Mine isn’t really a “Meal”, I used to put margarine spread on white bread and sprinkle a tiny bit of cinnamon and sugar on it as a sweet treat growing up.
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Fried chick peas (I use cans since they’re more convenient, but even cheaper dried beans are fine too but you have to soak for 24h and then boil them first). But either way, seriously cheap, loaded with protein and fiber, and delicious:
Rinse beans and dump into a large dry pan on high heat. Move them around until they have mostly dried up and just barely start sticking to the pan. Then add oil - just once or twice around the pan is plenty - and some salt. Then let them fry in that little bit of oil. Move them with a spoon every so often to keep from sticking too much.
After about 15 min you have these golden brown crunchy and slightly salty little things. They’re great, and go with everything as a side dish.
Rice and beans. Mine are usually white rice and black beans. Beans cooked with a little onion, green pepper and garlic. Salt and pepper. Hot sauce.
I eat it regularly, to the point I have a tiny slow cooker that I pretty much just use to cook beans.
Here my favourites:
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cook rice, add a canned tuna, shred a boiled egg (optional) into it and some ketchup and you got yourself a banger.
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Mix 1 can of corn, 1 spoon of corn flour, 1 egg, and milk (enough to almost cover the corn), season it with salt and pepper and blend it till homogenous. Add some shredded cheese to it. Put it into a pyrex with oil and bake it for like 30 mins or till it’s golden brown on 220°C.
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Roast 1 or half an onion (depends on the size) in a pan. Add Corned beef to the pan and break it down. Add your left over rice stirr it a little and enjoy it.
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shredd some patatoes (about 300g for each egg you use), add half an onion, add some shredded cheese, add some beaten eggs and season it to taste (salt, pepper) Put it in a pyrex and bake it for 30 mins or till golden brown on 220°C. Alternatively fry it on low heat in a pan. Make sure you can put a lid on that pan (I prefer the baked version as turning that thing in the pan is usually difficult).
Saving this one, they seem like good “I just need food quick” meals as well as being cheap
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My mom used to make my sisters and I cinnamon toast for breakfast when we were kids, pretty much like you describe only on toast.
Struggle broke or struggle sad?
Broke.
*stuggle
I didn’t realize it until now…
Rice + blackbeans + whatever is around + a tortilla = poverty burritos
Also, potatoes in many forms.
All forms of potatoes are whats gonna get me through this next great depression.
Gardening is awesome. Just had some home made mashed potatoes with chives I grew.
I’m growing a good bit of food this year! Mostly herbs but I also have 5 jalapenos and 9 tomato plants. I do have 80 onion sets but I didn’t plant them yet because Idk where to do it. Now I think it might be too late for those.
Herbs are great and easy to grow.
Beans and rice are so healthy and cheap, with so many variations. It’s always beans and rice for me.
Was considering saying the same. What are some of your favorite ways? I like refried if I have them, with cheese and cayenne.
Just had refried beans (just cumin & salt) today in breakfast burritos (eggs, potatoes, beans, onion, cilantro, cheese, salsa - we only eat once or twice a day on weekends and cook better stuff) and yeah pintos are one of my favorites.
Channa masala
Black beans on yellow rice is my kids’ favorite, they love black beans.
Red beans (cooked from dry with whatever veg we have) and long grain white rice with hot sauce like Tabasco.
I really like pintos on brown rice with tahini sauce but nobody else in my household likes it.
Chopped raw sweet onion on all of them.
A can of chili over some cooked rice, add a little salt and extra hot sauce. This was my broke young adult fancy meal.
Fry ground pork and break them into small pieces (like 1/2 cm diameter). Add minced garlic (and onion optional), salt, and Maggi seasoning.
Eat with rice, butter, and fried egg (optional). To make it more nutritional, add some sort of vegetable. I like stir fried spinach with garlic and fish sauce.
Tip; use some kecap manis (sweet soy sauce) instead of maggi.
Popcorn with garlic powder and black pepper.
This sounds highly illegal.
Yet, so alluring.
Popcorn & eggs are where I test spice combinations.
If you want to get really illegal with popcorn, go for lemon pepper, sea salt, and a splash of cinnamon sugar.
Used to be rice with a fried egg. In my family we call it Ghibli rice. Nowadays I just bake my own wholemeal bread and that’s the cheapest eats there is. So cheap you can afford the nice butter!
Spaghetti with tomato and avocado. Add some olive oil, sunflower seeds and a bit of cheese if you are feeling rich. *Avocado is really cheap where I live, you can literally get them for free
Spam fried rice, cheap, tasty, full of protein.
If you live near or attend a large university, the real struggle meal is just food from free events on campus.
When I was a grad student I’d show up to every event on campus where I knew there’d be food and fill up a Tupperware or two. Didn’t matter if it was connected to my department or not.
Unrelated: I used to go to tech meetups in my city fairly often. There was one guy who always seemed to be there just for the food. I only knew him by his username (‘Lex R’ - a programming pun) and never talked to him. Tall skinny dude; if I had to guess, I’d say he was around 50ish.
Every meetup without fail, this guy ate so much pizza. One time I counted 11 slices. He also drank at least a 2L of soda - didn’t matter if it was diet or regular, he drank it. About 10 minutes before the meetup ended, he’d put a bunch of leftover slices in a pizza box to take with him. And he had a bottle of some kind in his bag that he’d pour the dregs of all the soda bottles into, and would take that with him too. It was weird because it was a tech meetup, presumably most people were making at least 6 figures.
Until today I had never considered that this might be his only source of food.
The rule was if you wanted the grad students to come to a talk you had to put out little cubes of cheese.
Seminar and BEvERages provided
https://www.knorr.com/us/en/p/spanish-rice-side.html/00041000022685
Depending on your level of struggle, these rice packets cost about ~$1.25 USD and cook in 7 minutes, you just gotta stir 'em a bit.
To that I’ll add some protein, either some sausages I cooked on the George Foreman grill and sliced up or a packet of flavored tuna. This is mostly no effort or unattended.
For veggies, I’ll steam up something fresh or microwave some frozen mixed veggies. Either way this can be done in 3-5 minutes, unattended.
Some effort, but still very low. You can get everything started at once while you stand there and stir the rice packet on the stove, everything should wrap up in less than 10 minutes and you’ll have a relatively complete and filling mill for hopefully less than $5 USD but I don’t even fucking know anymore with inflation, tariffs, and out of control groceries. Should still be more cost effective than a lot of alternatives, though.
EDIT: The rice packet can honestly be quite a bit for a single person, depending. You may want to pad it out with a few more things like mushrooms and beans, then you can split the meal in two. Eat half now and save half to be microwaved later to stretch it out and for when you have no prep time at all.
