• The Hobbyist
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    14 minutes ago

    Oats are underrated. Dirt cheap, with calories and nutrients. Super easy and fast to cook. Can be cooked in water or milk. Can be made sweet (e.g. with apple and cinnamon, drop the sugar) or savory (e.g. curry powder, or tomato etc).

    And it definitely fills your stomach.

  • Ann Archy
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    61 hour ago

    Lentils, beans, onion, rice. Lentils and beans need to be soaked for a long time before cooking, but they’re DIRT CHEAP, and they are actually super tasty. Just get used to it and you’ll find it’s basically comfort food. You can eat it with anything, but lentils and onion and rice is amazing, especially with some condiments or whatever

    • @[email protected]
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      37 minutes ago

      As a side note, it’s a good investment to buy a pressure cooker at least for the beans since it cuts the cooking time to about 10 minutes (and this is assuming you’ve soaked the beans for at least 12H).

      Pressure cookers will also work cut down the cooking time of things that need longer cooking to be not be too hard to chew, such as cheap pieces of beef.

      Also consider chickpeas along with beans and lentils since you can cook them in the same way and they’re the same kind of thing (pulses).

  • Basic Glitch
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    1 hour ago

    I’m grateful I haven’t reached my college level of broke (yet), but with the economy absolutely booming right now under our current leadership, money is very tight. I’m pretty good at figuring out meals with some budget to work with.

    Not sure if this only applies to Costco prices right now, but rounding up I got a 4.5lb bag of quinoa ~$13, a 5 pound bag of red beans for $10, and a 5 pound bag of red onions for $6. So a total of ~$29. Depending on how many people you’re feeding you can stretch that several weeks. If you go with rice instead of quinoa it’s cheaper and also still gives you a complete protein when you combine it with beans.

    My father in law always said he lived for an entire year in college eating nothing but potatoes. I wouldn’t recommend trying that but I guess it’s an option?

    Also recently made a loaf of bread for the first time. All you need is flour, yeast, oil and water.

    Chickpeas and lentils are very cheap and can be used to make a lot of recipes. Buy some taco seasoning, tortillas, and lentils. Make a giant pot of that, and it will last a while. Lentils are pretty similar in texture to ground beef, so it works pretty well. This may sound weird but lentils are also really good as a meat substitute in spaghetti.

    It gets really boring eating the same thing everyday, so I’ve also used this website to make some really good meals: https://www.budgetbytes.com/ They have a ton of options for both meat and vegetarian meals.

    This was like 10 years ago, (so shit is definitely more expensive now) but when I was between jobs I had to make $50 for groceries for two last a little over 2 weeks. I went through the recipes on there and found a bunch that sounded good and contained the same core ingredients. Made a list of core and extra ingredients I would need (garlic, ginger, etc) and then went to Walmart and got everything I needed within budget.

    The mujaddara was and still is my favorite (I always end up needing double the water the recipe calls for to cook the lentils and rice) https://www.budgetbytes.com/mujaddara/

    Also keep in mind if you buy something like fresh ginger, onions, or mushrooms, but don’t end up using all of it right away, you can chop it up and freeze it for later so it doesn’t go bad.

    I’ve stored chopped frozen ginger by itself in a ziplock bag. It seemed fine to me but apparently you’re supposed to put it in oil and then freeze it. Some people use ice cube trays and make small aliquots of oil and ginger or other herbs.

    I’ve been told repeatedly you shouldn’t freeze onion, but when you’re broke and need to make what you have last, whatever. It might lose some flavor and texture, but I always saute onion anyway. If I was trying to eat it raw or something I could see that being a no.

    Mushrooms have to be cooked first (as far as I know). Chop and saute with olive oil and a little bit of butter or coconut oil (there is something about the extra fat that helps preserve it when frozen). After cooking, spread out on a nonstick surface or sheet of parchment paper, put them in the freezer and then once they’re frozen, move them to an airtight container.

  • HobbitFoot
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    11 hour ago

    Ramen with frozen vegetables mixed in.

    Bean tacos.

    Some kind of dish using chicken thighs as you can buy the thighs for cheap.

    If ground beef is cheap, cottage pie.

    Various pasta dishes

  • @[email protected]
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    11 hour ago

    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.

    • Ann Archy
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      11 hour ago

      Who eats popcorn for dinner? They asked about food, not snacks. Popcorn contains basically zero nutrition.

    • Ann Archy
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      11 hour ago

      Bad choices, apart from the oatmeal, and even then thats not great. You can get by cheaper with lentils and beans while increasing nutritional value by a few thousand percent.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 hour ago

        The carbs have a place in a healthy diet. Nothing wrong with rice or noodles. The Ramen if it’s instant is crap though

  • @[email protected]
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    12 hours ago

    When I was in college, it was a lot of yogurt, cereal, pasta, and subway. Those $5 subways were 2 meals for me.

    However, as an adult, I just made a cabbage salad. I highly recommend recipes from budgetbytes. They try to use cheap but nutritious ingredients whether fresh, frozen, or canned

  • @[email protected]
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    33 hours ago

    Sandwiches and soup. I always preferred tuna, but grilled cheese or ham and cheese are solid too.

  • @[email protected]
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    10 hours ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      98 hours ago

      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…

      • @[email protected]
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        232 minutes ago

        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 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 I’d 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: acres 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 nursing school right now, so soonish I’ll looking at another income bump, but I’m already making enough to all 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.

        • @[email protected]
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          110 minutes ago

          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)

    • @[email protected]
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      119 hours ago

      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!

      • @[email protected]
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        30 minutes ago

        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 😁

        • @[email protected]
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          115 minutes ago

          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.

  • BarqsHasBite
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    12 hours ago

    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’s seems expensive but it’s cheaper than fish itself.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 hours ago

      +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.

    • @[email protected]
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      1010 hours ago

      Beans and rice is the real answer here, +1 to this

      Lots of meals are cheap but few will also fill you up.

      • @[email protected]
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        19 hours ago

        Yeah agreed. Beans/lentils, rice, potatoes and flour make up most of my meals. I rarely eat meat but I do consume dairy and eggs occasionally. If you mix in some cheap vegetables like carrots, celery, onion, ect you can get really far with tasty meals.

    • @[email protected]
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      28 hours ago

      +1 for the beans (or lentils, or just any pulses fwiw), but why the rice?
      Pulses contain carbohydrates, but much more protein than rice and as rice is a hyperaccumulator of arsenic and pulses aren’t, wouldn’t that make a diet centred around pulses healthy while still affordable?
      Put some canned tomatoes, vegetables, onions, garlic, spices or whatever else is available and affordable to the beans and you have a nice enough and quite healthy meal.

  • @[email protected]
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    810 hours ago

    You do not need to be broke for: noodles made in herb water
    Once you try it you may never go back to only salted water