Watching those fancy cooking shows and craving a tasty home-cooked meal? You can have healthy, gourmet-worthy dishes without breaking the bank. The trick is to focus  

on inexpensive base ingredients.

For example, consider rice. It costs only a few cents per serving, but it's the perfect blank slate to accept any combination of herbs and spices you can dream up. Add eggs — the most cost-effective protein out there — and you've got a great meal that can be dressed up or down with other seasonal ingredients in a whole host of ways.

The recipe in this blog can be adjusted with different spices and toppings for an easy, chef-worthy dish several nights per week. Try adding peas to the rice and garnishing with mint, or go for Italian flair by replacing the avocado with tomato and fresh basil. You could also season the rice with curry powder and add cubes of roasted eggplant for Indian flavor.

Once you start to experiment, inexpensive rice and eggs just may become your new go-to dish.