By centering meals on vegetables, legumes, and whole grains rather than expensive meats, the Mediterranean Diet offers great opportunities for delicious, healthy, and affordable meals. Here are some tips and recipes to inspire your own cooking without breaking the bank:

• Love legumes. Legumes, including beans, peas, and lentils, offer nutrient-dense flavor, fiber, and protein. They fit easily into any kind of diet, including vegetarian, gluten-free, and dairy-free diets. And they offer a low-fat or fat-free alternative to more expensive animal proteins. Dried beans, depending on where you live and what kind you buy, cost about $2.00 per pound. A single one-pound bag of dried beans is equivalent to three cans of cooked beans, which makes buying dried the most economical choice. However, even canned beans can be an affordable (and convenient) option at around $1.50 per can.   
   
• Pick pasta. Pasta is certainly one of the most delicious, convenient, and widely available healthy foods. It satisfies children and adults alike, can be served hot or cold, comes in a myriad of shapes and sizes, and serves as a fantastic vehicle for other healthy foods. Depending on the type of pasta, it can be as little as $1 per pound. Look for whole-grain pastas for the best nutritional value.    
   
• Store sales and smart storage save money. Many ingredients can be purchased when they are on sale at the supermarket and saved in the pantry or freezer until they are needed. Look for sales on fresh seafood to save money and increase the variety of fish you eat.
  • If you are going to use your fish within 1 to 2 days of purchase, store it on ice in the refrigerator. If you need it for later use, wrap it tightly in moisture-proof bags to prevent the fish from drying out and store it in the freezer. Defrost the fish in the refrigerator when you are ready to use it.
  • Store mussels, clams, and oysters in a shallow pan (without water) covered with moistened paper towels in the refrigerator. Use mussels and clams within 2-3 days and oysters within 7-10 days of purchase.
  • Cook live lobsters and crabs the day you buy them.   
     
• Let a little bit go a long way. Sometimes a recipe just cries out for a premium ingredient: an imported cheese, a cured meat like prosciutto, a particular kind of olive or wine, for example. Fortunately in most cases, a little bit of a flavorful ingredient can be stretched a long way. Just a couple of ounces of feta cheese or a sprinkling of real Parmesan cheese adds an immense amount of flavor to a salad or pasta dish. And you can perk up any dish with just a few olives or slices of a cured meat. When possible, purchase just the amount you need for your recipe. But if the package size is larger than you need, you can store the remainder in the freezer or plan other meals using the same ingredient later in the week.