Food is expensive. Where can we find cheap food? Share your tips and tricks so we don't have to eat rice and ramen forever.
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Food is expensive. Where can we find cheap food? Share your tips and tricks so we don't have to eat rice and ramen forever.
First, what do you like to eat?
When I was poor as hell my parents fed me white bread, butter, and sugar on top.
Pay attention to sales. If you have a Spouts anywhere nearby, they have good deals on produce. If you know anyone with a Sam's Club or Costco membership, get non-perishables there (I get the restaurant-sized rice). Use coupons; Ralph sends me like a $9 coupon every month.
Isn't Huxley's gigantic dong food enough?
Go to a restaurant, order everything on the menu. Eat Eat and run run! :bigsmile:
You need fast legs though. :bigsmile:
I don't think this thread will do well in GC
a healthy body needs 4 things in order to stay healthy:
carbohydrates
fats
protein
exercise
if you followed the recommendations of the government I believe the breakdown is 1/3 protein 2/5 carbohydrates and the rest in fats - and thankfully they are recommending you eat less or no trans fats (i guess the trans fats people are running out of bribe money)
I recommend something along the lines of 35-40% protein, and then you eat whatever the eff you want in carbohydrates and fats.
That's right - you can eat a candy bar for breakfast. Why the hell not? I eat a junior chicken at mcdonald's for lunch if I want. i do what i want!
In terms of what you may like to eat, I am not even sure. Whenever we spoke in the past we would circle fap over eating candy and chocolates and chips and soda, and then I would go into an insulin craving then possibly go out and get some sugar. So I know you like carbohydrates. That's fine.
For protein what is cheap? ground beef is cheap. chicken is expensive. pork is...somewhere in between iirc. Steak is too expensive. Anything else (roast, etc) is irrelevant.
Wait for sales, as Shlup mentioned. At my supermarket I ONLY buy meat that is at 50% off. I throw it all in the freezer and on the night before/day I intend to eat, I take it out and toss it in the fridge to thaw. If it's still in the wrapping just throw it in the sink and cover it in water.
I think you can thaw meat in the microwave.
So now you have ground beef to eat. What to eat it with?
- potatoes - baked / hash / rosti / mashed / roasted / cubed
- pasta - mix your ground beef in a pot with just enough tomato pasta sauce to cover it. Add sugar/ketchup + soy sauce. Cook it for 1-2 hrs at low med . Don't leave the cover on top - if it's splashing around just cover the top but leave the side open so it doesn't spill over
- tacos! buy some taco shells, and instead of cooking beef as above, brown the beef. You take a slab of thawed ground beef and throw it in a pot or a pan. As the beef cooks, you flip the ground beef blob around and scrape off the cooked parts. Season it with something or other and add some lettuce on top and some tomatoes if you want.
- burritos! do the same as the taco recipe, but add a can of refried canned beans (should cost you a buck or less) and wrap it in a tortilla.
Those last two might not be as cost effective as pasta. Pasta is so bloody cheap. When I was living off 500$ a month (electricity, hydro, food, internet, phone, fun) I ate pasta every single night. I didn't always put meat in it, because I didn't know about my ground beef pasta sauce recipe above.
Then there's also ramen/rice + cold cuts. but i'd go crazy eating that.
I said CHEAP foodQuote:
Originally Posted by Psychotic
I don't have any specific recipies or anything, but you can usually save time and money by making large amounts of food that can easily be frozen and reheated later. Or just put in the fridge for some days. It's easier to not waste any ingredients when making 4+ meals in one go than if you make 1 meal 4 times. Buy lots of meat on sale (as already suggested), and just keep it in your freezer until you need it.
I dunno about over in the states, but at least here, ground pork meat is a lot cheaper than ground beef. It also generally has a bit less fat in it. Compare a (over here) regular package of 400 grams ground meat, i'll usually have to pay 3 dollars for ground beef with 14% fat content, while i get ground pork for just 2-2.5 dollars with 9% fat content. But of course, buying larger units of ground beef also brings down the price on that. For example, 1 kg of frozen ground beef for just below 5 dollars. that stuff usually has around 15-16% fat content, however.
You can also look for deals on frozen chicken breasts. I can get a 2 kg bag for around 10 dollars if I look around for long enough. That's enough to make dinner with a reasonable amount of meat for several weeks, unless you're building muscles hardcore like PG is. Chicken breasts are very low in fat, usually less than 2%, which also brings the value up a bit when you compare it to other meat which might be cheaper but has a lot higher fat content.
Buy a chicken. Roast that chicken. Cut the legs, wings and breast off. Stew the carcass with some veggies (celery, carrot, potato etc). Less than £10 for over two weeks food.
Grocery stores are where it's at. Even if you don't find insane sales, it's always cheaper than going out of whatever. I used to buy stuff to eat for work on this food cart that came by. I stopped doing that and have been bringing my own food from the store and been saving mad cash ever since.
This. Buy a whole chicken as it's cheap as hell and food for days.Quote:
Originally Posted by Flambard D'Quinceteth
Shoulder of lamb is also pretty cheap. Stew it, food for weeks again. Basically, stew is a poor person's best friend.
Yup. Pretty much what's already been said. Get the cheap meats that are close to their 'use by' date and stick it in the freezer. When buying vegetables, pick ones that you can use in different meals. That way nothing you buy ends up going to waste.
I like my food like I like my women... cheap, versatile and probably in need of a good wash.
Typical Mancunian...
Scavenge. Scavenging works well.
This is what I do as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Flambard D'Quinceteth
I've heard organ meats are quite cheap. I have no experience there as I'm not a big fan, but that's also kind of why they're cheap I guess. Most people don't want to eat them, yet they're some of the most nutrient dense stuff you can eat.
Liver tastes fantastic, at least if you use it in a stew with the right spices and tit. Then again, liver isn't technically an organ.
Lamb's liver is really cheap and really tasty. Kidney is also cheap, but tastes of every kind of piss. Heart is reasonably cheap, but fairly difficult to eat. Nothing tastes quite so much of meat as an ox heart, though. People have gone off offal recently, because "blegh blegh blegh it's all icky and gross wah wah", so the price has just plummeted.
I've never really had heart. It should probably taste like a mix of regular meat and liver, I guess, because of the high iron content of both, and the fact that the heart is a muscle.
I wouldn't really want to taste kidneys, because of that "full of piss" thing. There's also lungs, but I've never eaten that. Don't think I want to either.
Chicken livers! mmmmm
Rice and Beans are usually really cheap! And they make any meal go much further.