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A small rant about being poor* and food. Healthy, tasty food is cheap. It really, truly is. If you have a smartphone, you can learn how to make cheap, tasty an

A small rant about being poor* and food. Healthy, tasty food is cheap. It really, truly is. If you have a smartphone, you can learn how to make cheap, tasty and filling food. And you can afford it. Here's what you can't afford: the time, the equipment, the space. Can't buy frozen meats because the freezer is broken. Or it's small. Or it's already full of your flatmates shite that they've had in there for 15 months and never going to eat. Same with the fridge, you can't shop for a week (but you wouldn't anyway because you don't have a car) because it's already full of your f**ing flatmates rotting, half eaten yogurts, rancid meats and leftovers. So you buy what you have to eat for a day, today. Also you're tired because your commute was 80 minutes on two buses, each way. And your feet hurt anyway because you stand or walk for 7 hours every day. And your back hurts. But even if you weren't tired and in pain, you don't have a chopping board, or a knife that isn't blunt as a spoon, or pan that isn't rusty, or a large cast iron cooking pot. You have whatever random collection of burnt, greasy, mouse dropping covered (Yay London!) weird iron pots were in the cupboard when you moved in. And why buy anything nice? Your flatmates will use it, not wash it, scrape off sauces with metal cutlery on a non stick pan (really!) and generally mistreat anything there. And you have exactly one working hot plate left and even that's got dodgy heat. Rant over. The Capex (equipment, use of a large, working kitchen) for cooking healthy is expensive. The time Opex for cooking healthy is expensive. The human willpower for cooking healthy is expensive. The ingredients, however, are not. Neither, actually, are the skills and knowledge of how to do it. * minimum wage UK in London, no ability to get credit.

hinkley 4y ago
I don’t think my family would have made it through the 80’s without a chest freezer. I own a smaller one now that has occasionally been awkward to site when I was an apartment dweller but it’s still worth it. When bread was on sale, often 3 for 2 sales, we’d buy six loaves and stick them in the freezer. Meat was almost always whatever was on sale. They are not expensive, but they take planning or at least putting off some other big ticket item u til they pay for themselves. What the poor also can’t do is afford to experiment on things that may or may not pay off. That money could have been spent on something else. Including a little bit of fun. VCs aiming for a one in ten success rate sound like madmen. To this day I still scratch my head at that.
Scoundreller 4y ago
The cookbook and other guides here are excellent: https://efficiencyiseverything.com/food/ https://efficiencyiseverything.com/food/
xyzzyz 4y ago
Seems like you’re saying that one of the worst parts of being poor is living around other poor people.
- plsbenice34 4y ago
  It is.
- jdmtheNth 4y ago
  David Sedaris says that the best thing you can do for poor people is to not become one.
3pt14159 4y ago
When I was poor[0] it wasn't really the food that got to me. No, rice kept well and I'd cut up some hotdogs into it or melt some butter or oil or something. The problem was the crushing depression of thinking of every single quarter. Things you take for granted like wanting to read a book or going downtown Toronto to visit friends. Every drive with the car was a gamble. It's this sort of constant pressure that eats up so much of your mental energy. Healthy food on a budget is easy if you're not depressed. Bake some sweet potatoes. Raw carrots with hummus. Eggs. The problem is that you didn't clean the kitchen because you hate your life and now there are all these little ants all over the place. And now you don't want to be home to cook and you can't really go anywhere either because you're broke. But you do anyway, because you want to be around people, and so you stretch that $5 pint of Labatt 50 across as long as you can. It's not a fun life. I don't recommend it. [0] Startup poor in 2009, as in, my startup was failing but I could get an above average job with little more than a resume. I understand that this is not the same thing as proper poor, but it sure felt horrible anyway.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

hinkley 4y ago

I don’t think my family would have made it through the 80’s without a chest freezer. I own a smaller one now that has occasionally been awkward to site when I was an apartment dweller but it’s still worth it. When bread was on sale, often 3 for 2 sales, we’d buy six loaves and stick them in the freezer. Meat was almost always whatever was on sale. They are not expensive, but they take planning or at least putting off some other big ticket item u til they pay for themselves. What the poor also can’t do is afford to experiment on things that may or may not pay off. That money could have been spent on something else. Including a little bit of fun. VCs aiming for a one in ten success rate sound like madmen. To this day I still scratch my head at that.

Scoundreller 4y ago

The cookbook and other guides here are excellent: https://efficiencyiseverything.com/food/ https://efficiencyiseverything.com/food/

xyzzyz 4y ago

Seems like you’re saying that one of the worst parts of being poor is living around other poor people.

plsbenice34 4y ago
It is.
jdmtheNth 4y ago
David Sedaris says that the best thing you can do for poor people is to not become one.

3pt14159 4y ago

When I was poor[0] it wasn't really the food that got to me. No, rice kept well and I'd cut up some hotdogs into it or melt some butter or oil or something. The problem was the crushing depression of thinking of every single quarter. Things you take for granted like wanting to read a book or going downtown Toronto to visit friends. Every drive with the car was a gamble. It's this sort of constant pressure that eats up so much of your mental energy. Healthy food on a budget is easy if you're not depressed. Bake some sweet potatoes. Raw carrots with hummus. Eggs. The problem is that you didn't clean the kitchen because you hate your life and now there are all these little ants all over the place. And now you don't want to be home to cook and you can't really go anywhere either because you're broke. But you do anyway, because you want to be around people, and so you stretch that $5 pint of Labatt 50 across as long as you can. It's not a fun life. I don't recommend it. [0] Startup poor in 2009, as in, my startup was failing but I could get an above average job with little more than a resume. I understand that this is not the same thing as proper poor, but it sure felt horrible anyway.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]