hey if it’s your first time being food insecure because of snap benefit cuts, hi! this ain’t my first rodeo and i’ve got tips.
1. dried beans and rice are infinitely cheaper than the canned/microwave stuff. just wash, soak (in the case of beans!), cook, and you’re done!
2. on that note, beans and rice, when eaten together, make a complete protein that is easily digestible by your body. if it comes down to it, you can live off that alone for a good long while.
3. when shopping, prioritize ingredients over premade meals. a frozen pizza is just one pizza, but flour, tomato sauce, and cheese can make many pizzas.
4. dry pantry goods will get infested if you’re not careful. adding a dried bay leaf to dried beans, rice, flour, etc. works wonders for keeping out weevils and other nasty stuff. adding a few drops of peppermint oil to a spray bottle filled with water will keep mice away if you spray it on your baseboards, too.
5. canned veggies is veggies. canned fruit is fruit. you ain’t too good for it, so get those micronutrients if you can.
6. potatoes are super nutritionally dense and a good source of fiber. use them to stretch meals. just don’t store them next to onions because they’ll sprout way faster.
7. coupon clip like a crazy person, and get ready to use the math skills you swore to leave behind in high school. saving pennies starts with getting the most for your dollar. if all cabbages are $1.00, get the biggest cabbage you can find. if tomato sauce is cheaper by the ounce in a quart jar compared to a pint jar, get the quart if you can. be smart with how you spend.
8. lentils are a great way to stretch any kind of ground meat. they’re really cheap and if you’re like me and can’t cut meat out of your diet completely for health reasons, they help it last a lot longer.
9. portion control is so key. if a meal is meant to make four servings, make it last four servings. it’s better to be a little hungry four days in a row than stuffed for two and starving for two. weigh it out if you have to.
10. never say no to free food. whether it’s potlucks, community events, religious gatherings, or student food pantries, a free meal is one less you have to cook for yourself. pro tip: hit up wednesday night suppers at churches, shabbat dinners at synagogues, and sikh gurdwaras pretty much any time for a free (if not really cheap) meal. you might have to endure some proselytizing, but as long as you’re respectful and mind your business, you’re golden.
Hope you don’t mind me adding some extra tips of my own op!
11. Bullion cubes tend to be real cheap and making things into a soup is a great way to make small portions feel bigger. A serving of beans and rice doesn’t feel like much but when you add a bullion cube and some hot water now suddenly that’s soup and you’ve got a big bowl full + extra flavor
12. If you’re diabetic or insulin resistant and suddenly faced with eating lots of carbs because they’re what’s cheap and available pre cook your food then chill it!! Starches in most everything from potatoes to rice to bread will change form when cooked and then cooled. They start converting to resistant starch and our body basically processes them like fiber instead of like carbs, so you can lower the glycemic index of your rice by quite a bit if you cook it then freeze it overnight before thawing and eating. Is it perfect? No but it helps!
13. Frozen fruit and vegetables can also be a great and less expensive way to get your fruit and veg. Canned is often cheaper but do the price-per-ounce math and check! Grocery stores near me still occasionally do 10 for 10 sales on bags of frozen veg! And if you can get some on sales like that they become a great way to bulk out other foods. Mac n cheese? Add some frozen veg. Hamburger helper? Frozen veg. Top ramen? Frozen veg.
14. Reiterating the never turn down free food if it’s something you can eat. Hit up food pantries, check if Facebook has a buy nothing group for your area, people will give away food for absolutely free! Groups like this are also super useful even if you don’t find food, look for things like toiletries on offer, if you can get your body wash for free that’s a couple bucks you can devote to food.
15. if you're going to shoplift, prioritize spices. you have a lot more plausible deniability, they last for a long time, they're lightweight, they're debilitatingly expensive when you're struggling but they make a huuuuuge difference in your ability to choke down the same three basic ingredients for every meal
16. if you're buying spices, buy two or three mixes instead of individual spices. not because it's a better value, but because it minimizes the cost and maximizes the variety. and you need variety of flavors in your food or you'll choke. rice and beans made with herbes de provence is different from rice and beans with curry powder is different from rice and beans with chili powder.
17. similarly invest in a big bottle of some kind of hot sauce. you might not like hot sauce, but just the novelty of painful food will get you through some weeks
18. vote for higher taxes and against fascists
boosting this post again because the holidays are often rough if you are food insecure. big expectations coupled with food pantry shortages are a recipe for physical and psychological disappointment.
if you’re in need of advice, the reblogs and comments on this post are full of great tips about how to stretch your dollar, cook flavorful meals while on a budget, and keep pests out of what you do have. might make a masterpost with everything in one but until then, scroll away or send me an ask!! as seasoned home cook steeped in generations of appalachian and southern poverty, i got you.
stay safe, stay warm, stay radically optimistic y’all!
