This site provides a growing number of delicious recipes that are straight forward to make without breaking the bank.

We have put this site together with the novice cook very much in mind. In addition to the recipes, this site features some helpful cookery hints and tips, a list of store cupboard essentials and a guide to combinations of ingredients that work well together when preparing meals. Our Spoon Rating system (thanks to ChefShamus for this) will guide you as to the complexity of the dishes (1 = easy, up to 5 = Masterchef).

Our hope is that you find this site a useful source of information, enjoy preparing the dishes featured on here, and become more confident and ambitious in your cooking... Then you'll be ready to do that Sunday roast for your mates or tackle the Caribbean Chicken with Rice and Peas dish on here :-)

We'd love to hear how you get on using this site.

Our kids were getting to an age when they would soon be leaving home and were showing in an interest in learning how to make the various dishes that their Mum was preparing for them. They wanted to make these for themselves after moving away from home.

So we had an idea to compile Mum's recipes into an online resource that they could tap into easily in order to find recipes and get key pointers on how to cook. Mum's Recipes Online was our first attempt and consisted of a few pages tucked away on a personal website.

Word about the site started to grow with the kids' friends, our work colleagues and family members all showing an interest. With all of our kids either at or heading off to University this year (Kids, don't forget to keep in touch! -- Mum), we decided to relaunch the recipes site with a focus on meals that are relatively straight forward to make and particularly suited to a student's limited budget - and a few more challenging dishes thrown in too!

And so www.studentmeal.com was born.