I have $24 to last me til Friday, what should I buy with it?
a pallet of ramen noodles
I hate ramen noodles tho
hmmmmm bees?
Are you suggesting that I eat bees for a week
This is roughly what I make sure I have in my kitchen all the time along with rough estimates of local prices (MN). I buy a lot of things when theyāre on sale and stockpile them.Ā
instant oatmeal packets with fruit in them - $3 probably and this can be breakfast all week and maybe even a lunch or dinner too since you usually get 10 packets
bag of rice - $2-3 depending on size. 1 cup dry rice makes enough for about two meals depending on what you add in. if you get cheap rice, rinse it before cooking
canned beans - usually under $1 per can - mix the can with your rice and you have a meal. chili-spiced beans will make bean tacos. Rinse non-spiced beans before adding to anything.
Tortilla - usually around $3 but you get like 8-10 of them. Tacos, wraps, and quesadillas are all fair game here
lettuce - $2 max around here, either a head of something or bagged precut depending on preference, use as a salad or on tacos
protein other than beans of some sort - probably $5-7 for meat, $2-3 for eggs. sometimes I can get bags of frozen chicken breasts in this price range and each is usually 2 meals if I add in a bunch of veggies. fry/scramble eggs and add to any of the options.Ā
your favorite stir fry sauce - $3ish
vegetables - $5ish. literally anything that you can 1. fry in a pan and 2. youāll eat. fresh carrots are usually pretty cheap. get frozen if itās cheaper and youāre strapped for cash/prep time on this part.Ā
alternative to stir fry: Ā pasta (~$2), fresh tomatoes (~$2), cheese (~$3).Ā
cheese and fruit if you have extra - look if your store has loyalty cards for free that you can load coupons on for cheese thereās always one it seems like.
ahh thank you!!!
Reblogging because thereās never knowing whoāll need it.
Adding also: the single most nutritious food on earth is potatoes in their peel. Potatoes + some milk and butter = everything you need. They donāt last all that long, but theyāre fairly cheap and the quickest cheat to āHow do I not fuck my body up.ā
(Cooked potatoesāll last a while in the fridge. Potatoes nearing the end of their useful lives? Cook them to half-done first, figure out what to do with them later.)
Easiest baked potatoes: slice thinly but not paper-like, spread like cards, brush with oil (a silicone baking brush is totes worth the little it costs), spread salt and pepper (a little less than you think youād like), cover with foil, stick in oven or toaster-oven at 150C for 40min. (If you have the patience, at that point click up to 180C, remove the cover and add 10-20min.) Reheats well, lasts in the fridge longer than itāll take you to nom.
Dead-Animal-Free Whole Protein: some legumes + some grain. AKA rice and lentils, or rice and beans. (Maybe some fried onion for flavor; onionās cheap and stays good a descent while. Fried onion makes everything taste better and keeps forever in the freezer, so frying up a bunch and keeping portions is not a half-bad idea.) (If going for the beans option - lentils are cheaper around here but fuck if I know what itās like in your area - dump some tomato sauce and oil in; canola or soy are best health-wise, and far cheaper than olive; avoid corn.) Oh, what does instant couscous go for in your area? It keeps for fucking ever, itās usually cheap, and it takes well to any and all added taste.
If you get to choose, black lentils taste the best and need the least soak-time (0-20min), green lentils are best for cooked stuff and red lentils are best in soups. (Red lentils + potatoes + root vegetables of choice + spices; cut into small pieces, cook, run through the blender if you wanna [stick blenderās awesome], freeze in portions.)
When possible, get instant soup mix. Get the good instant soup mix. (The kind thatās not made primarily of sugar, yeast or both. The rest is optional.) Dump 1/2tsp (or more, but start on the low end) into couscous, or chicken, or sprinkle over potatoes being stuck in the oven. Whatever. Itāll make most cooked-food-type things taste better. And again, lasts forever on the shelf.
IfĀ you can have eggs (goodness knows theyāre sometimes expensive), dump some tomato sauce in a pan (tomato sauce lasts forever on the shelf), add some oil, onion/beans to cook in it, hot peppers if you wanna, then when itās nearly ready crack an egg or two in. Hard-boiled eggs last a remarkably while in the fridge, so when eggs reach near the end of their usable lives, just hard-boil and stick in the fridge. (Have eggs as often as you can, particularly as you have brain-shit going on. You need all the eggs, salt, and 60%-or-more chocolate you can get. Brains are made of cholesterol and salt, so folks with neuro or other brain shit need more of both. Potassium is also aces. You know what has the most potassium? Tomato paste.) Grated cheese keeps in the freezer for ever. Grated cheese will make a lot of things taste nicer. Preserved lemon juice keeps forever in the fridge. Grated cheese + oil + lemon = instant and awesome pasta sauce thatāll liven up the weeks-old dry pasta in the fridge. Slices bread also keeps well in the freezer. Try to have half a loaf or a loaf. Dry bread gets cut in cubes, mixed with oil and the aforementioned instant soup, stuck in oven at lowest until properly dry, then kept in an airtight jar to add to soups. (Over-ripe tomatoes come cheaper. They get turned into soup or sauce, then frozen in portions.)
this is a very good post but why are we glossing over the fact that the alternative to ramen is bees
i have it on pretty good authority that bees are notĀ an affordable eating alternative to ramen.
Seriously, bees are expensive
Trufax.Ā
And speaking as someone who is also living off oatmeal, beans, and brown rice, if you need recipes, I have them!Ā
Today I made 16 bean soup with chicken sausage and it was crazy good and I got 8 servings out of the one batch (froze half). I usually get the cheapest beans I can find, and GOYA bags of beans are usually $1-2. I soaked them overnight,rinsed them, and threw them in a gallon lidded saucepan with 2 boxes of chicken stock (also on sale for $2), two bay leaves, sauteed green pepper, onion, and celery, some garlic from a jar, about two tablespoons of dried herbs de provence,and theĀ āfancyā bit was adding $6 bourbon and apple chicken sausages. You can actually sub veg stock for chicken and skip the sausage and make it vegan and it would still taste great.
Oh and Iāve been doing steel-cut oats. I donāt buy the name brand ones, I just pick whatever store brand/generic I can get for less than $4. They take about Ā½ an hour to make, but theyāre super tasty and I make 2 cups of dried oats at a time with dried cranberries and thatās breakfast for 4 days at least.Ā
Iāve also been making black bean soup, red beans and rice, and curried potatoes and chick peas. I got 100 quart and pint take-away containers from Amazon for $20 and they all stack neatly and are perf for one serving of whatever.
Additionally, depending on where you live, whole rotisserie chickens are something like $4-$7 and are easily 4 - 6 servings of protein and on TOP of that, if you stick the carcass in a ziplock bag and then the freezer you have excellent soup makings. Using bones in soup literally squeezes all viable vitamins and minerals out of the suckers. Soup made from lots of bones is great to keep around if you get sick, itāll feed and sooth you relatively easily and as you get better you can add noodles. ON TOP OF THAT, a quarter to a half cup of soup broth added to a lot of dishes also adds those nutrients PLUS flavor.
Hereās my āHow to eat for a week on $30ā³ post.
donāt forget Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4 A Day
Yall are clutch for this lmao cuz ima need this for about the first month after I move
Reblogging cause who knows what your followers are going through rn
Adding to this Jack Monroeās Cooking on a Bootstrap: https://cookingonabootstrap.com/ She has multiple books out, but many of her recipes are available online for free and she is active on Twitter. She found herself on benefits with a small child to feed on about Ā£5 (= ~$7.50) a week several years ago, and has become the UKās reigning specialist on how to feed yourself well when you have absolutely no money at all. All her recipes are costed out to the penny, they taste great, and she offers vegan and vegetarian alternatives.
More on making your own broth, while you are making other meals save veggie scraps from onions, carrots, or celery in a container in the freezer. I will save onion skins and the onion ends, carrot tops (not the green leafy part just the part of the orange bit that you normally don't eat). Then when you make broth take it out and throw it in with the bones you are using or just use the scraps by themselves to make veggie broth.
For saving the broth, freeze in an ice tray. Once frozen it can be moved to a different container and you can grab out however much you need for whatever meal you are making without need to defrost before hand.
Lastly really easy way to make bone broth if you can't stay at home and watch a lot for hours. Use a crock pot. Throw the bones and anything else you want into the crock pot, then fill the rest of the pot with water. Turn on low for 24 hours or high for 12 hours. (Bone broth take longer then veggie. Veggie only needs like 30 minutes on the stove.)
Oh just thought of one more thing, instead of premade store broth; buy chicken feet. I can get one package of chicken feet for about $2 and make about a whole gallon of broth from one package. Yes they look really weird but they are the best part to make broth from. The broth turns out very gelatinous and nutritious.
