🍔 Cheap 🍑 Good 🍛 Food 🍞 Thread 🍗

Alright… I’m looking for ideas…

So far… I’ve determined that I can eat 2 eggs and a banana for breakfast… and that will only cost me 18$ a month.

I’m looking for similar type things to expand upon on this new diet. I take a complete multivitamin. Nutritional value isn’t the most important, but I’d still like to keep it balanced.

I know I’m going to be eating a lot of canned goods. Canned peach slices sound really good. Grew up on that stuff… pears aren’t bad… apples have grown old on me. Apple sauce doesn’t even seem like food.

Ramen noods are out… that stuff is actually pretty bad for you.

I’m thinking almond milk(fortified, unsweetened) and orange juice(fortified with vit D and Calcium). As more expensive items on there.

Canned salmon. (I’ve bot a 7 serving can I’m going to give a try. I know the pouched stuff is good. So are the smaller cans.) It’d be good for a mac and cheese kind of thing.

I need some ideas though. What do you guys eat?

Pumkin pancakes… :pancakes:

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I’ve been thinking the same thing lately.
I’ve decided to save 300,000yen for moving and I would like to cut down on food but still I want to keep it balanced.
Yes, bananas and eggs are cheap…but still nutritionally rich.

Here’re a few other ideas:

-Frozen vegetables into salad or soup(you can buy frozen stuff or freeze vegetables yourself for later use)
-Fish or Vegetables in season
-Canned tomato into spagetti sauce or vegetable soup
-Mushrooms of any kinds
-Potatos

I’m Japanese and there’re some really cheap but nutritionally rich foods like tofu, natto, seaweed, etc. I eat these almost everyday. Tofu can be made into a variety of dishes so it helps a lot.

I normally spend 30,000yen (about $250) a month but when I stick to only cheap items above I only spent 18,000yen a month ($150).

Nothing new but hope it helps.

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Rice and pasta!

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Canned beans are also good.

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Hmm, pasta and sauce of any type is always a good easy choice

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All the food mentioned is OK but try to get it on sale. Shop sales and if you have room in your apartment and something is nutritious and you like it than stock up on it. You can buy the meat that is on sale and buy a few pounds of it and freeze it and eat off of it for a month. You can freeze vegetables, fruit, butter, and cheese too. Buy in bulk if you have room, it saves money.

Canned goods are often on sale. If you see chili or pork & beans on sale than buy 5 or 6 cans of each. Beans are good fiber. Cans of soup are cheap and go on sale a lot too. But yeah, buy whatever fresh fruit and vegetables are on sale. They are the best things for your health. Buy cheap bread, lunch meat, peanut butter and jelly.

I don’t know what you like so it’s hard to tell you exactly what to buy. Buy canned chicken and tuna and mayonnaise and mix them up for sandwiches. I like a little relish in my tuna. And chopped onions. Maybe download some easy recipes and cook yourself a real meal once or twice a week. Cooking is deceptively easy. I always say that if you can read, than you can cook. A recipe has all you need to know in it. And there are many recipes online that are easy. I like chili and scrambled eggs myself. It’s easy to fix.

Buy a cheap waffle iron for thirty bucks and get some flour and eggs, baking soda, and sugar and some sugar-free syrup and viola! Waffles. Buy a big container of instant oatmeal. It takes one minute to cook and you put some raisins, butter, and brown sugar and it’s almost like a dessert.A tub of flavored Greek yogurt is always nice and it’s healthy and if you get fat-free than it’s like dessert too. Buy a dozen eggs and hard-boil 6 or 7 of them and put them in the fridge and you can grab one anytime for a healthy snack.

Buy canned corn. If you don’t have a microwave already you can get them pretty inexpensively. I’ve seen them on sale for as little as $30.00 but you can get a medium quality one for 50 or 60 bucks. I could go on and on but you get the idea. Buy food on sale and stock up and freeze what you can’t use right away.

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One cheap good meal is two cups of boiled rice, two cans of light red kidney beans and a package of kielbasa sliced thin. Very high in fiber! Cost $4 to make six meals.

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I buy a lot of our meal ingredients from Family Dollar. You can make a parmesan spinach noodle packet with two cans of tuna and a can of peas, for about $4.

I also make a great pasta dish with 3 cans of sardines, canned collard greens, canned mushrooms, one can of spag. sauce, and rotini noodles for about $10. Cheese on top, bake for 1/2 hour.

I often crave nachos, and you should be able to get all the ingredients up there, including jalapenos, black olives, canned tomatoes, and cheese sauce.

I make a Spanish rice packet with gr. beef, black beans, tomatoes, corn, should cost around $10, but it will last a long time.

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Man. You guys eat healthy. I don’t know how you do it. I mostly eat fast food. I need to do better.

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Rice is a good cheep staple that has a lot of uses… and adapts to a lot of different dishes.

oatmeal is also a good one… (get the real stuff… not the packaged gunk with all the sugar added)

When they are on sale… I’ll stock up on the tin soups at times… some tomato soup with some bread makes a good meal.

Lentils are a staple in my house. They’re really cheap and easy to make. Plus they go well in a lot of dishes that would normally have ground meat.

@astefano I’m making that transition myself… I really needed a good place to cook and store my food before I would have been able to start doing this.

I still don’t have pots and pans… So I’m living out of the microwave more or less.

Good stuff folks especially @bananatto and @77nick77 Make use of the sales and the freezer… I’ll try to remember that.

I do think I’m going to steam large quantities of rice and get the right kinds of sauce… Something that isn’t to heavy on either sugar or vinegar… I’ll figure that out when the time comes… I think I can make a weeks worth and put some frozen veggies in like broccoli and carrots and make it a side dish with a lot of meals…

Potatoes are hella cheap as well. But there is a lot of prep with those and they get rather unhealthy when you add too much stuff to them. On their own they are just bland starch.

I’m still kind of lazy… I think some people enjoy prepping food I really don’t at all.

Here is some of the thinks on my list so far:

Minced Garlic (comes jarred)
Frozen Broccoli (bags)
Frozen Carrots (Bags)
Gonna buy small portions of various rices until I find the kind I like most.
Canned salmon/chicken/turkey/crab meat
Grated Parmesan cheese
I’m a fan of angel hair pasta… So some of that to have around
Eggs
Bannanas
Canned peaches
Canned Pears
Canned Kiwi (Eh why not)
Pancake mix perhaps just as filler for breakfast.

It’s kind of a trial and error thing here at first to see what lives up to my expectations.

I’d probably get some condensed cream of mushroom soup and use half the required water… then mix it in with the pasta as a cheap alfredo alternative.

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You could also search for coupons. I know people save a lot of money like that.

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Ah… I’d rather just keep an eye out for items that are on sale… I don’t want to stand at the register passing coupons and what not…

This grocery store is pretty fairly priced.

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I guess it’s only 8 days… not counting today… I’m gonna be just fine.

Alright here it is. My first attempt a making some can slop.

3 kinds of beans
Chicken
Turkey
Mild rotel
Mushrooms
Minced roasted garlic

I think that’s it. Canned chicken isn’t that bad

Doesn’t look that great I know. But 8$ for a tub of it. It’ll improve over time. I don’t have any money to play around with right now.

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tombstone pizza makes a pretty good frozen pepperoni that we eat quite a bit. you can even spike up quality by spreading a little added shredded mozerella before baking. we also eat a lot of hot dogs. chopped yellow onion, mustard and cheddar cheese…yum.

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I was on the hotdog diet for a couple weeks there… my breath started stinking in a new way… Trying new things… canned chicken and salmon seem to be the way to go.

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Fruit - veg - lentils - beans - peas - rice - pasta - noodles - potatoes - bread - eggs - milk - canned oily fish

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