Eating cheap in America (or any where).

[DanS]

Yeh, $5 for 2 seems pretty expensive if you're on a strict budget. The easiest way to cut down on food prices is to not eat out. The next easiest is to buy less processed foods in bigger containers. Yes, fresh fruits and veggies are expensive -- some more than others.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by ramseya


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.

I'll agree that is a major issue.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Asher
There's nothing wrong with crockpots.

Except that they make insipid food.

Otherwise, they are just dandy. A lazy way to cook

[GePap]

Frozen vegetables can be an okay and less expensive way to get some vegetables like spinach, green peas, broccoli, and cabbage.

Another cheaper substitute is canned tomatoes - mainly to make sauces or stews, but you still get the nutritional value out of them.

I have yet to find a cheap worthwhile sub for fruit. For example, most commercial apple sauce is loaded with corn syrup and preservatives, which is not exactly what I want, and fruit juice is not cheap and many times contains lots of added sugar.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Jon Miller


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

You should give lentils and split peas a try - specially lentils, since they cook so quickly. Just take some lentils, water, a bouillion cube, and some carrots, celery, onions, salt, and pepper and in half an hour you can make enough good lentil soup for a week. With rice, a complete meal.

[Dinner]

Another cheap eats idea. At my local Costco you can buy 5 dozen eggs for $5.99 which comes out to be about $0.10 per egg. Let's face it eggs are a staple food used in everything from baking to eating directly and you can also get a huge block of American cheddar pretty cheaply at Costco. If you don't have a Costco membership then Walmart's Sam's Club will have similar prices. Other things which are dirt cheap if bought in bulk include tea, flour, sugar, mixed salad greens (though I have a hard time finishing all that salad before it goes bad), in season fresh fruits & veggies, pasta & sauce, plus Costco has very strict quality standards so if any meat is even a week before its sell by date they mark it down to virtually nothing so it is a good place to get fresh steak, pork, or lamb at heavily discounted prices. When you get it home just chop it into individual sized portions and freeze it.

I'm sure someone will say yeah $0.10 an egg is pretty darn cheap but what will I do with five dozen eggs? Scrambled eggs or omelets make for a good cheap breakfast while hard boiled eggs are a good ready to eat snack. Tired of just regular hard boiled eggs? Then try a batch of Chinese tea flavored eggs by making a batch of tea (preferably green tea but any tea will work), add in some Chinese Five Spice mix, and let the uncooked eggs soak over night in it. In the morning hard boil the eggs, crack but don't peel the shells, and then put them back in the tea & 5 spice for another day. The result is eggs which really do have the flavor of tea and five spice all the way to the yolk. It's a nice change from regular hard boiled eggs.
__________________

[Dinner]

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

Yeah, but it is a really meat heavy dish with each person getting 1 pound of shredded salted pork which really is a lot especially when you add in the refried beans, cabbage, onions, and tortillas. If each person only eats 2/3rds of a pound of pork (which is still a lot) then you can feed three people. Plus you end up with plenty of left over tortillas, fresh garlic, cabbage, etc so to make it again you'd just need to buy the meat,one onion, and another can of refried beans. The meat can be bought for about $0.50 a pound on special and one onion costs virtually nothing.

[Asher]

Originally posted by GePap
Except that they make insipid food.

Otherwise, they are just dandy. A lazy way to cook

You're so ****ing clueless, that if I donated one hundred million dollars worth of clues to your mental deficiency charity you'd still have none.

Slowcookers/crockpots can make some delicious, melt-in-your-mouth good food if you're not an inane, tasteless, soulless civil servant who thinks you need deluxe cooking devices to cook tasty food.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Asher

You're so ****ing clueless, that if I donated one hundred million dollars worth of clues to your mental deficiency charity you'd still have none.

Slowcookers/crockpots can make some delicious, melt-in-your-mouth good food if you're not an inane, tasteless, soulless civil servant who thinks you need deluxe cooking devices to cook tasty food.

Since when are cast iron or steel pots "deluxe"?

Good cooking requires attention to details, which is exactly what corckpots stand against. But then, a fake "man of the people" like yourself (you know, the George Bush model) isn't bothered with reality much.

[Asher]

Originally posted by GePap
Since when are cast iron or steel pots "deluxe"?

You tell me, because you apparently think ovens and stoves and any kind of device that heats the contents over a given period of time are lazy.

Good cooking requires attention to details, which is exactly what corckpots stand against.

The attention to detail is in the ingredients and the timing.

The fact that you don't watch it continuously while it does its magic is inconsequential to the result, you insipid swine.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Asher

You tell me, because you apparently think ovens and stoves and any kind of device that heats the contents over a given period of time are lazy.

You actually compare a crockpot to an oven?

The attention to detail is in the ingredients and the timing.

The fact that you don't watch it continuously while it does its magic is inconsequential to the result, you insipid swine.

[Asher]

Sounds like somebody just hasn't been exposed to good slowcooker recipes. Why am I not surprised that you are, in yet another subject, clueless in every sense of the word.

You're the Ben Kenobi of the left, you know that?

[Asher]

Note to self: If I wish to be perceived as an elitist intellectual despite continuously ridiculous posts, I should have a signature with quotes from luminaries such as George Bernard show, Voltaire, Drake Tungsten, and of course myself.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Asher
Sounds like somebody just hasn't been exposed to good slowcooker recipes. Why am I not surprised that you are, in yet another subject, clueless in every sense of the word.

You're the Ben Kenobi of the left, you know that?

Cute, though I can guess that only you and mini-Asher share that "opinion".

[Asher]

Originally posted by GePap


Cute, though I can guess that only you and mini-Asher share that "opinion".

Oh, you've no idea do you?

Tell yourself that if it makes you feel better.