#Cheap Food

[victusinveritas]

[bitchesgetriches]

Hi Bitches! I have a fun food story I think you'll like.

So I recently discovered there's a produce rescue in my state that purchases unsold wholesale produce at the border to prevent it from being tossed in the landfill. They then sell it off at hella cheap prices. You don't get to pick what's in your box, but, uh. It's 70 pounds of produce for $15, you get what you get and if you're like me you will figure out what to do with it rather than let it go to waste.

Anyway, my last box included an absolutely insane number of Persian cucumbers. So I decided I'd try something I've wanted to try for years, because if I wrecked one or two in the process it wasn't as big a disaster as if I'd tried it with expensive store bought ones, and...

I can make my own glatt kosher dill pickles now, and holy crap, Vlasic can eat its heart out. Mine are crunchier, more flavorful, better-cut and kept perfectly good food from being thrown away, doing them with my produce box meant they were about 1/8 the price, and also pickling is very easy but people think you're amazing and fancy if you pickle your own stuff.

Also if anyone is in Arizona and wants in on this action, it's called Borderlands P.O.W.W.O.W. (Produce On Wheels WithOut Waste) and you can find them here. Here's what my last box looked like:

I should note that's what's left after I split the box half and half with a friend.

HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHITBALLS THIS IS AMAZING!!! Thank you so much for sharing this extremely frugal win AND telling the rest of us how to get in on it. With grocery prices the way they are, this is sure to keep a lot of people from going hungry or missing out on necessary nutrition. I encourage everyone outside of Arizona to look for similar programs in your state! (Though I suspect it's mostly only applicable to border states.)

Also, drop that super crunchy pickle recipe, baby.

Here's more advice:

How to Shop for Groceries like a Boss 

You Should Learn To Cook. Here's Why. 

Did we just help you out? Say thanks by joining our Patreon!

[voluptuarian]

How to Eat From the Food Bank/Food Pantry

I've seen a number of posts recently encouraging people to utilize their local food banks if they're struggling financially, as well as providing some basics on how one would go about doing that. I've been relying on the food bank myself for about six months now, and it's been very helpful. However, as somebody who was pretty new to cooking and was mostly using pre-made dishes when I did, when I first started going I found the food I was getting completely antithetical to how I cooked and ate and struggled to figure out how to utilize what I was getting. I'm sure I'm not the only person in this position, so I thought I would share the strategies I've learned for making the most of food bank offerings, and the best and most affordable dishes I've found to make with them!

What To Expect/What You'll Need

Food banks tend to cater to families, assume you know how to cook, and expect you to own kitchenware and have pantry space. So if you don't have them already, go to goodwill and get like a 13x9 cake pan, basic soup and frying pan, a stock pot, and a decent size mixing bowl for your own good. (You can get them like one per paycheck if you need to, or even ask friends and family if they have extras, but you Will need them.) You'll also want some cooking utensils, like ladles, spatulas, and decent knives. And God help you if you don't have much pantry space, because every flat surface in your house is now going to be covered in food cans and your crisper drawer will not be enough to hold all the fruit and veg you'll be inundated with. (Sadly, at least where I am, they don't give out milk and that's like a basic ingredient for a lot of the food they're actually giving you, so idk what's up with that.) They usually also assume you have a car, and if you're like me and don't, absolutely bring your own bags because they probably will not have any, reusable shopping bags are perfect for this. Bring more of them than you think you'll need.

Foods you will likely get at a food bank

produce (I frequently get potatoes, onions, oranges, carrots, squash, melons, lettuce, cabbage, green onions, salad mixes, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, and so. many. apples. It's especially abundant during the summer and fall, when people will donate extra produce from their gardens and fruit trees. Good luck finding places to store all that, though.)

boxed macaroni and cheese

dried beans

dried pasta

bagged nuts

bagged rice

canned food (canned spaghetti/ravioli, applesauce, various canned vegetables, and many varieties of beans-- I've most frequently gotten pinto, kidney, navy, and black beans.)

a protein option (at my local one they usually offer a choice between eggs or an egg substitute and some kind of frozen meat, like fish sticks or breaded chicken.)

Foods I recommend you regularly buy yourself if they're not providing (most of which will be used in at least one of these recipes)

cheese (esp shredded)

milk

salt, pepper, and dried spices/herbs (these are not too expensive generally, if you buy them like a week at a time you can get a nice collection in not too long, and if it comes to that they are very easy to steal, but sometimes food banks will give them away as well.)

butter

cooking oil (olive oil is used in multiple recipes I'm sharing here, so that's what I'd recommend-- sadly it is spendy.)

garlic (it makes everything better, honestly, and it will last a long time in your cupboard, too.)

marinara/spaghetti sauce or other pasta sauces (now most these place are already giving out cans of sauce, so why bother buying any? Because they exclusively provide only the blandest, most watery, most worthless canned marinara/tomato sauces known to man. Do not bother trying to use these on pasta-- you can use them for other things, though, which I'll get to. But you'll need something to put on all that boxed spaghetti.)

Go-To Dishes for Food Bank Ingredients:

7 Can Soup - I am not exaggerating when I say this is now the staple food in my diet. Thankfully it is tasty, extremely easy to make, makes enough to last for days, gets better the longer it sits in the fridge, and can often be made with just what you get from the food bank. (Also great for popping in a tupperware for a comforting work lunch.) And you can buy the needed ingredients for less than $6 typically, so even if it's a bad week and they don't give you anything you need, this is still a very cheap dish to make. The basic recipe included here uses pinto, kidney, and black beans, plain diced tomatoes and diced tomatoes with chilies, corn, beanless chili, and a cheese of your choice, but you can easily change it up or add ingredients as well.

My way: I add dried spices, usually a little garlic salt, pepper, and a dash of paprika; as for cheese, shredded Mexican blend is my favorite for its smoothness but pepper jack is great too, and I often mix different kinds. I also play around with the beans I use depending on what I get, but also to taste-- using ranch beans instead of one of the standards is especially nice, and gives a richer flavor. (I haven't tried it with dried beans, but if you have bagged and not canned, I'd assume you could get away with substituting one of the the canned options for a dried one, but not more than that or the flavor will be too weak.) If you prefer a brothy-er soup throw one of those aforementioned tasteless-ass canned marinara sauces in with the beans, it adds more liquid without watering anything down. You can easily add a cooked meat in as well, I love throwing sliced kielbasa in when I can get it. And I usually wait until an old batch is getting low, throw a little water into the pot to soften the leftovers up, and then drop a whole new batch of ingredients in with it, it adds the more intense flavors of the older soup into the new batch (and means I don't have to wash the pot out in between.)

Rumbledethumps (Vers. 1, Vers. 2)

This is a baked Scottish comfort food with a great name. I regularly get given cabbage when I go to the food bank and for a long time was like, what can I possibly do with this? I also frequently end up with a lot of potatoes, more than I need. This dish uses up both of those, only requires a few additional ingredients, and is pretty easy to make even if you don't cook. (Also cabbage, onions, and potatoes are pretty inexpensive, too, so if you're missing one that's not prohibitive.) I've included two recipes as examples, but there are lots of variations you can make, and upping or lowering the amount of cheese, throwing in garlic or spices, or adding or forgoing meat makes it easy to still reliably make regardless of what ingredients you have or how much you have to spend on extras. (I would say, if you can add more cheese, do it, but then I am a cheese-loving gal.)

Briam (Vers. 1, Vers. 2)

This Greek dish is just designed to use up produce and I LOVE her for that. Early on I was absolutely bewildered by all the produce I was getting, and constantly struggling to use it up before it went bad, and briam solved all those problems. And it tastes and smells Divine. I even made it for Thanksgiving this year. Cooking know-how needed is minimal, and the prep is the most labor intensive part, then you just throw it all in a cake pan and put it in the stove. In a typical week you will probably get most of the vegetables you need to make this, and may need to buy a couple squash or tomatoes at most, as well as a few fresh herbs, so it's very affordable. And not only decadent, but a really nice break from a lot of the more processed dishes you'll get-- also vegan!

I've included 2 versions, one is a written recipe with photos, the other is a video of someone prepping briam (the first dish in the video), and while it doesn't provided measurements for everything, includes a lot of ingredients that the written recipe doesn't. My own method combines both of these recipes, so I wanted to share both, but also having a video example is nice sometimes, too.

My way: I've prepared dozens of different versions of this since I started making it depending on what veggies I have while generally falling somewhere between both versions, and it's always delicious. The key is to make sure you balance out starchy and watery vegetables-- look at the suggestions in Vers. 1 and try to keep whatever substitutes you make to the same proportions. (Also if you use carrots, wait until they've gotten a little soft and bendy; fresh, hard carrots will take longer to bake than all the other vegetables and won't cook soft in time otherwise.) For flavoring ingredients I rely on garlic, dried thyme, green onion, Italian parsley, fresh dill, and rosemary, preferably fresh if I can afford it. Sadly herbs are expensive, so if you have to pare it down, garlic, parsley, green onion, and fresh dill are all you really need (I can't skip the dill, it's So Important for me.) and use dried herbs to fill it out. I also like to chop up half a regular yellow onion (or several smaller ones) into fairly small pieces as additional flavor layer, then I use a whole red onion diced into big pieces as part of the regular ingredients. I use twice as much salt as the recipe suggests and only about 2.5 1/4 cups olive oil instead of 3, and skip the tomato paste (you won't need it.) I roughly peel my potatoes as well as any cucumber or zucchini (I tend to find it a bit bitter if I don't). I also like to cut up all my large veggies and throw them in a large mixing bowl, then dice up all my fresh herbs into a smaller bowl, where I combine them with the salt, garlic, and dried herbs, and 1/4 cup of olive oil; then I pour the herb bowl into the veggies, mix them well so everything is evenly covered with flavorings and oil, then dump that into the baking pan, and then add the rest of the oil and water. (I like to get the last of the herbs and spices out by pouring one of the 1/4 cups of water into the little bowl first to rinse it, and then dumping that into the cake pan.)

Adasi (Persian Lentil Soup)

Haven't made this yet because I still haven't bought mint or turmeric, but it looks easy and delicious, plus it's not uncommon to get bags of dried lentils from the food bank, they last a long time, and they're not that expensive to buy either. It's also another vegan option! Also this is one of the few lentil soup recipes (and soup recipes period) that didn't involve blending it afterwards-- I do not have a blender or a food processor, as many people don't I'm sure, and certainly don't have the funds to buy one just to make soup with, so this recipe was a treasure! (Also the instructions say to soak the lentils overnight, but that's not actually necessary-- and you could get away with skipping the parsley or lemon juice, if you needed to.) I feel like this would make a great topping for rice, too.

Hopefully this well help anybody using the food bank to maximize what you're getting, as well as making the jump into real cooking less intimidating for those just starting out. Happy eating!

[galahadenough]

Also, why did Luo Binghe cook something bad?

[featherlesswings]

I just realized there are probably lots of you out there who don’t know how to cook, or struggle with “there’s nothing to eat” idling. And especially with finding enough food to eat for what little money you have, in these trying times.

Pending the expected price gouging from the new regime here in the US, here are some suggestions.

Cabbage! It’s cheap, for a LOT of food. Usually under $1 per pound where I live.

Eggs, depending what’s Going On Outside 🙃

Avocados are pretty inexpensive, and you can get 2 servings out of each one. They’re roughly $1 each here. If you have ramen, throw 1/4 to 1/4 an avocado on top of each serving, to make it more of a meal.

Rice is your best friend. You can add it to a lot of things to make more food. Honestly, a can of black beans, seasoning, and some rice, mashed together, makes great veggie burgers.

A small bag of flour, even if you don’t know how to bake. If you have grease left from cooking meat, you can make gravy. Broth or boullion + water, or milk is the only other thing you need.

If you don’t already drink tea, you can get a box of 20 tea bags of whatever flavor interests you, for not very much, and make a cup whenever you want something different to drink. Floral herbals are especially tasty even without sweetener. You can add ice, if you want something cold.

Tofu tends to be cheaper than meat, nowadays, at least where I live. There are lots of great recipes for flavoring and cooking it in ways that are yummy. You don’t have to be vegan to eat it, it’s just a nice, healthy protein in general. Throw some cheese on your tofu, I don’t care.

Check your local “International” section, because some things could be cheaper than the kind aimed at locals. For me, a lot of the stuff in the Hispanic food section is like half the price of the “white people kind.” I just recently learned how to make Sopa de Fideo, without knowing what it was until I saw the pasta cost $.50, and looked up recipes. It’s delicious and incredibly cheap for a LOT of food.

In a pinch, you can make soup out of almost whatever you have left in your space. My grocery money is a day late today, so I made “scrap soup” out of the last bit of cabbage, some minced carrots, leftover chili ramen seasoning, peanut butter, and the last handful cheap dried gnocchi I had left from last week.

Cheap Lazy Vegan and FitGreenMind on YouTube both have great inexpensive recipes. Also the podcast Eating While Broke, while not usually focused on the recipes, always has one or two “this is what I ate when I was poor” recipes, which they cook and then eat together. I’ve found some interesting ideas from that show!

Here are some recipes I’ve thrown together and liked lately:

*Fraggle snack*

Cucumber

Radishes

Mayonnaise

Worcestershire

Lime juice

Cilantro, chopped

Ramen flavor packet

Uncooked ramen, crushed

Use vegetable peeler or mandolin to slice cucumber & radishes. Mix together mayo, Worcestershire sauce, lime juice, & cilantro, and a teaspoon of ramen seasoning, toss with vegetables. Top with crushed ramen.

*Version 2* :

Packet tuna

Maybe a teaspoon of anchovy paste

1-2 Tablespoons mayo

Lime juice

Nutritional yeast

Half avocado

6-8 inch cucumber

2 radishes

A handful of walnuts

5-8 saltine crackers

Mix tuna, mayo, lime juice, anchovy paste, and a sprinkle of nutritional yeast to taste in a bowl. Use a vegetable peeler or mandolin to slice cucumber and radishes, add to tuna mix. Cut avocado into cubes, add to bowl, stir intil combined. Chop or crumble walnuts and crackers on top.

*Crab salad*

2-3 green onions, chopped

2-3 radishes, diced or slivered

1 carrot, shredded

Snack pack of imitation crab

Half an avocado, diced

1 tablespoon kewpie mayo

2 tablespoons chive & onion cream cheese

A dash or two of Worcestershire

Cooked white rice

*Faux Congee*

1/2 - 1 c day old cooked rice

2 c water

1 1/2 teaspoon chicken Better than Boullion

Pepper, paprika, onion powder, parsley, powdered ginger : to taste

2 T sweet onion, minced

2-3 T shredded leftover chicken

One egg

Half an avocado (topping)

Heat water to boiling in a small to medium pot. Stir in boullion until combined, then add rice and break up with spoon. Season to taste, add onions, and cook until onions are cooked and broth is thickened/rice have swelled and split. Add shredded chicken, return to boil, and crack in raw egg. Cover, wait until top of egg turns white, remove from heat. Serve with avocado on top.

Alternatively, you could toss in minced or shredded carrots at the same stage as the onion, or replace the chicken with protein of choice.

*Potato soup*

2 cups water per person (or broth)

1 cube boullion per cup water (omit if using broth)

1 large potato per person

1 large carrot per person

1/8 vidalia onion per person

1 T butter per person

1/4 c milk per person

1/4 c ham per person

1-2 slices bacon, cooked & crumbled, per person

1/4 c peas per person

2-3 bay leaves

Dried parsley

S&p to taste

Bring water to boil in an appropriate sized pot, add bouillon cubes, carrots, & onions. Simmer for 10-15 minutes, add potato, butter, & seasonings. Continue to simmer until potatoes & carrots are tender, add preferred meat, peas, & milk. Simmer 5 minutes more, serve.

[political-us]

[iwaxsquirrically]

Chaos gardening pt. 1: The simplest, no fuss way to grow microgreens

They are tasty, very nutritious and very simple to grow. You don't need fancy pants equipment like trays, grow medium, lights and such, you only need seeds, something for them to grow in, something to hold moisture, and water. All of which can be obtained very cheaply (if not for free).

I've been growing my microgreens using three very basic things: a tray from a restaurant that once held sushi leftovers, toilet paper, and a zip bag.

How? Wet some toilet paper, wring it out so it's wet but not dripping, put on a tray, sprinkle seeds on it and put the whole thing into a zip bag. Wet the paper slightly once every two days (I put it under a barely dripping tap but a spray bottle would be better), leave the bag open slightly when the seeds start sprouting, wait a few days and badaboom, microgreens!

You can supposedly grow most seeds into microgreens. Sure, there are special seeds that you can buy specifically for this purpose, but I've also used storebought chia seeds meant for consumption, and they grow like crazy.

I'm also going to try growing some sunflower seeds that I bought for birbs (sorry birbs) because I can get them in a local store for pretty cheap. In fact, I'm gonna go do it right now!!

(photo from Pixabay because I'm too lazy to go look for my phone)

[abyssaldroid]

I've tasted Grimace's milk - dredged its sanguine, burbling depths. My word, the breadth of it... the curdled wine-dark madness. At the bottom I met the ghost of Louis Pasteur. He drowns there eternal, screaming: "Hell has lactated."

7.5/10

[wanderinghearth]

Food Bank Leftover Granola

Sometimes you come back from the food bank with weird stuff, and it sits in the back of your cupboard for months while you try to imagine what to do with it. This recipe happened because of a situation like that. I had a 32 oz bag of almonds, a bag of toffee baking bits, and a bag of prunes. With some other stuff I had in my cupboard, I was able to make literally the best granola I've ever had in my life. This is a great recipe even if you don't have all the ingredients. The toffee and syrup make it delicious, and every granola recipe needs rolled oats, but you can sub out most of the other stuff with equal proportions of something similar, and you'll probably get a good result. Anyway!

Here's the recipe:

3 Cups Rolled Oats

½ cup plain almonds

½ cup leftover whole grain cereal

½ cup melted butter

¾ cup pancake syrup

½ cup chopped prunes or raisins

½ cup toffee bits

big splash vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. Combine everything except half the toffee and the chopped dried fruit in a big (BIG) mixing bowl. Spread the mixture evenly on a cookie sheet and bake for 45 minutes, stirring and flipping every 15 minutes to make sure it gets evenly toasty. Toss with remaining dried fruit and toffee pieces when its warm out of the oven, and store in a sealed container.

Serving Size: ⅓ cup

Recipe Costs: $9.43ish

Shopping Costs $24.13 if you bought everything from scratch from Fred Meyers. I don't recommend doing it this way, but you'd have enough to make two batches plus leftovers if you did. The price per serving in that case would be 55 cents per bowl.

Cal per serving: 282 cal

Makes aprox 17 small servings

[ordantorrem]

Animation Fandoms worldwide! Prove your worth & what you learned saving others & fighting tyrannies.

Canadians are going homeless this winter & hunger with exposure death rising. All because of the elites & Liberal-NDP-Trudeau government pricing out everyone who lives there so the rich can hoard our homes & land.

Animations cannot be watched by then because of all the work, job finding & have no home, phone or wifi.

We can’t make money by malls or own businesses when malls kick us out over prices too.

Spread awareness across the fandom. Real life is another’s foreign realm with great characters.

[bookshopwitch]

mug cake for when you're actually broke and need to eat (4 ingredients, no sugar, no eggs)

disclaimer: this recipe obviously assumes you have access to the ingredients needed. sometimes you won't. this is for people who do. it's all non-perishable staples, and things you could get in a food bank.

you will need (measurements are not precice, i do this by eye):

2 tbsp of plain or self raising flour 2 tbsp of hot chocolate powder or cocoa powder (or melted real chocolate if you happen to have it) 5(ish, until cake batter consistency) tbsp of cold water or milk (if you have it) 2 tbsp of any fat (i usually use vegetable oil)

method:

put it all in a mug (go for a bigger mug or a bowl if using self raising as it will rise when cooked) mix mix mix until no lumps microwave in 10-20 second bursts until a fork or knife comes away a little crumby but otherwise clean let sit for a minute so you don't burn your mouth eat <3

[lifeblogstory]

Street Food Festival

A random street food festival that sell many cheap food under $5. During this moment, went to grab a fried chicken leg and chicken skewer in cheap price. This is once in a while. Love their freshly-made chicken and skewers. Very crispy and smooth. Next, went for spicy popcorn chicken which is medium spice. From “Crispy Burger” and “Legend Chicken”

[rockatanskette]

If you eat mac-n-cheese out of a box a lot of the time, do yourself a favor: get the white cheddar kind, buy a small jar of quality pesto (mine is 6.5oz), and mix half a tbsp in per box. First because it's really good and super cheap, secondly because it really elevates the food to a meal. Boxed mac-n-cheese sometimes feels like Nutrient Paste, but pesto? Pesto is high cuisine.

Make sure to get the white cheddar kind if you can, tho. My game is buying Annie's in bulk when it's on sale, but Kraft's is pretty good too.

[stone-cold-groove]

Burger Chef Hamburgers. Open flame broiled - still 15¢.

[yesbothways]

This is the sort of woman I grew up around. And we should hand over control of the earth into their hands. I'm not fucking joking at all.

[cabrinius]

the stuff I'm eating right now tastes like chemicals and I. HATE when things taste like chemicals. Why, did you do this [nondescript corporation]? why would you do this to me? I hope you know I will not be eating your food until it stops tasting like it was bombed with pesticides and piss, then covered in 13,000 layers of deep fried dog shit, thank you. Good bye.