A 20 percent gratuity and a service charge are not included in the package price. Beverages are additional, as well as certain dishes in Le Bistro or Cagney's. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the more meals you purchase, the less they cost. If you're a fan of the onboard restaurants included in the SDP and plan on eating there every night, even the smallest package saves you money on menu pricing -- if not with an entree alone than certainly with an appetizer in tow.

Want more of a reason to book? All Norwegian Cruise Line restaurants excluding Moderno Churrascaria and Teppanyaki, which retain their cover charge model have now transitioned to a la carte pricing.

La Cucina, Le Bistro and Cagney's are still no additional charge with the package, even if menu items have exceeded the sum total of previous covers creating more of a value for package purchasers.

How to book: Purchase online under "Dining" once logged in to ncl. You can also purchase a dining package onboard on the first or second day of your cruise. For three- and four-day cruises, the SDP may only be purchased on the first day of your cruise. Cost: Packages extend from three to five specialty restaurant reservations, and then an Unlimited Dining Package that allows for one extra-fee meal per night and lunch on sea days.

Savings are calculated to add up to 40 percent. What's not included: Flexibility is a bit tough when reservation agents are trying to accommodate thousands of passengers; your exact choice of venue, day and time might not always be facilitated. In fact, beyond your first evening, you will have to negotiate your remaining dining reservations once onboard.

For the package to be worth it, be sure to book meals as soon as possible, manage expectations and try different venues. Drinks are not included. Does it save you money?

Yes, especially considering that Royal Caribbean includes the gratuities and service charges in the price of your dining package. Rates for Royal Caribbean's popular eateries are always rising, so taking advantage of locked-in rates helps to budget for special meals.

If eating at a new restaurant every night is thrilling to you, then the Ultimate Package which also includes select lunches has the potential to save you lots of cruise dollars.

How to book: After you book your cruise, visit RoyalCaribbean. Dining packages include a meal on the first night of your cruise, so be sure to book by 5 p. the evening before departure.

Celebrity's specialty dining packages are based on length of cruise and start from three nights to two weeks. What's not included: While packages are available with wine pairings which include a 15 percent wine service charge , the base price does not include alcohol.

Same as Royal Caribbean, your first meal onboard is arranged for you -- make sure to list your preferences before you board. Even with the three-meal package, the savings is calculated to be 19 percent.

How to book: Start online at celebritycruises. Specialty dining packages must be booked ahead of your cruise; they're available onboard during the first or second day only.

More meals can be purchased to be used for breakfast or lunch via advanced request to Celebrity Dining. Cost: There are many different dining packages available for purchase on the MSC Cruises website.

Packages for different venues across different ships are bundled and sold in a format similar to Groupon. As such, prices range from a 45 percent discount on a single meal at a restaurant like Sushi Festival on MSC Poesia to a two- to four-meal dining package aboard MSC Divina.

If diners at Ocean Cay would rather dine from the a la carte menu, they can do so at half price. What's not included: Choice. While there's choice in the meals and packages themselves, once you purchase something, the option to switch restaurants is off the table.

When tomatoes are at their best, you'll forget all about stuffed peppers and opt for these simple stuffed tomatoes instead. Here, fresh tomatoes are stuffed with canned tomatoes and peppers, bread crumbs, Cheddar cheese, and smoked sausage.

The classic Cheddar cheese and tomato combination takes on new form in this recipe. Salmon fillets are topped with dried basil and fresh tomato slices. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with Parmesan, and bake.

This simple recipe is one you'll want to keep in your rotation for easy weeknight dinners. Serve over rice.

Going meatless just once a week can do amazing things for your budget. One of the best veggie meals. Even my carnivore of a husband said that he liked it," says reviewer Fran.

This healthy and filling combination of chickpeas, tomatoes, onion, and numerous spices means Meatless Mondays never have to be boring. Serve with Indian Naan Bread , basmati or jasmine rice. This gives the dish its signature look, as well as adds a subtle nutty flavor.

These make-your-own burrito bowls are a whole lot cheaper than takeout. It's a great way to use any leftover chicken or rice you may have on hand. Fresh basil is the key to this quick and easy stir-fry. Be careful not to overcook it, instead, stir the basil in right before serving.

Reviewer samantha says, "This comes together very quickly and is a great way to use up extra basil growing in the garden. Keep things simple on a Friday with this panini consisting of turkey, avocado, provolone cheese, fresh spinach, and roasted red peppers.

If you don't have a panini press , you can place the sandwich in a skillet with a little oil, and top with a heavy skillet such as cast iron to press.

It's hard to believe this entire pizza is made with just four ingredients: shredded mozzarella, fresh mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, and fresh basil. The melted, shredded mozzarella makes a crispy, thin crust that's gluten-free!

Take it from reviewer Britney who says, "I was skeptical a cheese crust could hold up to the toppings I prefer. IT DID! Canned salmon is cheaper than fresh, making it an excellent, budget-friendly protein source. These wraps are loaded with green onions, radishes, cucumbers, rice, and salmon, all tossed in a soy sauce mixture.

This gives me my fix! Looking for a use for that summer zucchini crop? This caprese-inspired salad makes a meal when stirred into pasta. You can even add grilled chicken for more protein.

Although this recipe calls for ingredients you'll likely only find at specialty grocery stores, you can easily swap out the Thai basil with regular basil and the Thai peppers with serrano peppers, as Allrecipes Allstar lutzflcat did: "This was so full of flavor and so darn easy to make I simply couldn't believe it.

This simple linguine is made using ingredients you likely have in your kitchen right now. Try adding grilled or sauteed veggies to make it a meal. Chicken and asparagus are tossed in an orange-soy sauce and served over brown rice to make a well-balanced weeknight dinner.

If you prefer the sauce a little thicker , combine equal parts cornstarch and water, mix until combined, and stir into sauce. Canned tuna is an affordable, high-quality source of protein, and it's hard to resist in this cheesy panini melt. Serve with homemade potato chips for a diner-style dinner.

Vegetarians and meat eaters alike will enjoy these quesadillas loaded with mushrooms, onions, black beans, cilantro, mozzarella cheese, and lime juice. Serve with salsa on the side, if desired.

Top Affordable Dining. Where to eat in the Bay Area without spending a Families pack into the simply decorated dining room on weekends Missing Duration

Economical dining packages - The food at many of these recently opened restaurants is often so good you'd want to go even if their prices weren't so low. The new affordable Top Affordable Dining. Where to eat in the Bay Area without spending a Families pack into the simply decorated dining room on weekends Missing Duration

Our list of the healthiest meal delivery services for is a good place to find all the most nutritious options.

Number of meals per week. With almost every service, the more meals or servings your order per delivery, the cheaper it becomes per meal. But you'll want to hone in on exactly how much food makes sent for your household. If you can't imagine yourself cooking more than twice per week, don't order more than two meal kits because they typically won't last more than a week in the fridge.

Most prepared meals either arrive frozen or can be frozen after unboxing. That means it's less of an issue if you order too many meals on your first go around. Most services allow you to change the number of meals or servings in your plan even after you've started.

Our meal delivery experts have logged more than 5 years of cooking more than 75 meal kits and tasting more than prepared meals from various services to help land on our list of the best healthy meal subscriptions in While everything else has got more expensive, meal kit subscriptions seem to be getting cheaper.

The absolute cheapest meal kit is EveryPlate , and with consistently tasty meals -- we've tested it three times now -- that take as little as 20 minutes to cook, it's an easy pick for the best cheap meal service for Read more: Are Some Meal Kits Cheaper Than Buying Groceries? I Did the Math.

If you're looking for inexpensive vegan meals by mail or an affordable meal kit service that includes steak and seafood in the standard plan, we have picks for those, too.

The takeaway? Being budget-friendly certainly doesn't mean the food has to suck. If you're looking to eliminate a few weekly tasks -- grocery shopping, meal planning, prep, cooking -- without squeezing your budget, we tested more than 10 top wallet-friendly services to find the best cheap meal delivery for The bottom line : EveryPlate's meal kits were all solid and easy to make.

EveryPlate meal kits are easy to prepare and I loved everything I made in multiple rounds of testing. You won't find a lot of foofy, upscale cuisine or complicated recipes, but you will get a lot of satisfying comfort food, such as hoisin meatloaf with mashed potatoes, cheeseburgers, umami pork chops and sweet potato quesadillas.

I tested EveryPlate and was pleasantly surprised with how much I liked the meals. Having tested all of the leading prepared meal delivery service options, Fresh N Lean ran away from the competition, ticking more boxes than any other.

The food is healthy, thoughtfully prepared, tastes fantastic, looks appetizing and is fairly affordable, depending on the plan you select. Fresh N Lean has five meal plans to help keep folks on track with their specific nutrition goals, including low-carb, vegan, paleo and protein-plus options.

The food I tried was all made exceptionally well, made from simple, whole ingredients. This is the perfect service for families with picky eaters trying to eat well on a budget. Much like EveryPlate, Dinnerly has a lot of comfort foods such as ravioli with spinach and parmesan sauce, carne asada tacos and chicken pad thai.

Dinnerly has an enormous menu of recipes -- typically more than 60 to choose from in a given week. The bottom line: This plant-based meal delivery service had some of the best, healthy prepared meals of any service we tried.

I sampled about nine of Mosaic Food's plant-based prepared meal offerings and the vegetarian prepared meal delivery service had an astoundingly high hit rate. Mosaic uses bold and interesting global flavors and employs creative use of meat substitutes such as tofu, jackfruit, cauliflower and vegan sausages to create tasty and satisfying vegetarian meals -- even for this omnivore.

There are some vegan meals, but many of them use dairy products, so vegans must choose their Mosaic meals more carefully. The bottom line: Blue Apron is a classic example of a quality meal delivery service.

One of the original providers of this service, it also stands out for eco-friendliness. Blue Apron is one of the original meal kit services and it's also one of the best. In fact, Blue Apron topped our list of best meal delivery services for with a wide range of excellent recipes, all for an affordable price.

It's true, you can order bistro steaks and roasted trout dinners with Blue Apron's standard plan, where many services charge extra for those premium proteins. In addition to solid meal kits, Blue Apron is the most eco-friendly service of the major players, according to a recent study.

The heartier meals are great too, like the cauliflower rice and pesto harvest bowl with cashews and spinach. You won't need more than a saucepan, toaster or blender to prepare most of the meals, and most can be made in as little as 5 minutes.

When I tried Daily Harvest , I loved the interesting smoothie combos such as a chocolate blueberry smoothie with greens, banana and almond butter. The bottom line : It doesn't get much easier than HelloFresh.

This service has tons of cheap meal kit options, more than 50 per week, and allows you to add proteins or extra servings to keep the whole crew fed and happy. HelloFresh has as many as 25 dinner meal kits per week, so it is nearly impossible not to find something you'll like.

HelloFresh also has five or six plant-based recipes a week, making it the best cheap meal kit service for vegetarians. Over the past few years, we've tested nearly every meal kit delivery and prepared meal delivery service we could get our oven mitts on, and that includes the best budget meal delivery services.

Many of the menu options for the meal delivery services we've listed include nutritious plant-based food or high-protein recipes with lots of veggies and lean meats. To test each cheap meal delivery service, I tried at least four and sometimes as many as 10 meals from any given service. I always choose a range of meals from the various menu and meal plan offerings.

For instance, if a meal subscription service offers vegan or vegetarian meals I was sure to try at least one. I also mixed up the cuisine types to include pasta, meat dishes, bowls and other various styles offered by the brand.

To test the best cheap meal kits, there was another set of standards and protocols to adhere to. Here's more on how we test meal kits at CNET. The first big decision you'll make is whether you want meal kits, which require some prep and cooking, or a prepared meal service that sends fully cooked meals ready to heat and eat.

Prepared meals require almost no time and energy, other than what it takes to actually eat the food, but typically run a few dollars more per serving.

If you're keen on eating low-calorie, low-carb, plant-based or pescatarian food, certain meal kits and meal delivery services are better than others. Our list of the healthiest meal delivery services for is a good place to find the most nutritious options.

Cut into strips and serve over a simple green salad such as this Spinach Pomegranate Salad. This filling and nutritious combination is just what you need to jumpstart your week. This recipe calls for boneless pork loin chop, but you can also substitute chicken or shrimp.

When tomatoes are at their best, you'll forget all about stuffed peppers and opt for these simple stuffed tomatoes instead. Here, fresh tomatoes are stuffed with canned tomatoes and peppers, bread crumbs, Cheddar cheese, and smoked sausage.

The classic Cheddar cheese and tomato combination takes on new form in this recipe. Salmon fillets are topped with dried basil and fresh tomato slices. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with Parmesan, and bake. This simple recipe is one you'll want to keep in your rotation for easy weeknight dinners.

Serve over rice. Going meatless just once a week can do amazing things for your budget. One of the best veggie meals. Even my carnivore of a husband said that he liked it," says reviewer Fran. This healthy and filling combination of chickpeas, tomatoes, onion, and numerous spices means Meatless Mondays never have to be boring.

Serve with Indian Naan Bread , basmati or jasmine rice. This gives the dish its signature look, as well as adds a subtle nutty flavor. These make-your-own burrito bowls are a whole lot cheaper than takeout.

It's a great way to use any leftover chicken or rice you may have on hand. Fresh basil is the key to this quick and easy stir-fry.

Be careful not to overcook it, instead, stir the basil in right before serving. Reviewer samantha says, "This comes together very quickly and is a great way to use up extra basil growing in the garden. Keep things simple on a Friday with this panini consisting of turkey, avocado, provolone cheese, fresh spinach, and roasted red peppers.

If you don't have a panini press , you can place the sandwich in a skillet with a little oil, and top with a heavy skillet such as cast iron to press. It's hard to believe this entire pizza is made with just four ingredients: shredded mozzarella, fresh mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, and fresh basil.

The melted, shredded mozzarella makes a crispy, thin crust that's gluten-free! Take it from reviewer Britney who says, "I was skeptical a cheese crust could hold up to the toppings I prefer.

But it should be adjusted according to your needs as everyone requires a slightly different amount of nutrients each day. For example, we don't all need to eat the same amount of calories. Men, who are generally heavier and have more muscle compared to women, need more calories.

Young children also need fewer calories than adults. But boys older than 11 and girls aged 15 and above are likely to need more calories. So, adjust portion sizes accordingly to meet your families needs and appetites. A company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales with no.

Skip to main navigation Skip to content. Breadcrumb Home Guide to diabetes Enjoy food Eating with diabetes Meal plans Budget. Save for later Page saved! You can go back to this later in your Diabetes and Me Close.

Budget meal plan. With the UK currently in a cost of living crisis, more and more of us are having to manage our finances more carefully. Important information about following this meal plan This meal plan has taken nutritional information from our recipes and the sixth edition of Carbs and Cals , unless otherwise stated.

A mix of whole milk and semi skimmed has been used, but please use whichever you prefer. Any dairy alternative should be unsweetened and fortified with calcium. This meal plan meets your recommended amount of fibre across the week. This includes plain water, plain milk, and tea or coffee without added sugar.

Further information on following this meal planner The weekly overview You can also download our budget meal plan as a pdf PDF, 83KB , which contains a full breakdown of the nutritional information per day.

Monday Breakfast: Banana porridge — make with 27g uncooked oats, ml whole milk, and one banana. Lunch: Scrambled eggs with wholemeal toast and tomato. Milk: ml semi-skimmed milk. Tuesday Breakfast: Two wheat biscuits with ml semi-skimmed milk, raisins and pumpkin seeds.

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