#I've had frozen chicken from work in my freezer for months and months

[lexkent]

cried at the auto shop and on the uber ride home and continued crying as I walked through my front door and Libby and Cody ran to greet me but aren't used to me crying and did this and forced me to giggle

[wanderingcas]

hey so like, i hope this is okay to send? but feel free to ignore it if you don't want to answer. i hope this isn't tmi but recently my mom became a single mom and i've been trying to help out more as the oldest, and that includes meals from time to time. my mom usually doesn't have time / energy to try out new things(frozen meals is the usual) and we're definitely on a budget- i found your post from like. two years ago lmao, saying to message if anyone needed any recipes. i don't even follow you or know you but if you had any ideas for stuff i'd really appreciate it! currently we have a lot of beans but tbh take that with a grain of salt because we can totally go out and get other ingredients, its just a matter of 1. making sure it doesn't cost much and 2. her not having to go to the store super often. do you have anything in general you'd suggest? especially with the fact that i'm a beginner in mind? it's also worth mentioning my mom likes to keep a low amount of meat in the house(but it isn't off-limits, just preferred to not be in everything). i dunno it feels super silly but i don't even feel like i know where to start. thanks in advance!

absolutely it's okay to send!' i answered the best i could, but obviously there's SO much more to go into specifically, so please feel free to message me if you have specific questions

but for every meal, i think it's best to keep it simple: protein, carb, vegetable. everything else on top of that is just extra, but at the base, the meal should consist of that. now, breaking it down into those parts:

vegetables

-frozen vegetables - peas, carrots, corn. you can’t tell these even were frozen when you put them in a soup or a casserole

-potatoes are usually cheap, depending on where you are in the world especially russet potatoes, and they can be baked alongside any protein you make.

-this isn’t necessarily on a budget, but ready-to-mix salads are a great option if you’re looking for something healthy and also fast. but those can be a couple dollars a bag. if that’s not an option, a really good idea is buying spinach (it can last at least a week in the fridge if you keep it good and sealed), buy a favorite dressing, and eat that combo for an iron kick. not the most fun thing in the world, but it’s very nutritious. you can even throw a few croutons or dried fruit in there if you can. plus, spinach can be thrown into any canned pasta sauce you get for an extra vegetable - just let it simmer on the stove for a few minutes until the spinach breaks down and gets soft. it’s a pretty versatile green!

-onions are usually affordable and always elevate a dish - just buy the cheapest your grocery store has, and don’t worry if a recipe says a certain kind (like yellow onion vs. red onion). most of the time, in a pinch, it truly doesn’t matter. we’re not aiming for a michelin star here lol

-celery: you can wrap it in tin foil and it'll last a few weeks in the crisper drawer

protein

-you mentioned you have a lot of beans, which is great, because if you don’t want a lot of meat this will provide you with a lot of protein! some ideas are chili (with those frozen veggies), vegetable soup, tacos, simply just rice and beans... they're really versatile!

-chicken thighs, bone-in, is harder to eat but always cheaper. thighs in general are cheaper than chicken breasts, too. if you can swing it, ready-made rotisserie chickens at the grocery store are the easiest to work with - simply cut and serve with rice, pasta, salad... literally anything!

-somtimes you can find discount meats that are about to expire at the grocery store. your freezer is your friend in this case - buy on sale, then freeze for up to 3 months until needed

carb

-rice is THE cheapest carb and can be used with literally anything. there's a variety of rice, all have their own personality, but get whatever is cheapest - you won't notice the difference in recipes, generally

-bread is obviously yum for any dish, especially garlic bread with pasta - cut a baguette or any thick loaf in half and spread some butter and garlic powder on it before throwing it in the oven wrapped in some foil

-pasta pasta pasta!! buy any shapes or sizes. can work with hundreds of dishes

now for random recipes that you can google for the steps or improvise - they're hopefully not too crazy complicated! obviously not a complete list, but enough to hopefully inspire you. they can all be theoretically cooked in under an hour, too.

-chili, potato soup, any baked chicken dish with veggies + a carb, fried rice, pasta with marinara sauce from an jar + side salad, tacos, quesadillas, beans + rice.

-googling "cheap dinners in 30 minutes" will also get you a crazy amount of results!

in terms of grocery shopping, i'd look up the recipes in advance, then make a list. then you can substitute any veggie or protein you want depending on price.

i hope this helps!! good luck:) and feel free to message me again with any specific questions or if you want specific recipes!! i'd be happy to provide links/steps but i didn't want this ask to get too crazy long <3

[hecckinfood]

lesson 1: salads

I know, I know, just go ahead and lower those torches and pitchforks please.

The first moment food made sense to me was when I had almost nothing in my house but some wilty lettuce, bacon I had swiped for free from the kitchen at work, and a bottle of strawberry vinaigrette I had bought on a whim because I had a couple extra dollars to spend on something frivolous that day. I threw it all in a bowl with some of that pre-mixed salad garnish, said screw it, good enough and sat down to watch Friends for the umpteenth time.

For the first time in a month or two of figuring out this "healthy eating" thing, I felt like I had made a breakthrough.

Anything really can be a salad if you try hard enough. Lettuce isn't always necessary. In my opinion, as long as it contains a protein, a vegetable, and some sort of dressing (adding a starch is good for energy and feeling full, but not necessary), it counts.

My biggest tip: rotisserie. chicken.

Costco is famous for its $5 chicken, and I'm fortunate enough to have a membership through my job that I can use for personal purchases, but honestly most rotisserie chickens are pretty affordable, and for the volume of food you'll get off of it, it's 100% worth it.

So far, some of my most memorable attempts at salad-making have been:

Pre-cooked potatoes and chicken, raw spinach, with a dressing made from shaking together buffalo sauce, mayonnaise, balsamic vinegar, and salt in a tiny mason jar, then microwaved enough so the spinach gets wilty.

Butter lettuce, bacon bits, heaps of shredded cheese, leftover hamburger, with some random creamy dressing I found that looked halfway decent

Fruit salad. Just. a whole bucket (and yes, I do mean my big popcorn bucket) of fruit salad. Pineapple, pears, apples, grapes, oranges, whatever I could find that was either small enough to be bite-sized to begin with or that I could find pre-cut and canned. Thrown together with a bit of lime juice and honey.

Some ingredients that you can try but I've found to be either disgusting or just not worth my time/budget:

Quinoa. This stuff is great and nutritious in theory, easy to find pre-cooked, but the taste of it is weird and bitter and is so strong it ruins salads for me

Bottled dressings. Yes, they're great. But they're often full of sugar and other preservative crap. And the things I've been able to do with separate ingredients is amazing and (in my opinion) more budget-friendly. For example, I keep on hand balsamic vinegar, apple cider vinegar (which is also great for a heap of other things), mayonnaise, olive oil, hot sauce, and basic dried spices and herbs. You can get spices in those 4-way containers from Aldi that don't take up much room and have incredible flavor profiles.

Frozen vegetables. Again, great in theory and convenient for some, but my lazy ass would rather consume an entire jar of pickles or a can of green beans before I cracked open that bag of spinach in my freezer. Veggies are veggies, and as long as you're getting something high in fiber and dark in color, it doesn't really matter how it's stored. Canned mushrooms, green beans, carrots, kidney beans, etc. All amazing additions to a dish (doesn't have to be a salad, sometimes canned foods in salad can get a little weird) with lots of nutrition for cheap.

Anyways, that's lesson 1 on salads!! tune in next time for more of Katie's Some-Nonsense Guide to Food When You Can't Cook

[frogsandfries]

I'm absolutely exhausted

My mom only really came after me once yesterday till I put my headphones on, and it was because I was sitting like ten feet from where she wanted to be sitting, and she didn't want to be that close to me?? So she "had" to use this excuse to interrupt my peaceful, quiet stitching.

I'm not going to keep moving this fucking lamp all over the room, a couple hours here, a couple hours here. Someone is going to trip on the extension cord I'm using to keep the lamp plugged in, or I'm going to trip on all the filth, clutter and chaos and break the light..... I need the lamp to get my stitches all pretty. Why should I let her control the quality of my work.

So then today at work, I was having a lot of trouble staying awake till first break. I was glazing over hard and, like I later told the woman I work with, I would rather run around with my own underwear on my head, banging a gong on my chest than be caught sleeping at work. I would think speaking up would have been the right thing to do; I would even think the ladies on first shift, who are the yardstick, would have appreciated me speaking up, and someone would have been willing to swap. I often do work the two I work with don't want to do. I've been proactive.

But I happened to speak up at the wrong moment. I asked her specifically to send the sleeper over to what I was doing--if he was going to sleep, he could do it alone and I would check the parts. She went to cool off by herself while I told the guy who was sleeping to run the line. Well then he was sleeping while I sat there waiting. So after the first break, I told a supervisor, hey I just got yelled at because this person is frustrated, and I have never encountered a situation where someone is literally sleeping, help.

This guy is barely younger than myself. He sleeps much more than I do, and he was more intent on the job than I was. I don't feel bad about whatever I set in motion. People from other departments knew he was sleeping; I'm this close to most likely getting hired; I go to work to work, not sleep. He was going to get caught sooner or later, and it might have been worse if he'd been caught another way... It definitely doesn't look good to get fired; temps don't really get fired, they get sent back to their agency. And this way, he's been warned almost daily for like a month; he has a chance these next couple days to go to his agency himself and ask for something else.

Well then I got to sit through three hours of how millennials suck and how did she raise these girls who live on fast food and getting their hair and nails done. I don't know! I hate fast food, it's a money pit and I'm trying to get my finances in order, and I only eat fast food when there is no alternative. I can't cook in my parents' place. I can't buy a big bag of fish or chicken and rice and potatoes and frozen fruit and maybe a stack of cardboard pizzas, because even if the freezer space was there, my mother would eat my food! It took years and years of wanting to get my nails done professionally before I bought a gel finish and I bought a couple bottles of polish last year and lost them, but those were probably the first bottles I owned for years, and what that was summer 2016, and this is new year 2018. It's been that long since I've even painted my nails. Apart from the one hair cut a few years ago, I hadn't gotten a proper haircut since third grade. Unless you count my sister, but I don't pay her. I've never gotten my hair colored, as much as I've thought about it. I've contemplated a tattoo for.... since I was eighteen. But I'm afraid of it being too expensive. I have a strong work ethic for my generation, but I have no obligations to drive me. This one young woman works two jobs but has a baby. I don't even have my own place because I've been frozen by choices that need making.

I don't know anything about middle class millennials, except most of the ones I've met piss me off almost as much as they piss off this old lady. But she raised middle class millennials. There's no way in hell I did. I say I practically raised myself and my siblings but obviously we at least had my dad.

And the fucked up thing is, like I was trying to explain, when there is no money left after the bills and food is provided by the government, that life of poverty doesn't leave much room for acquiring money skills. I basically had to learn, either I buy all this junk I neither need nor want (like candy that I would probably simply never eat), or I can put that money into things I really want--like that tattoo, or starting my family, getting a place, finishing my van.

Honestly I love the van because the space is limited by being street-legal. I can only go up and back so far. I could be like my dad and try to hang on to every last piece of junk, or I could do me, and embrace the philosophy. And the money I save on junk that takes up space, the money I could save not having to pay rent, I really think would enable me personally to focus on being a better parent. I need to be a better parent and raise a better child.

However, having this co-worker point out to me that meeting her kids' needs led them to be....well, entitled. Their basic needs were met, so their definition of indulgence is a full-on mani-pedi, while my definition of indulgence is getting to spend a couple hours doing something that expends all of my stress and helps me feel productive.

I think my generation, those of us who had the time and cared, were taught that happiness is living like a celebrity. Our generation didn't learn to keep up with the Joneses down the street. We keep up with the Kardashians on TV. I mean, me, personally, I just want to achieve my own idea of success: Not being told to leave my home because I'm a bad tenant or I can't afford my home; and being able to give my child a comfortable, less stressful childhood, where maybe they have needs, but from the time they are small, I show them how hard life can be, and inspire them the way my dad's work ethic inspired me. Not to be mean, but so that they never wonder why they can't pay rent, and others are wondering how they can afford to get their nails done.