I used a free magazine subscription to make the perfect meal and saved a fortune on what I'd normally spend

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My wife is a rugby player. And I'm an attentive husband. When she gets back from her weekly training session she's got an appetite that's as fierce as her passing technique, so I always aim to have a hearty meal ready.

We've got a few recipe books at home, and I've got a repertoire of old favourites I can whip up, almost from memory, but we're getting tired of some of them. James May's Cottage Pie recipe, for example, is terrific, but eating it every week takes the shine off it.

So in the interest of matrimonial harmony, I clearly needed to find some new recipes. And then I remembered that the magazine subscription service, Readly, has a huge selection of cooking-based publications on its platform, and they're all included in a free trial. So I signed up and put my reading hat on.

There are more than 7,500 magazines on Readly and they're all split up into categories, so finding a foodie publication wasn't difficult. The front page of "Woman and Home - Money Saving Meals" immediately caught my eye with its promise of "One-Pot Wonders". I put a chicken and chorizo paella on my shortlist straight away.

Thumbing through the other titles I was immediately drawn to the front page of Good Housekeeping Magazine, and that definitely didn't have anything to do with Julia Bradbury being that issue's cover girl. I was briefly inspired by a chicken chilli traybake but, unlike the former Countryfile presenter, it just didn't push my buttons.

Next up was a magazine called the "High Protein Cook Book". This lines up all its recipes in the contents page, which saves having to scroll through page by page, something that's actually quite easy to do on Readly. But I wasn't really keen on any of the ideas in there, so I moved on.

Then a back issue of Delicious magazine caught my eye. "A slice of comfort" was the headline, with a picture of some sort of pie on the cover. But the pie had swede in it, and swede makes my wife a bit cross, so that was off the menu very quickly.

The next issue that caught my eye was another back issue, this time a special publication from the BBC Good Food series. "Money Saving Meals", it was called. Promising to help me craft delicious dishes for a pittance. I liked the sound of that.

Sliding through the pages, I was stopped in my tracks by a tuna pasta bake recipe. It looked incredibly simple, just some dried pasta, a tin of tuna, cream cheese, and a selection of fresh veg. I figured the ingredients would come to around £5, and it was less than that in the end, partly thanks to some of the items already being in stock. We got four portions out of it in the end, which is remarkable.

I didn't actually set out to save money, I really just wanted to impress the wife. But discovering a simple recipe I can make for less than a fiver has been an unexpected surprise.

One of the biggest problems I have with homing in on recipes on Readly is the vast amount of choice. The platform makes it really easy to find food magazines, but there are thousands to choose from once you start flicking through all the back issues. You can lose so much time to it, but it's a lot of fun.

Now that I've had success with a post-rugby meal, I'm going to set some time aside to find some more recipes. It's quite addictive.

Readly has offered National World readers a special offer with a reduced monthly rate and two months free. This means that, after your two-month free trial, then you pay a reduced rate of £11.69 for the first 10 months. And you can cancel any time.

To find out more and start seeking out your cost-saving recipes, click here.