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.
If you've got a contact who's active military, see if they'll shop for you at the PX/BX. Sure, the food's exceptionally generic, but it's cheap.
Dollar Tree, Dollar General, and similar stores are excellent sources of seasonings, herbs, spices, simple canned vegetables and fruits, some frozen foods, and occasionally meats and dairy (at a few of the larger stores).
Also if you live in rural farming areas, see if they'll allow you to glean in the fields after the harvest (especially right now with it being sweet potato season). Often there are still a decent amount of good vegetables left behind on account of smaller size and "imperfections".
Useful for most people at one time or another
For a lot of people rn it's the one time
Additionally, some things like garlic, onions, potatoes, beans, herbs, beets, and radishes are stupidly easy to just shove in the ground and forget about depending on where you live and how much rain you get. Often times, you can just grow them in pots. You don’t even need to know anything about gardening. Also, and I can’t believe more people don’t consider this, the U.S. (and basically any other country) has a fuckton of invasive plants that were brought here because they grow insanely well and can produce a lot of food (watercress, purslane, kudzu, sunchokes) that aren’t really eaten due to their presence as “weeds” (even though they’re functionally no different than eating lettuce or artichokes - if not better for freshness) and plenty of other plants that weren’t brought here as food but are still perfectly edible (tumble mustard, common mallow, pepperweed) and insanely abundant (and very fresh + usually free of chemicals and microplastics as opposed to the produce you buy in the store, which have a contamination rate of 100% in many cases) and for most of them, the most preparation you need is to walk out your front door, pull them out of the ground, wash them, and eat (and I can not stress enough how much better they will taste than your normal, soggy, wilted, earth-damaging produce because of how truly fresh they are!!!). Not only will you be eating fresh, nutritious, comparatively tastier, and healthier food, you’ll also be actively contributing to help solve a problem that most people don’t even think about.
