looking to expand their palates and shrink their grocery bills.