poor people food

reply to post by MidnightSunshine


I think it would be cool to learn canning, so hopefully that goes well for you!

As far as Spam goes? Never tried it and I most definitely NEVER will

Originally posted by Iamschist
reply to post by Trueman

 

Yes, I am so sorry

. I lost power for 10 days in 2007, made the freezer a tragedy. Still over all, it does help save money. You will recover, although you may have weather ptsd, for years, I still do. Praying for you guys.

No problem, it actually was a "wake up call", for everybody at home. My wife used to tell me why I store canned food and survival stuff. Now I'm the hero.

reply to post by MidnightSunshine


Try researching canneries and LDS pantries/canneries. LDS is Latter Day Saints (Mormons). The LDS pantries may or may not be members only; or some may let you use the facility if you are with a member. At any rate, canneries are a great source for bulk foods and are super cheap, compared to the grocery store; especially the Mormon ones.

There are tons of vids on YT for this stuff... Growing as much of your own food is something everyone should be doing. Canning is a great thing to know how to do. You can make good food cheap and can it. You'd be very surprised on how economical it can be plus there's so many things you can jar up and it's just as quick to open and reheat as buying fast food except that it's actually nutritious! Check out some of these YT channels: atticus9799, perbain, bexarprepper, themrsvolfie, katzcradul, michigansnowpony. They have hundreds of vids on all sorts of things to make at home.

I'm currently making my own laundry soap. It costs me about $1.50 for enough to wash 50-60 XL loads plus there's no nasty chemicals in it. It's super easy to make and is a huge money saver!

reply to post by SilverStarGazer


HEY, my aunt makes laundry soap!! She gave me a 5 gallon bucket everytime I added a kid to the family

I think she said she used bar soap, lux maybe?

Thanks for the youtube idea, gonna check that out for sure

I keep everything and I buy a lot of chicken and flour.

We shop at Aldi for 90% of our groceries. We can buy a chicken for $4-$5. When we are hurting for money, I buy two chickens. One goes in the crockpot all by itself no seasoning and cooks for 8-10 hours on low. It falls to pieces and we pick off all the chicken. I strain the broth and freeze it. One shredded chicken can go 2-4 meals. The other I roast with potatoes and carrots and make gravy from the broth. Pick that chicken clean of meat and then I save the carcass in the freezer.

Anytime I have vegetables, I save everything and keep it in a zip locked bag in my freezer. I have two bags - a stock bag and a stew bag. The stock bag can take all the stuff you usually throw away. The ends off of celery, carrot tops, onion skin, mushroom stems, whatever. The stew bag takes any leftovers we have. If we open a can of corn and we have some left after dinner, I dump it in the stew bag in the freezer. Left over carrots from the roasted chicken can go in.

Then, usually on a Sunday, I take the chicken carcass and my stock bag of unwanted veggies and put them in a pot covered with water. You can add in seasoning if you want. Boil it for a little while then keep it on a good simmer most of the day until your liquid starts getting rich in color and taste. Then just strain and throw out the chicken and veggies.

Then, I take my stock and my broth from the crockpot chicken and put it in a pot. I make homemade egg noodles for nearly nothing. Cook them in the stock and throw in some shredded chicken. Season and eat. So good and usually will go for two meals.

You can do a lot with your shredded chicken. Chicken and rice, chicken and veggies, quesadillas, enchaldas, chicken tacos, chicken salad, throw it in pasta, lots of things. Cheaper to make your own tortillas.

Now, we have had times where we have like $100 to buy dog food (at least $20) and two weeks worth of meals. Not even counting if we are out of laundry soap or something or other.

At those times we eat terrible but we eat cheap. Frozen pizza is 75 cents each at Aldi. Pot pies are 50 cents. TV dinners are 88 cents. Ramen of course. Hot dogs are 75 cents. Mac and cheese 50 cents. Spaghetti - pasta is 99 cents and sauce is 99 cents. We feel like poop when the two weeks are over with all that processed food, but we made it through.

Hamburger around here is a luxury. It cost near $3 a pound, but sometimes stores will have 10lb rolls for $1.99 a pound. We buy it then and freeze it into one pound portions. My husband hunts deer and we freeze a lot of that into ground meat if we're lucky enough. He hasn't got a deer in two years and we are feeling that hurt for sure.

Other than groceries, you can make your own dish washing detergent and laundry detergent. I've had to do that a few times when we have run out and had a $0 balance for at least another week.

If you want to save money and you have an option for "bulk food" shopping, I would start with rice - brown if you can for the higher nutrition/fiber content (we have several "health food" stores with huge bulk food selections - we are lucky - the regular 'health food' is horribly expensive, but the bulk is reasonably priced. Also, warehouse clubs, if you have a budget for buying big amounts at one time that will last...). Dried beans are incredibly cheap. We have a lot of "special diets" at our house due to allergies and other health issues - it gets complicated, but when the budget is tight....

If you eat meat - traditional meat-extenders like "meatloaf" and "meat balls" include bread and egg to stretch the hamburger further. I actually buy a slightly more expensive "ground sirloin" that has a lot less fat in it, so you end up with more edible meat, less grease. Chili is another way to stretch meat, or you can do it vegie with just kidney and red beans, which is cheaper. Onion, cumin, chili powder, crushed tomatoes, etc. Easy.

That's the same protein-stretching concept as 'fried rice' - lots of rice, some frozen peas & carrots, soy sauce (wheat-free tamari for me), and your favorite protein - you can use small amounts for "flavoring" as much as anything. Or eggs for a vegetarian meal.

Soup - tomato base & on-sale canned-veggies. If you want it with protein, take on-sale ground turkey, brown it with onions first and then add the rest. I also use fresh carrots, potatoes and celery - I make a huge amount and we eat off of it all week.

Cheap protein for meat-eaters or lacto-ovo vegetarians: Eggs. If you can eat eggs, you can eat very cheaply. We have done (back when I wasn't allergic to so many things) "breakfast for dinner" which is fun. An egg on toast (which I can't eat now either....grrrr...), whole wheat if you can, will carry you a long way in the day.

I like from-scratch baking - it = less weird processed ingredients and a higher quality of food, even if done cheaply. The initial purchase of ingredients may be more than a "baking mix" but usually last longer, imo, and you will have them on-hand for multiple needs.

And as others have also mentioned - home-grown is awesome. We live in the city, but have a little property we've started to cultivate. It is incredibly satisfying. The next skill I want to learn, once we get over the learning-curve hump with "in-city farming" is canning. :-)

Freezing - if you have the space - is another great way to save. Making large quantities of on-sale meals and making your own "frozen dinners" to reheat.

"Whatever Stew or Soup" - this is where you take that leftover roast-beef or turkey from TG, the odds-and ends of whatever frozen or fresh veggies you have, a can of diced tomatoes and a can of plain tomato sauce OR two cans of crushed tomatoes, 1 large potato, diced, thaw the frozens & toss them in a large soup-pot, add some water and you have dinner and lunch for days.

Shepherd's Pie - do the above and use less water - put the cooked mixture in a casserole pan, then take left-over mashed potatoes (because you made extras!!) and cover the top - sprinkle on some paprika if you like and bake until the top is lightly browned the the mashed potatoes are heated.

Crock pot beans from scratch. Soak beans and rinse (do this over night, rinse twice!) - add fresh water and NO salt to the crock pot - use 2x or 3x the water for the amount of beans to expand further. If you like certain flavorings other than salt, go ahead and add them now. Salt will keep the beans hard. By that evening you should have some lovely, soft beans - add salt and extra spices at the end of cooking.

I hate the idea that if you don't have money, you have to eat unhealthy processed foods - I know that sounds uppity, but since both I and my son CAN'T eat many processed foods due to allergies, I've learned to try and save money eating whole foods. I am trying to eat less meat as well, but that is not happening soon...

peace,
AB

reply to post by MidnightSunshine

spam spam eggs and spam. spam is pork shoulder not intestines and when fried up crispy is just like bacon. and a can will last several years on your shelf.

reply to post by MidnightSunshine
I have re-discovered hot dogs as a way to stretch the budget. I have found out that you don't just eat hot dogs, but you use them to stretch out other recipes. I love Shrimp Creole and I can find a 1.5 Lb. package of farm raised medium shrimp for $10.00 and I was lucky to find bell peppers, the orange, red and yellow ones for 99 cents each...so I stocked up. Onions and tomato sauce remain at about the same price. So the trick here is to make up the recipe normally but use one hot dog in place of half of the usual amount of shrimp. Cut to the smaller size and covered with sauces and veggies, the hot dogs allow me to stretch out a bag of shrimp for twice as long as before things got tight.

Everyone has had some great ideas... and yes canning is fairly simple to do ( water bath) pressure canning is too but you have to have a pressure cooker which can be expensive. Vinegar is always a must have not just for canning but for CLEANING as well.. baking soda and vinegar go along way and you can do alot of amazing things with these two chemicals.

Beans... dry beans go along way.. plus you can plant dry beans and grow more beans... did know that? true story plus sprouts.. don't forget you can sprout them and eat them fairly quickly too.. CHEAP!..

Spam is totally doable too.. just slice it into thin strips fry it up like bacon and eat it either on a sandwich or with breakfast.. it really is pretty good.. almost like bacon.

I created an account just so I could tell the OP and all of the posters that this is the most useful thread I have read anywhere in a long time. Thanks to you all for sharing such good information. I wish I had something more to add, but not much of anything new.

Growing up we always had a huge garden, and we would buy half of a butchered steer to package and freeze. Those two things made up a lot of our diet for most of a year for a family of four, of course adding to that as needed, but it didn't take much extra.

Canning and root cellars are so great for storage. It was just a part of life growing up, as well as eating what you kill. Funny how things change, and not always for the better.

reply to post by louczar


Hey louczar, Welcome to ATS, and thank you for your reply! You DID add something new:

buy half of a butchered steer to package and freeze.

The friend i talked about in the OP and I have discussed buying a cow and splitting it. I didn't know you could buy half a steer. An older lady friend of mine does this and swears by it!! I need to look into that further and see if I could fit 1/4 of a Big Old Moo'er in my basement refrig/Top freezer!!
Thanks again, hope you find many more helpful and interesting topics here

reply to post by MidnightSunshine
we have a butcher shop that will cut and package 1/4 a 1/2 or a whole steer, pig... they also have "bundles" you can buy that you might want to look into... I buy a bundles for about $180 and it has everything from steak to whole chickens and it last my family a good 3 to 4 months... it saves alot of money.. check into your local butcher shop.

Don't eat out.

Skip a meal once in a while.

Buy stuff with two purposes in mind.

Wait until items come on sale at the store to buy them. Once in a while stores will drop the price for things to a dollar, then buy several.

slice up some Hot Dogs and mix them with Macaroni and Cheese or Ramen Noodles - its really cheap and tastes great

Ramen Noodles by their self are only like $.10/each and will fill you up for a while.

3 words. EAT THE WEEDS. www.youtube.com...

my grandparents did the bacon greace as well, on sandwiches, or they kept it to re-use as baking butter (tastes great when you bake pancakes in it but sooo unhealthy)

some tricks I learned from grandma, she learned them as a young girl during the war in Europe when there wasn't much food:
1) haven chickens.
They are low cost and the eggs are an excelent substitute for meat. She even used eggs in mashed patatoes and it is yummy! (I still do that) mixed under the patatoe or sunny side up on top of it....

2) soup.
I started making fresh, thick soup once a week, with either pasta or small pieces of patatoes in it
It's cheap, you can make lots of it at once and put smaller portions in the freezer. Plus, you can make soup from any kind of vegetable and it's supper healhy. growing vegetables for soup, like tomatoes is easy and can even be done indoors.
I make it as a complete meal with bread once a week
but grandma used to serve soup before every meal, because when you had soup, you eat less and need less
of the main course, which is less expensive then doing the main course only.

either soup before, or a cheap home made dessert (like oatmeal) after.

Home made food is cheaper.

3) fish
every sunday we had fresh fish because grandpa went fishing... one more day with a free dinner (and grandpa thought it was fun)

4) leftover patatoes and veggies: mash them all together and eat between a sandwich the next day as lunch, so delicious I would guard my leftovers just for that! lol

5) next to water, tea is the cheapest when you buy it in large package amounts

6) keep old bread untill you have enough to make bread-pudding.... I even put cookies in it if I have only a few left that no one wants to eat anymore... and again, the eggs are needed for this, it's cheap dessert!

reply to post by MidnightSunshine
Not only can you have popcorn at night but save some and you can eat it with milk and sugar for breakfast. Since I am talking about corn, you can use cream corn mixed with flour or pancake mix and make corn fritters. You can take pancake mix and add some chili powder and dip some sliced zucchini and pan fry. Throw some raisins, diced prunes or any fruit for that matter, into that left over white rice and you have a delicious pudding. Take cheaper bacon and course pepper it and marinate it in maple syrup. Oh yes in deedy!

wanted to throw this in here since it fits the subject of food... it will sound a bit groce to some

I once tasted cat food.
They say cat's never eat meat that gone bad...

Years back I used to feed my cat Sheba, the ones with pieces of meat in it not the paté (not sure if you have those in the US)... it's one of the most expensive brands of cat food you can buy in the local suppermarket and it costs between 90 eurocents and 1 euro / cat meal (about 80-100 grams)

So one day I opened a can and figured it smelled great and even looked tasty, so I tasted it.... guess what? It IS tasty!
In fact, I think most domestic cats eat better then their owners!

and more... I think if I would make soup with cat food no one would ever notice or say it tastes bad! lol

Not wanting to say that cat food is the way to go..... but it does make you wonder: there are people on the streets starving while most housecats have great dinners every day....

reply to post by GypsK
..

that is slightly disturbing.. esp when here in the states a can of tuna cost less than a can of cat food... however since we're on that track i will tell you that if you go to a feed and grain store ( for animals) you can get huge bags of oats, barley, wheat... pretty much any grain for next to nothing... and it's the exact same thing you get at the grocery store except that it comes in a big burlap bag... mill it yourself ,,,