There's got to be hundreds of recipe websites online. My current favorite: http://www.nibbledish.com/recipes/all_time_best/page/1

You just have to improvise a little, blending recipes & substituting for expensive ingredients.

I was definitely surprised to see so many comments on here about recipes, when the recipe was a pretty tiny portion of the article! Maybe it reveals a latent demand for recipes specifically aimed at being as cheap as possible.

Personally I'd love to see more recipes that are - cheap - quick to cook - healthy - tasty

As it is, there's a hell of a lot of books that presume you want to make something fancy.

There are quite a few student cookbooks over here, and surprisingly most of the stuff in them is fairly decent.