My life has fallen apart because of Trump/Musk taking my job and the American economy becoming a dumpster fire.
I have turned to frozen margarita pizzas as a source of nutrition. To spruce up my pies I chop up spinach, mix in a can of diced green chilies, and season with whatever I have on hand. If I have an extra bag of mozzarella I throw some of that in there too. I let it sit for five or so minutes then spread that on top of the pizza. I add five to ten extra minutes to the baking time.
Got any cheap and fast cooking tips along those lines?
–Extra points for vegetarian tips.
Red lentil soup. Cheapest meal I can think of. Boil red lentils with a bit of salt, a veggie broth cube and a little bit of orange curry powder mix. Mash it or mix it with a blender when it’s boiled and ass rice at the end or boil potatoes seperately and add when soup is finished.
Rice, beans, and some frozen peppers and onions are an easy, no cut base to start a meal. Toss what else you want and you can have a good tasting ready to make one pot meal a few times a week.
Kielbasa and sauerkraut! You can generally get both for less than $10 all in, and eat 2-3 times. Put the Kielbasa in a lidded roasting pan with sauerkraut and optionally add about half a bottle of beer for flavor (basically any beer works, my mom always used bud light just because it was around, so the standard does not have to be high) bake at 350° for around 1 - 1.5hrs to be fast, or at 270° for 3-4+ hours for the better slow-cooked version (It’s almost impossible to burn this and cooking for longer generally only makes it better in my experience, if the sausage bursts it’s definitely done, but kielbasa is typically fully cooked from the store so not too many worries about food-borne illness). Brands of sauerkraut also vary wildly in flavor so try a few. My personal favorite is the jarred Silverfloss brand, and a close second is Libby’s.
We make this black bean soup pretty regularly at my house. I still can’t believe how good it is for how simple it is to cook!
ETA: I crib quite a lot of recipes from eatingwell these days. This chickpea casserole is quite good, too.
yes.
ditch the frozen pizza and make your own dough. it tastes way better and is much cheaper.
6 cups of flour
3 cups of water
1-1/2 tablespoons of yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons spoons of salt
mix it all in a bowl, cover it and let it sit for about an hour. once it’s risen, put it in the fridge. it will be ready to use the next day, but it will keep for a few weeks.
i like to make pies with 450 grams of dough, it makes for a good 15” pizza. i use tomato sauce from fruit that we grow, but ive heard greet things about san marizano tomato sauce in a can.
i have lots more to say, but i don’t want to type it all out if you’re thinking ‘yeah, fuck that guy - i’m never gonna do that’, so if you want more info, lmk.
My oven can’t keep a stable temperature or I would be making my own bread.
Bread machine, and if you can get a cheap pizza stone or large piece of metal you can help it out as that will act as a heat sink and help it maintain a temp
Usual stuff re: food banks, community pantries, etc. However -
I’ve been a member of Community Supported Agriculture farms for a couple decades now. People pay at the start of the year to buy a share of the farm’s produce over the growing season, and the farmer operates secure in the knowledge that his farm isn’t dependent on banks or a good harvest. CSA members usually get about 3/4 of a bushel per week, plus pick-your-own.
I’m bringing this up because some CSAs offer work shares, and this would be the right time if year to apply for one. It’s a small commitment of hours each week, say, 4-5 hours a week over the course of the season, and you get a full share of the produce to take home. I don’t know if a work-share CSA exists in your area, it if you’d be willing to do it, but it can supply a pretty decent percentage of your food if it’s something you’re interested in, especially if you make and freeze dishes or ingredients, or can, pickle or dehydrate produce.
Buy a bunch of silicon containers or boxes that are both freezer and microwave safe. Take the biggest pot you have and make a massive portion of food. Eat 2-3 times, freeze the rest in individual meal portions. Repeat 1-2 times and you have a massive storage of cheap, healthy, delicious food.
Suitable dishes:
- Indian curry
- Thai curry
- Japanese curry
- any other curry, just experiment
- soups
- pasta Bolognese etc.
Big upgrade for your nutrition and kind of fun to cook such massive portions, while also allowing you to be lazy 9/10 days
One of my favorites, Japanese curry. My grocery has a box of spice paste which is extraordinarily convenient, tasty, and means I don’t need to buy all the spices nor follow a complex recipe .
Box gives easy directions: dice potatoes, carrots, onions, and chicken. Brown the meet, throw in the veggies, a little water and simmer 15 minutes, then mix in the paste.
Tastes excellent, made from actual ingredients, easy, make in bulk, stores well.
Seconding this - batch cooking is the way to go. Sometimes on a Sunday I’ll just spend a day making large batches of 2 or 3 meals like this, almost all of which will be frozen and then used over the next few weeks.
I recently newly “discovered” soups, though, and it’s crazy magic food! If you don’t overuse oil for searing onions or so, they are very low in calories, high in fibers, and with some chicken also high in protein. Basically you can eat as many portions as you can possibly fit in yourself, roll back to your room and snooze for 3 hours before repeating 😄
I used to love the black bean soup at Panera before they discontinued it and the restaurant started going downhill. But recently I made some from a random online recipe; it’s easy to make and it’s excellent!
I even got a baguette so it’s just like Panera used to be, only better, less sodium, more veggies, and much cheaper
I never made soup before because my family only ever made chicken noodle soup, but it was easier than expected
Nice, I guess I was born just a few decades too late with my insight
Ok here is another I am fond of.
Make a large cheap meat, (chicken thighs, pork roast, tritip) butcher into smaller pieces and wrap well and freeze, even better if you can vacuum seal it. You can basically sous vide in a pot of boiling water and then use in lots of ways. Fajitas, casserole, poutine, shredded BBQ sandwich, etc.
I do this with tonkatsu and charsiu which are nice to have and do as a big batch.
Do you have any special sous vide equipment or recommendations? It seems like you can go all in but basically need a new setup for it. I don’t feel like buying a ton of new stuff but I’m also curious about it
The first piece of tech for doing sous vide was a piece of lab equipment used in chemistry.
Its a technique of making stuff work and can be done with a thermometer and a pot of water.I would say definitely get a vacuum sealer, you can do the cold water and ziploc trick but it will never really truly work and I had to use a wet towel to keep the food submerged when I was doing it. But that means you can still if you are ok with weighting the bag.
I buy a bulk box of the premade bags from a restaurant supply store cause they are cheap and then I can individually seal meat when I buy it and freeze them, makes portioning and doing a quick sous vide faster too.Then if you want to be cheap you can get a used immersion cooker, it doesnt touch food, just water usually. I usually use a pot on some cork board wrapped in a towel. Some chefs really like using a cooler cause it is insulated.
ANOVA is a good brand just get controls on the device cause it is just easier and faster.
Find your local asian market, buy ramen noodles in bulk. Chop up some veggies, saute them in the pan before you make the noodles. Crack an egg in there. You can buy bulk mushroom powder for cheap too, put that in there. Go to your local grocery and buy the cheapest meat, slice it up and throw that in before the veggies.
Is it going to be culinarily coherent? Maybe, maybe not. Are you going to eat it? Probably. Is it going to hit your macros? More or less.
cheapest meals you’ll ever find.
- beans
- rice
- seasonings
- ramen
also if you can, grow your own veggies. yellow summer squash dries really well and can be used in lots of dishes.
winter squash like butternut stay good for 6-10 months in the right conditions and can literally fill a meal.
carrots are easy to grow and high in nutrients, they can be stored for several months as well.
make sure you keep all your scraps and reintroduce them back into the soil as fertilizer. I would dry them and grind them in a blender along with egg shells, a bit of coffee grounds, dried fruit peels (like banana, orange, apple, etc). sprinkle over soil and mulch over that(could be dried leaves or hardwood mulch), and water.
if you grow eggplant, the leaves can be dried and boiled to create a weak insecticide since the plant is related to tobacco.
fight powdery mildew with vinegar and water. A 1/10 solution weak should be good enough.
if squash bugs or other pests are a problem, get a torch and burn them and the eggs off your plants. if you’re vigilant when they first show up, you won’t have to work so hard later. remember, the point is to “cook” them, not cremate your plant.
if space is a concern, grow things that crawl. greenbeans, peas, tomatoes, acorn squash, yellow squash, zucchini. all can be grown from pots on trellis. make sure they get plenty of light, water, and nutrients. careful with some squash though, they can crossbreed if they’re in the same family.
think of it this way. you spend $10-20 on heirloom seeds and take the seeds from your best harvest every year, you’ll never have to buy those vegetables again. $10-20 dollars, for a lifetime of food.
“West African” Peanut Stew, which is an Americanized version of various groundnut stews/maafe, is super nutritious and cheap. It is quick if you put in 1hr in advance to make like 3kg of soup, ~8 servings, for ~10 bucks. I think it’d freeze OK too.
Look up a recipe, but basically: 1 onion, garlic, 6c broth (vegetable in your case), 2lbs sweet potatoes (maybe 3lbs if vegetarian), 1 bunch greens (collards, kale, mustard greens, whichever you have/like/are ceapest), can diced tomatoes, peanut butter, 2-3tbsp vinegar, optional spices (cumin, turmeric, bay leaves, chili powder, paprika, cayenne pepper/red pepper flakes, oregano, minced ginger, msg, etc), optional garnishes: peanuts, cilantro.
Sautee 1 diced onion in a pot until translucent, add garlic and spices & sautee 30s more, add 6c broth, 2lbs cubed sweet potatoes, chopped greens, can of diced tomatoes. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20mins. Take off the heat and add 1c peanut butter and 2tbsp of vinegar (recommend adding 1tbsp at a time and tasting so as not to add too much), stir to combine. Serve.
I add 1lb chicken to mine and it makes like 3kgs of soup. Calorie dense, nutritious, very tasty. I also add a small amount of soy sauce, fish sauce, and/or worcesteshire when adding the liquid - imo this mimics some of the fermented sauces used in West African foods. Apple cider vinegar added at same time as the peanut butter really improves the dish. Salt and pepper throughout cooking, of course - but even without spices this is a tasty soup. Spices do help though.
A solid suggestion, thanks.
For when it’s real bad: The Sad Bastard Cookbook
Veggies + pasta + sauce
Beans + veggies + sauce
Various forms of potato
Carrots and hummus
I’m having a really bad time. I’ll go read it.
Been there, homie. You’ll come back around, keep the faith. 🙏
Mix in a pack of taco seasoning with brown rice and it tastes like tacos without needing the meat. Tho rice takes a bit to cook
Black Beans and Rice
Cook 2 cups of rice (rice cooker makes this easy)
Ingredients: 2 cans black beans 1 chopped green pepper 1 chopped onion 1 table spoon butter or oil
Spices: 1 Bay leaf 1 tsp black pepper 1 tbl spoon sugar 1 tsp vinegar (or lime juice) 2 tsp cumin (other potential spices: allspice, ginger)
Garnish: Sour creme (optional) Chopped green onion (optional)
Cook onion and green pepper together with butter/oil Add beans and spices Add sausage if using Add spices Cook together about 45 minutes on low, stirring occasionally Serve over the rice, garnish with sour cream and green onion if desired
Most soups take time to cook only by boiling for a while. Preparation usually is quite fast.
My wife does this cheap and fast soup:
- Cut potatoes in big chunks
- Cut carrots in big chunks
- Onions the same way
- Add garlic by taste
- Meat in same big chunks, preferably beef
- add 2 bouillon cubes, salt and pepper by taste, bay leaves and cloves if you have any.
- boil for a while, maybe like 20-30 mins.
- Enjoy.
Big chunks as in approx 3cm by 3cm cubes. It doesn’t make much time to cut veggies like this. I can do this soup alone in less than an hour.
Also, suggest to get rice cooker for a perfect side dish to any meat. Rice is healthy AF and with rice cooker is super easy to prepare to a perfect state. Also also, maybe get a slow cooker. You can throw food inside, set timer to start cooking and leave it til you need food to be done. Or pressure cooker if you want to speedup cooking.
In other words, invest in your kitchen gear. Cooking doesn’t take much time and effort if you have gear and tools needed to cook food. Good knives and kitchenware will save you money in a long run.
Coconut curry lentils over rice is a favorite (I use the recipe budget bytes has online). Rice and beans will be your best friend cuz you can have so much variety.
