Seems like I need to educate myself on lentils and dry beans. Any EASY recipes welcome!
I cook beans and rice regardless of how its going. Nothing can beat that. And you can add anything you want, which makes beans really flexible.
I can cook rice OK, but it’s never really enjoyable to eat. Always too bland. Never tried cooking with dried beans and lentils so I’ll have to explore that. Cheers.
Look up recipes for seasoned rice, obviously it ups the cost a bit.
Fry the dry rice in some type of oil until golden brown (stir regularly to prevent burning) then add some chicken stock or a bouillon cub to the water along with herbs and spices you like while the rice boils. I usually go with onion/garlic powder and some dried rosemary but fresh works good too.
Rice and beans. Together they make a complete protein so can make up a larger bulk of your diet.
Pork loin, those gigantic big ones, are cheap per pound. Cut it into three for three roasts, freeze the other 2.
Try to get Multivitamins and magnesium. Long term you want those vitamins and minerals. Fish oil too. It seems expensive but it’s cheaper than fish itself.
+1 For rice and beans. Add some drops of ketjap manis or soy sauce/salt for flavour. If you just eat rice and beans all day everyday, you’re not even that far off a complete nutritional package. If you love in a potato country, switch out the rice for taters, even better nutrition but might still be a hit more expensive.
Beans and rice is the real answer here, +1 to this
Lots of meals are cheap but few will also fill you up.
oats with whey
2 cans of beans with oil and spices (or chickpeas)
pasta with oil and frozen veggies (pasta always whole grain ofc) pasta with canned fish
these are my go to meals. However i cook them because im lazy and these are all very healthy, chep, and easy to make
Microwave meatball subs and raw broccoli.
I don’t have a microwave. Sounds good, though.
While chicken from Walmart (or Costco) about $5 and it becomes 4-8 meals.
Air pop popcorn. Buy popcorn by the huge bags, so I only buy every few years.
Rice is cheap. Bread is cheap. Pancakes. Bananas (it’s like $1 for the week)
Also check out your local food bank, lots of free stuff to fill the kitchen, then you just have to buy a few staples that are missing from the food bank items. (The one near me doesn’t have milk, eggs, meat, etc. but they have plenty of vegetables and fruit and some snacks) also a monthly box filled with canned foods.
Who eats popcorn for dinner? They asked about food, not snacks. Popcorn contains basically zero nutrition.
Chili, chili, chili! No ground beef? No problem! Make a bean chili!
I love ban chili, it’s relatively cheap, vegetarian and incredibly versatile. Meaning that with one big pot of chili you can have 3-4 different meals without having the feeling of eating the same thing over and over.
I usually make a big pot and then the first day we can make burritos with tortilla shells, the next day nachos, you can eat it with rice, a baked potato use it as a base for soup or make vegetarian burger patties with it.
Bulgur wheat makes a really good textural element in vegetarian chili.
In a beat boxing tone:
Beans 'n rice (repeat as many times as needed).
Also do pasta with tomato sauce a lot, add whatever I have or what I can find on sale (mostly lentils, beans, frozen vegetables (kinds that have protein)).
I’ve always loved lentils but I’ve kinda rediscovered them lately, it’s crazy how good they are in every way. Cheap, somehow always makes more food than you think, easy to cook and extremely versatile, makes you feel full with less and keeps you going for longer. Truly a superfood IMO.
Beans, rice, potatoes - the holy trinity.
Adds nicely to the beatboxing too
Even easier:
Rice with broth of joice + pureed (blended?) tomatoes.
Add a solid spoon of sour cream and parsley.Easy tomato soup with rice. (also works with pasta)
I can get many varieties of squash and brassica cultivars locally for a ridiculously low price as most of the entire county I live in used to be all farmland and we have a ton of actual farmers markets that aren’t fully commercialized
So I eat a lot of acorn and spaghetti squash, broccoli and cabbage in many forms, peppers are usually cheap as well as carrots. Onions are cheap as well as bananas
Beef and chicken bouillon for cheap flavor, whatever fruit is on sale for desert
Tofu for protein as I can’t stand the texture of beans
Oatmeal. Lentils. Beans and rice. Pasta.
When I was literal piss-broke, there was a college campus near me with an open food court. Couldn’t afford the actual shops selling food there, but in that food court was a condiments station that randomly had one of those electric hot water dispensers for making tea, and styrofoam cups. It also had ketchup packets, saltine crackers, and pepper.
Turns out you can make a pretty passable tomato soup with ketchup and hot water. Bit of pepper and a handful of saltine cracker packets, and I had myself a hot meal for exactly $0.00
With some money to spend, rice is where it’s at. Hitch a ride to Costco or Sam’s with someone who has a membership, and they have iirc 50 lb bags of that short grain fortified rice for like… $15? That’s well over 100 meals worth of rice.
Cook that up with literally almost anything that has some flavor or nutrients - whatever’s cheap. Or just eat it straight… bland, but it’ll fill you up. Eggs go great with rice.
Fair warning, you’ll get fat. Cheap food is NOT usually healthy.
I hope you’re better off now ❤️ !
The rice comment is 100% spot on BTW, you know you’re in dire straits when you can’t afford rice…
Things are way better now! I was getting pretty depressed, and struggled with suicidal ideation. Had a plan, and a redundant backup plan in case the first one didn’t turn out to be fatal, but then randomly decided to try an extreme change in lifestyle so I enlisted into the Air Force on kind of a whim. Was always opposed to military cuz of the whole killing innocent people thing… figured if they put me that kind of position I’d just refuse (gave absolutely zero fucks back then) or worse case I’d just go back to plan A and kill myself instead.
Didn’t have to find out though: got lucky and they made me a medic (surgical tech specifically). And hugely: access to actual healthcare, to include mental!
Got the fuck out as soon as my enlistment was up, and I’ve been working as a civilian surgical tech ever since, which has me up to $24/hr. Actually not broke anymore, which still feels kinda weird. Using my GI Bill to go to nursing school right now, so soonish I’ll looking at another income bump, but I’m already making enough to at least eat healthy… you don’t realize how shitty you just always feel at baseline when your diet consists of carbs and whatever you can find on the clearance rack.
I see a lot of my classmates with that with that same kind of “aw fuck” expression on their face when they see the price tag on the hospital cafeteria food at our clinical rotations, so I’ve been pretty quick to buy their meal and tell em to pay it forward when they’re a ‘rich’ nurse lol. 😝
But yeah, it sucks absolute balls to be poor. I will never let myself forget what that’s like.
Thanks for sharing your story. I’m glad is going better now, and wish you luck for the next pay bump too! (God, what a horrible system, having to bet on joining the military… sorry you had to go through that)
Beans shouldn’t be much more pricey, give you less worry about arsenic and contain a fair amount more protein than rice.
If affordable, I’d pick beans over rice any day.
Big bags of dried beans it is!Also, for variety, there are a lot of kind of beans, plus there’s chickpeas and lentils which can be made in the same way.
For even more variety, one can eat beans with rice 😁
Agreed! Pulses in general allow for a healthy and affordable diet.
I’m not a proponent of rice mainly for the way it gets produced (lots of water needed and methane emitted in the process) and the fact it’s a hyperaccumulator of arsenic. About all these things I don’t need to worry when picking pulses.
But each to their own and some variety rarely is a bad idea.How much of a concern is arsenic? A lot of Asian cultures have rice with every meal and they have some of the healthiest people on the planet.
I imagine the right answer differs from country to country, as prices can be pretty different from place to place.
But in the U.S., when I was poor I’d often use regular boxes of dried pasta and add canned chili to them, and maybe shred a little bit of cheddar on top, add hot sauce to taste.
0.5 lb (230g) of pasta: 800 calories, 28g protein. Approximately $0.50 ($1/box).
15 oz (425g) of canned chili with beans: 460 calories, 29g protein. Approximately $3.
4 oz (113g) block of cheddar cheese: 440 calories, 24g protein. Approximately $1.50 ($3 per 8 oz pack).
That’s a 1700 calorie meal with 81g of protein, for about $5, that takes about 12-15 minutes. It requires only a single pot and a cheese shredder if you prefer shredding it yourself (you can also buy pre shredded for maximum ease/convenience).
Obviously you can portion down in size, or keep some leftovers, if you’re not the type of person to need a 1700 calorie meal in a single sitting.
Dry pinto beans are cheap (and flavorless). You just need to soak them in water before cooking.
Rice is a carb and nutritionally void, but it will fill you up and keep the cravings away.
A better path is to shift your entire diet away from carbs and toward nutritionally dense, unprocessed foods. But, this takes time, and you probably don’t want to start that when you’re low on money.
I’ve been eating a mostly plant-based keto diet for 15 years now. I can easily go two days on just water and be fine, no cravings. The best way to save money on food is to not eat at all. So, rather than eat crappy food just to feel full and stave off carb cravings, eat less food, but more nutritionally dense food. You’ll save money and still be healthy.
Really depends on the situation.
If I’m just feeding myself, I have no issue with going outside and foraging for food. I don’t hunt, but I’m not the type that needs an animal based protein main entree in my meals, so it works/worked for me to collect wild vegetables, fruits, and fungi.
And from there, I eat whatever is cheapest. Grocery store mark-downs and deep-discount sales would guide my decisions. If an acquaintance was giving away food, I’d take it. When the food bank is doing a giveaway and it was close enough for me to visit, I’d go there and take what they had to offer.
At my poorest, when I had no access to a kitchen, peanut butter sandwiches were a mainstay. Tuna sandwiches were next best, but more expensive. At the time, powdered milk was a bit of a luxury, but it definitely helped wash down the peanut butter and was way cheaper by volume than fresh milk.
A lot of stores and restaurants, at least where I live, will have condiment packages out in the open. Don’t go hog wild, but my experience is nobody cares/notices if you grab a few packs of whatever items are out: ketchup, mustard, mayo, honey, hot sauce, soy sauce, salt, and pepper – in moderation – so those can be free to you to use for meal prep.
When I’ve just been broke and/or saving money, my main protein was usually chicken. I’d just buy whatever was cheapest on sale, and try to stock up a bit or get rain checks. Then I could cook that in a crock pot and literally have meals for days. Around Thanksgiving and Christmas, turkey usually goes on deep discount and there are almost always a myriad of programs that just give them away. If you have room in your freezer and a crock pot, then you can be set just from that.
Add in some rice and/or beans/legumes to soak up the flavor when cooking meats.
Eggs were also always a solid choice, pretty versatile because they could be hard boiled, scrambled, fried, mixed into other things like noodles, or used to cook/bake other dishes.
Potatoes were another cheap source of carbohydrates, something that goes on sale often enough that I could usually find a deal, and if properly stored (cool, dark, dry) they can last a long time. Plus, they can go into the slow cooker with some chicken thighs and both ingredients benefit flavor-wise.
So, meals would be whatever combination of those things you can physically obtain. Your meal items don’t have to have a name. If you have potatoes and mix those with scrambled eggs and mix in some wild dandelions, that’s still a meal even if that’s not going to show up in a recipe book. If you boil some noodles and add in some mayo and a pinch of rosemary from a bush you saw down the road, that’s still a meal. Basically, just get creative with what you’ve got.
i think that it helps to always have some rice cooked and waiting to bump up the calorie count to almost any meal.
Rice, potatoes, beans, and lentils are all solid low cost choices.
Yup. Buy dry beans and dry rice – none of that precooked stuff. Buy fresh potatoes tho. If you can afford it, I’d also get a bag of onions, maybe carrots, and some spices that do NOT contain salt. You can also buy salt, but it is way cheaper per-gram to get salt and other spices on their own. Note that brown rice has more vitamin content than white rice (thiamine deficiency), but most white rice is enriched to compensate.
A friend had a recipie for a dinner he ate almost every night in college. One can of beans. One can of diced tomatoes. Put in microwave. Spice to taste. He called it “beans and tomatos”.
I have to admit that I do not do beans nearly as much as I should. I think it is because canned beans are not nearly the deal money-wise as dried beans are … and I am not good at letting beans soak without forgetting them and ruining them.
Fun fact FTW! Check out epazote for not only doing away with the pre-soak, but most of the renowned GI effects, too. 🖖🏼 A little goes a long way, (IIRC, ~ ½T for a 4-5gal pot) and it’s essentially dried grass. Get it from your local mercado/bodega for dirt cheap, change your life. 🥳
TIL, thanks
In general, when looking for ingenuous “hacks” in food, start with the originating culture. Thousands of years of poor people making the process more efficient, reliable, and just plain better? Sign me up.
I’m not sure they’re quite ruined if over soaked. Cooking time will be greatly diminished. I’ve left beans soaking for 24 hours because I forgot, they turned out fine.
I thought at least 24 hours was the requirement
Overnight/8 hours is what’s normal where I am. Or boil for 10 minutes, soak for a couple of hours.
Soup with lots of root vegetables, cabbage, lentils etc. whatever is in season (a tip is to roast the veg in the oven first for better flavour and mouth feel). I always have some good sausages in the freezer that I buy for 50% off because they’re close to expiration. Thaw them and fry them pretty hard before joining the soup. I can easily feed myself and my gf for a week from one batch. A boring week for sure but you do what you gotta do. Mix it up with some different toppings or other flavourings during the week.
