Eating cheap in America (or any where).

[Patroklos]

What if you don't want to cook?

Then you deserve to starve to death.

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by MikeH
$5 for 2 people is a lot.

What? Not in North America.

[ramseya]

I really haven't seen too much of an increase in prices. I remember in the late 90's, milk was just under $3.00/gallon, but now it is $4.15 which is an average of 3.2% increase a year. Then again, the minimum wage in Pennsylvania has risen from $5.15 to $7.15, an increase which more than compensates for this increase in milk prices.

Yeah gas has skyrocketed and it's effecting the entire economy but inflation is being over-blown. Maybe it's just cause gas is taking out too much money from people's incomes that they have less to spend on slightly more expensive goods?

[ramseya]

What? Not in North America.

It's enough to feed for two people on the McDonald's dollar menu. That's 5 double cheeseburgers!

The issue comes down to what you want to eat. If you buy food and make it at home, the price for food comes down quite a bit. If you're willing to subsist on tuna, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, and peanut butter and jelly, you'll be spending like $2.00/day on food.

It's this habit that people have of buying food at a vendor every lunch break instead of bringing a much cheaper bagged lunch that is a major reason why people have always over-spent on food.

[SlowwHand]

Eat a potato then, and only once a day.

[General Ludd]

Dumpster Diving

Food bank

Food not bombs

[MikeH]

Originally posted by SlowwHand


What? Not in North America.

It is for 1 meal if you are trying to give people ways of eating for very little and they are cooking it themselves.

Really nice lentil curry and rice, $2 for 4 or something?

[Jon Miller]

ramen is cheap (but I don't like to do it anymore)

cans of beans are cheap (1$ or even less for 3 servings, which is like 1 meal for me)

if you can cook the beans from dried, than it is even cheaper

and as someone else has mentioned, rice is good

what is expensive at home, is processed soy, and some fruits and veggietables

these are all things I buy

oh, and also, subways 12inch for 5$ is pretty good deal if you want something healthier thn the cheeseburger

JM

[C0ckney]

if you're serious about eating cheaply at home, then the best advice is to roughly plan out what you are going to eat in a week and buy based on that. say 4 or 5 different evening meals, a selection of salads and sandwiches for lunch and cereal for breakfast. you get the advantage of buying things in bulk and if you have lots of ingredients available then you can experiment with how you cook dishes, discovering new combinations and flavours.

i eat for about £25 ($45) a week. that's 3 meals a day, with a lot of variety and a good balance.

[Jon Miller]

Eh, if you eat what I do at home (which is more expensive veggies + tofu/etc), than a meal is ~5$ at home.

Also, bulk wise I eat a lot of beans/tofu. The beans are cheap, but the tofu and other processed soy are not.

JM

[C0ckney]

are you a veggie jon?

i would recommend eating something else if you're concerned about the cost. also try to buy items which you can use for several different dishes (preferably in different ways).

[GePap]

I hate rice cookers - they are the crockpots of the rice world. I make mine with a steel pot or a pan. Comes out much better.

In terms of getting complete nutrition for cheap, nothing beats rice and lentils. Dried lentils are very cheap and cook very fast. I still think that brown rice shouldn't cost more then white (given that you need to process brown rice to make white rice) but if you are going for cheap, you go with white, even though brown is more nutritious.

Soups and stews are definitely some of the best ways to strech a food budget - you can take an initial hit in buying all the ingiridents, but then you have food or several meals.

The big problems in eating a balanced diet for cheap are vegetables and fruits.

[Asher]

There's nothing wrong with crockpots.

Uncultured heathen...

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by C0ckney
are you a veggie jon?

i would recommend eating something else if you're concerned about the cost. also try to buy items which you can use for several different dishes (preferably in different ways).

Yeah, I am a veggie. And a health focused/lazy one also. So I eat healthy food (when I am not eating dessert, which I eat to much of), lots of it, and stuff hat takes little preparation. (I don't know how to cook)

So I get really bored of a can of low sodium beans heated in the microwave, and eat lots of other stuff that is as heathly but much more expensive.

JM

[SlowwHand]

Crockpots rock.