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$35/Week – Eating well on $35 a week

50 points by ErikAugust 12y ago

schrodingersCat 12y ago
I look forward to your next post on recipes. Thanks for this!
lightblade 12y ago
Are there any subscription services that let me eat healthy and don't have to cook? Better yet, feed me like a hamster :P
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  http://www.soylent.me/ http://www.soylent.me/
  - recycleme 12y ago
    There is a giant modal in the way of everything when I load this site. Regardless, I've heard of this before and it seems interesting. Has anyone tried soylent?
    - freehunter 12y ago
      Look up Ars Technica's series on Soylent. They've done an extensive amount of testing and coverage on it. They seemed impressed.
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      http://reddit.com/r/soylent http://reddit.com/r/soylent
    - sneak 12y ago
      I rather like it. I wouldn't live on it (one tires of it quickly) but it's really nice to have healthy, cheap, easy meals available when there's no time to cook (pre-work breakfast) or when I've forgotten to shop (late night dinner).
- SheepSlapper 12y ago
  Eating healthy and not having to cook seem to be conflicting ideas, as far as I can tell :) Places like http://www.blueapron.com http://www.blueapron.com or https://www.plated.com https://www.plated.com will send you fresh ingredients pre-portioned, and then you spend < 30 minutes preparing your meal. And you can get decently healthy snacks through something like https://naturebox.com https://naturebox.com that are more "feed me like a hamster". But if you're not rolling in the dough, then learning how to make a handful of quick/easy meals is going to be the healthiest/cheapest option. Cooking doesn't have to be hard or time consuming, especially when you consider leftovers :)
- VLM 12y ago
  Define "cook". Will you tolerate ripping open a bunch of plastic bags and dumping everything onto a plate or is that too "cook"ish? I'm kind of embarrassed to admit how many of my bachelor era meals were like that. Too busy/lazy to even go to the store, and I keep a stash of those salad bags like alcoholics hide liquor bottles. They don't keep fresh for more than a couple days, unfortunately. The supermarket is full of "salad bags" of various flavors. I wasn't a vegetarian but more of a paleo guy and the lazy paleo mans meal outta the fridge is a salad bag. When you're too lazy or in a hurry to pan fry a steak or bake some chicken or steam a fish filet, there's always salad bags. When/if you advance beyond "dump everything in the bag on a plate and eat it" you can buy bagged lettuce and vegetables and canned salsa as a topping and maybe even a salad dressing and the "cooking" becomes dumping reasonable quantities of each on a plate. Hopefully not too much like "cooking". The next step up in "cooking" is adding stuff to the salad which creates salad++, and maybe putting the salad++ in other containers. So take strips of (cooked) chicken, ranging from you took precooked breaded pieces out of a deli container up to you butchered the chicken yourself and then cooked it, and throw that into the salad, and then possibly scoop the salad into a taco/burrito shell with some extra salsa, lots of extra medium spicy salsa and maybe sour cream and maybe some sprinkled cheese, I think I had seasoned feta out of a package. Add some sliced jalapeno peppers if thats not too "cooking". Cheese and sour cream aren't necessarily good for you from a paleo perspective, but they taste good enough to be condiments and my ancestry is lactose tolerant unlike most adult people. Anyway that was my lunch on Saturday. Fitting in with the $5/day theme it was probably like 50 cents, maybe a buck, and most of the money went into the single chicken piece I split with my whole family. It was very filling and tasty. And now I'm feeling hungry. Its not really "cooking" it is just slopping salad out of a bag, salsa out of a jar, and chicken out of a deli container into a taco shell out of a box, and toss in some other stuff out of a jar or bag as you see fit. If that counts as cooking, making a PB+J sandwich or microwave popcorn must be being a chef. Next thing you know, you're putting salad++ between slices of bread and calling it a sub sandwich. Maybe even seasoning and cooking some fresh meats or fresh veggies. You can make a decent sandwich or wrap in a couple minutes, so if you can afford a potty break you can afford to make a sandwich. Just don't do both at the same time. If you descend into frying precut frozen bagged veggies in a wok and slopping sauce outta a bottle on it when its done, I'm sad to report you've descended into the depths of hell ... er ... cooking. Tastes really freaking awesome, and cheap and fast too, but it is technically cooking so ... The fresh veggies are usually cheaper than frozen if you can afford 1 or 2 minutes to prep them (rinse, chop...) Better be careful, cooking is dangerously addictive, and you might end up with pressure cooker, sous vide rig, electric smoker, who knows where the madness might end. WRT subscription service, if you can get peapod to deliver produce department salad bags, I guess that's close? When my kids were little I had peapod deliver every week, at that age it was a huge epic PITA to take a small herd of little kids out to the store. Like LOTR expedition, just to buy some food, the little hobbits getting into all kinds of trouble. Now they're grown and its more recreational than something to be avoided, otherwise I'd probably still peapod.
applecore 12y ago
That's five dollars a day, or less than $2 per meal (assuming three meals a day). There's this product called Soylent[1] that's supposed to be pretty healthy and costs less than $4 per meal. [1]: http://www.soylent.me/ http://www.soylent.me/
- jmccree 12y ago
  The subject is eating well, not avoiding eating entirely. You don't eat Soylent, you drink it. A lot of people still would like to eat.
chc 12y ago
I imagine it is easy to eat well on $35 a week if you consider a PB&J sandwich to be a "euphoric" experience. This does not match my idea of eating well, nor that of most people I know. This seems a bit like an article on how to become rich working at McDonalds defining "rich" to mean "earns at least $5000 a year."
- ahmad19526 12y ago
  I agree and I don't consider a "Frozen" box of anything to be "Eating well". It's a blessing to have these things (or is it?). I prefer keeping things organic and fresh when possible.
  - ig1 12y ago
    Well in this case is designed to mean healthy. Despite popular misconception organic and fresh food aren't necessarily healthier than frozen foods as many fresh foods lose significant nutritional value when stored/transported at room temperature.
- delluminatus 12y ago
  What are you expecting, duck confit and beef wellington? Eating well in this case means being satisfied and healthy. A peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat bread is surprisingly healthy (although I personally loathe whole wheat). It's not classy but it's a highly cost-efficient source of calories. Also, it turns out that even if you are willing to lower yourself to peanut butter sandwiches, getting 2500 calories of nutritionally well-rounded and healthy food for $5 a day takes quite a bit of planning (if not cooking). If you "imagine it is easy", it's only because you have not given a fig's worth of actual thought to the process.
  - fleitz 12y ago
    Please sir more gruel... err... nutraloaf.
  - chc 12y ago
    > What are you expecting, duck confit and beef wellington? I'm expecting an article about "eating well" to be about eating well, not just merely subsisting. > Eating well in this case means being satisfied and healthy. A peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat bread is surprisingly healthy (although I personally loathe whole wheat). It's not classy but it's a highly cost-efficient source of calories. I don't know about you, but I would absolutely not be satisfied with a diet made up mainly of things like peanut butter sandwich. Like I said, I've eaten on that level, and I didn't feel very satisfied with it.
dubcanada 12y ago
Just the cupboard section would cost me more then $35 a week.
- aceperry 12y ago
  Absolutely. Even when you amortize the cost of condiments, oils, spices, and vegetables, that would go over budget. Along with the eating out and more expensive items like chicken shu mai, this is not going to fit within the $35/week budget. What he needs to do is to cut out anything over $35/week to get a realistic picture of what it really means to survive on $35/week. I would like to see his meals and response to that situation, otherwise it's not realistic enough and he can't really make the case that you can eat well for $35/week.
- VLM 12y ago
  Thats his total contents, which is like 20 or so meals. Maybe not good meals, but 20 or so things. I probably have $300-$400 bucks of "stuff" in my cupboard but I don't eat all of it every week. I do "too much" amazon subscribe and save and I like spices so maybe a "normal" cupboard only has $200 or so of stuff. I think the idea is to promote creative thinking. So I'd fry up about a 1/10 of a bag of frozen broccoli and cook the mac n cheese and then add a can of tuna and mix all that stuff up into a tuna casserole and bake it, maybe broil it to brown the top which is WAY more than one meal for one single dude even accounting for the long term effects of food inflation (like mac n chee used to be a pound in the 90s, now its only like one cup in the 2010s). Maybe the day after tomorrow when the casserole is finally eaten up, a dash of oil in the wok with a bag of mixed veg and those meatballs and then some kind of homemade sauce, I bet you get two meals outta that at least. Dude needs to buy more fruits and veg and more spicy stuff. I see vegetarian burritos and tacos and spring rolls in his future.
glibgil 12y ago
Have you tried cooking dry beans? It is really easy and cheaper than canned. I bring them to a boil, can the water and then put them in the oven. They last for days in the fridge.
- FranOntanaya 12y ago
  Last batch of dry beans I prepared I started to wonder if it's really cheaper for me to pay for the energy needed to cook them well versus just quickly heating a can. Fresh beans though are definitely great, and with homegrown ones you can cook the pods too.
  - dgrant 12y ago
    If you use a pressure cooker, it takes less energy apparently. The more energy efficient method would be to pre-soak them for a long time, then cook on a pressure cooker (on low heat, hot enough for the pressure cooker to keep at full pressure though...but it doesn't take much heat to do that). I have a Hawkins classic pressure cooker. Apparently the Hawkins Futura line is even more efficient.
  - tunesmith 12y ago
    Hmm, 6-qt Fagor Duo pressure cooker, $85. Dried black beans, $1 - $2/pound. Can 15oz black beans containing 1 1/3 cup drained beans, about $2. 2 cups dried beans yields 5-6 cups cooked drained beans. 1 pound dried beans = 2 cups dried beans. Rinsed, un-presoaked black beans cooking time: 25 minutes, after maybe 5-6 minutes of bringing it to boil and reaching pressure level. Cooking time for can of beans: 5 minutes.
    - adsfasdf23f23f 12y ago
      Isn't cook time usually closer to 55 minutes after pressure?
      - tunesmith 12y ago
        I did two cups in my Fagor Duo last night at 25 minutes - they turned out great.
buro9 12y ago
Anyone serious about living on little should read http://www.theskintfoodie.com/recipes.html http://www.theskintfoodie.com/recipes.html And if you're really serious about living on less than that then I can only recommend Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London" for the wonderful tip of smearing garlic on a knife before you put butter on bread to convince your body you've eaten a hearty meal. I personally lived a couple of years on http://www.complan.com http://www.complan.com which is about as close to Soylent as you get when you're homeless and broke in 1994 and holding on to the hope that it might stave off whatever the next illness is going to be. My personal tip: Stale bread, old tomatoes, old cheese = pizza for less than 20p.
- josephschmoe 12y ago
  I usually just dice up garlic and throw it inside a partially filled bottle of olive oil. IIRC olive oil is actually cheaper than butter.
  - splat 12y ago
    Just be careful about botulism! You can mitigate the risk by straining the oil or keeping it in the fridge.
  - HNJohnC 12y ago
    Better throw some acid in there or you run quite a significant risk of death from botulism.
    - josephschmoe 12y ago
      Holy shit TIL. You may have just saved my life. Thank you!
- ErikAugust 12y ago
  OP here - thanks for the fantastic resource. I plan on incorporating some of those recipes into the fold.
  - 12y ago
jug5 12y ago
What a bad joke this is, only in the third world would this qualify as "eating well."
- maxerickson 12y ago
  "well" is used in a different sense than you are using it. They mean enough calories with a reasonable amount of nutrition. From a feed-your-body perspective, peanut butter on whole wheat bread is pretty decent food (it's even protein complete). To me the silliest part of the article was Food is one of the few true necessities in life, yet overlooked in mainstream thought. I would say that mainstream culture is obsessed with food.
  - ErikAugust 12y ago
    Good call - that was a vague statement - I've refined it a bit: "Food is one of the few true necessities in life, yet alternatives to junk food and eating out are often overlooked in mainstream thought." At least closer to what I mean, anyway. Thanks for checking out.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      I think there is a good chance you are taking an observation from your life, something about lots of people being uncertain about cooking, and (falsely) translating that into a lack of consideration for cooking. Even something crassly commercial like "The Food Network" spends an awful lot of its time on real actual cooking (and there are dozens of cooking shows on other channels). And it just goes on from there. What could be more mainstream than Rachel Ray and her talk show? And she is big on ingredients and cooking them. Or do a survey of "food section"s in print. The HuffPo, of all things, focuses on recipes: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/food/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/food/ Lots of real papers have lots of recipes and content that is not restaurant reviews. Sorry for focusing on one small point and being cranky about it.
      - ErikAugust 12y ago
applekor 12y ago
Pretty great cookbook I've taken a few meals from: http://www.leannebrown.ca/cookbooks/ http://www.leannebrown.ca/cookbooks/ Rather than cheap food that happens to be edible, she tried to focus on actually good food that happens to be cheap. Really well done. Free electronic copies are always a plus too...
- bch 12y ago
  A book that has been fascinating me lately is How to Cook a Wolf[0] by MFK Fisher[1], which is absolutely lovely, inspiring and amazing. A sort of home ec., slice of life bunch of anecdotes, ideas and story-telling. [0] http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Wolf-M-Fisher/dp/0865473366 http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Wolf-M-Fisher/dp/0865473366 [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._F._K._Fisher#Books http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._F._K._Fisher#Books
nisa 12y ago
35$ are about 26€ - it's definitely possible in Germany. You can buy 1kg oatmeal for 1€, 1kg yoghurt for 1.50€. 2kg whole-grain bread for 3€, 2kg potatoes or pasta or rice for 2€, 10 eggs for 1€, Then you have plenty of possibilities and still 17€ to add vegetables/oil/spices and other ingredients and create tasty meals. The difficult part is planning meals for 1 or 2 weeks in advance and keeping variations alive. Also avoid soda of all kinds and only drink tap-water and coffee/tee to safe the money. Also preparing sandwiches in advance while travelling saves a lot of money... It's surely possible to live healthy on the cheap but it takes a lot of effort and time and structure to do so..
incision 12y ago
Looks familiar. I grew up eating lots and lots of rice, beans and frozen vegatables and I'm still pretty fond of them - cheap and tasty, cheaper if you do your own seasoning and cheaper still if you buy dry beans and aren't particular about your rice. Personally, my big issue in weekly food cost is eating out at work - paying $10+ per day for worse versions of stuff that could be made for 1/5 that price with the right discipline.
aceperry 12y ago
Shopping at Trader Joes is a good start for keeping within budget, but you can't really make the case for eating well on $35/week if you go out occasionally and DON'T count that in your budget.
- drz 12y ago
  Under this system, I'd just eat out for every meal and net a budget of $0/week.
oniTony 12y ago
Is "bought from a store" a requirement here? I've built a small garden on my balcony, and it seems that such could meaningfully supplement a $35/week budget; especially given an objective of "organic". > I will likely spend up to 20% more to buy organic.
findjashua 12y ago
tldr: grains and legumes are cheap and healthy
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mmcclellan 12y ago
Dang, not bad. I also buy my food weekly at Trader Joe's and have been spending twice that much ($70 a week): 7 * 1lb Grass Fed Angus Beef $6 = $42, 2 * 8oz Kerrygold Unsalted Butter $3.25 = $6.50, 2 * 12oz Kerrygold Dubliner Cheese $4.50 = $9, 2 * 12 Cage Free Eggs $3.25 = $6.50, 2 * Charles Shaw Cabernet $3 = $6
- drz 12y ago
  Are you on a paleo-and-wino diet?
dzhiurgis 12y ago
If you are taking supplements clearly you are not eating well.
funkyy 12y ago
I am happy to see this. Coincidence is that I am on €49 budget right now (training self discipline). Thats €7 a day. BUT - I do not eat anything from cans or anything pre-made. All fresh meat, veggies and self made food - for 2 people. No bread and avoiding packaged food. Sure - you wont get any Whiskey or Cola for it. You wont be able to go to restaurant. Or buy crisps. But thats the point - living healthy. I dont like how author lives off cans - its not that healthy. You can make most of food much cheaper at home. Cans are mostly unnecessary. I propose to all to try this. Leaving for udner $10/€10 a day out of all healthy and self made foods.
- drz 12y ago
  As long as you avoid dented cans (risk of botulism) and strain off the liquid before using the contents (too much salt, risk of high blood pressure and kidney failure), canned foods are perfectly healthy.

50 points by ErikAugust 12y ago

I look forward to your next post on recipes. Thanks for this!

Are there any subscription services that let me eat healthy and don't have to cook? Better yet, feed me like a hamster :P

Igglyboo 12y ago
http://www.soylent.me/ http://www.soylent.me/
- recycleme 12y ago
  There is a giant modal in the way of everything when I load this site. Regardless, I've heard of this before and it seems interesting. Has anyone tried soylent?
  - freehunter 12y ago
    Look up Ars Technica's series on Soylent. They've done an extensive amount of testing and coverage on it. They seemed impressed.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    http://reddit.com/r/soylent http://reddit.com/r/soylent
  - sneak 12y ago
    I rather like it. I wouldn't live on it (one tires of it quickly) but it's really nice to have healthy, cheap, easy meals available when there's no time to cook (pre-work breakfast) or when I've forgotten to shop (late night dinner).
SheepSlapper 12y ago
Eating healthy and not having to cook seem to be conflicting ideas, as far as I can tell :) Places like http://www.blueapron.com http://www.blueapron.com or https://www.plated.com https://www.plated.com will send you fresh ingredients pre-portioned, and then you spend < 30 minutes preparing your meal. And you can get decently healthy snacks through something like https://naturebox.com https://naturebox.com that are more "feed me like a hamster". But if you're not rolling in the dough, then learning how to make a handful of quick/easy meals is going to be the healthiest/cheapest option. Cooking doesn't have to be hard or time consuming, especially when you consider leftovers :)
VLM 12y ago
Define "cook". Will you tolerate ripping open a bunch of plastic bags and dumping everything onto a plate or is that too "cook"ish? I'm kind of embarrassed to admit how many of my bachelor era meals were like that. Too busy/lazy to even go to the store, and I keep a stash of those salad bags like alcoholics hide liquor bottles. They don't keep fresh for more than a couple days, unfortunately. The supermarket is full of "salad bags" of various flavors. I wasn't a vegetarian but more of a paleo guy and the lazy paleo mans meal outta the fridge is a salad bag. When you're too lazy or in a hurry to pan fry a steak or bake some chicken or steam a fish filet, there's always salad bags. When/if you advance beyond "dump everything in the bag on a plate and eat it" you can buy bagged lettuce and vegetables and canned salsa as a topping and maybe even a salad dressing and the "cooking" becomes dumping reasonable quantities of each on a plate. Hopefully not too much like "cooking". The next step up in "cooking" is adding stuff to the salad which creates salad++, and maybe putting the salad++ in other containers. So take strips of (cooked) chicken, ranging from you took precooked breaded pieces out of a deli container up to you butchered the chicken yourself and then cooked it, and throw that into the salad, and then possibly scoop the salad into a taco/burrito shell with some extra salsa, lots of extra medium spicy salsa and maybe sour cream and maybe some sprinkled cheese, I think I had seasoned feta out of a package. Add some sliced jalapeno peppers if thats not too "cooking". Cheese and sour cream aren't necessarily good for you from a paleo perspective, but they taste good enough to be condiments and my ancestry is lactose tolerant unlike most adult people. Anyway that was my lunch on Saturday. Fitting in with the $5/day theme it was probably like 50 cents, maybe a buck, and most of the money went into the single chicken piece I split with my whole family. It was very filling and tasty. And now I'm feeling hungry. Its not really "cooking" it is just slopping salad out of a bag, salsa out of a jar, and chicken out of a deli container into a taco shell out of a box, and toss in some other stuff out of a jar or bag as you see fit. If that counts as cooking, making a PB+J sandwich or microwave popcorn must be being a chef. Next thing you know, you're putting salad++ between slices of bread and calling it a sub sandwich. Maybe even seasoning and cooking some fresh meats or fresh veggies. You can make a decent sandwich or wrap in a couple minutes, so if you can afford a potty break you can afford to make a sandwich. Just don't do both at the same time. If you descend into frying precut frozen bagged veggies in a wok and slopping sauce outta a bottle on it when its done, I'm sad to report you've descended into the depths of hell ... er ... cooking. Tastes really freaking awesome, and cheap and fast too, but it is technically cooking so ... The fresh veggies are usually cheaper than frozen if you can afford 1 or 2 minutes to prep them (rinse, chop...) Better be careful, cooking is dangerously addictive, and you might end up with pressure cooker, sous vide rig, electric smoker, who knows where the madness might end. WRT subscription service, if you can get peapod to deliver produce department salad bags, I guess that's close? When my kids were little I had peapod deliver every week, at that age it was a huge epic PITA to take a small herd of little kids out to the store. Like LOTR expedition, just to buy some food, the little hobbits getting into all kinds of trouble. Now they're grown and its more recreational than something to be avoided, otherwise I'd probably still peapod.

applecore 12y ago

That's five dollars a day, or less than $2 per meal (assuming three meals a day). There's this product called Soylent[1] that's supposed to be pretty healthy and costs less than $4 per meal. [1]: http://www.soylent.me/ http://www.soylent.me/

jmccree 12y ago
The subject is eating well, not avoiding eating entirely. You don't eat Soylent, you drink it. A lot of people still would like to eat.

chc 12y ago

I imagine it is easy to eat well on $35 a week if you consider a PB&J sandwich to be a "euphoric" experience. This does not match my idea of eating well, nor that of most people I know. This seems a bit like an article on how to become rich working at McDonalds defining "rich" to mean "earns at least $5000 a year."

ahmad19526 12y ago
I agree and I don't consider a "Frozen" box of anything to be "Eating well". It's a blessing to have these things (or is it?). I prefer keeping things organic and fresh when possible.
- ig1 12y ago
  Well in this case is designed to mean healthy. Despite popular misconception organic and fresh food aren't necessarily healthier than frozen foods as many fresh foods lose significant nutritional value when stored/transported at room temperature.
delluminatus 12y ago
What are you expecting, duck confit and beef wellington? Eating well in this case means being satisfied and healthy. A peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat bread is surprisingly healthy (although I personally loathe whole wheat). It's not classy but it's a highly cost-efficient source of calories. Also, it turns out that even if you are willing to lower yourself to peanut butter sandwiches, getting 2500 calories of nutritionally well-rounded and healthy food for $5 a day takes quite a bit of planning (if not cooking). If you "imagine it is easy", it's only because you have not given a fig's worth of actual thought to the process.
- fleitz 12y ago
  Please sir more gruel... err... nutraloaf.
- chc 12y ago
  > What are you expecting, duck confit and beef wellington? I'm expecting an article about "eating well" to be about eating well, not just merely subsisting. > Eating well in this case means being satisfied and healthy. A peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat bread is surprisingly healthy (although I personally loathe whole wheat). It's not classy but it's a highly cost-efficient source of calories. I don't know about you, but I would absolutely not be satisfied with a diet made up mainly of things like peanut butter sandwich. Like I said, I've eaten on that level, and I didn't feel very satisfied with it.

dubcanada 12y ago

Just the cupboard section would cost me more then $35 a week.

aceperry 12y ago
Absolutely. Even when you amortize the cost of condiments, oils, spices, and vegetables, that would go over budget. Along with the eating out and more expensive items like chicken shu mai, this is not going to fit within the $35/week budget. What he needs to do is to cut out anything over $35/week to get a realistic picture of what it really means to survive on $35/week. I would like to see his meals and response to that situation, otherwise it's not realistic enough and he can't really make the case that you can eat well for $35/week.
VLM 12y ago
Thats his total contents, which is like 20 or so meals. Maybe not good meals, but 20 or so things. I probably have $300-$400 bucks of "stuff" in my cupboard but I don't eat all of it every week. I do "too much" amazon subscribe and save and I like spices so maybe a "normal" cupboard only has $200 or so of stuff. I think the idea is to promote creative thinking. So I'd fry up about a 1/10 of a bag of frozen broccoli and cook the mac n cheese and then add a can of tuna and mix all that stuff up into a tuna casserole and bake it, maybe broil it to brown the top which is WAY more than one meal for one single dude even accounting for the long term effects of food inflation (like mac n chee used to be a pound in the 90s, now its only like one cup in the 2010s). Maybe the day after tomorrow when the casserole is finally eaten up, a dash of oil in the wok with a bag of mixed veg and those meatballs and then some kind of homemade sauce, I bet you get two meals outta that at least. Dude needs to buy more fruits and veg and more spicy stuff. I see vegetarian burritos and tacos and spring rolls in his future.

glibgil 12y ago

Have you tried cooking dry beans? It is really easy and cheaper than canned. I bring them to a boil, can the water and then put them in the oven. They last for days in the fridge.

FranOntanaya 12y ago
Last batch of dry beans I prepared I started to wonder if it's really cheaper for me to pay for the energy needed to cook them well versus just quickly heating a can. Fresh beans though are definitely great, and with homegrown ones you can cook the pods too.
- dgrant 12y ago
  If you use a pressure cooker, it takes less energy apparently. The more energy efficient method would be to pre-soak them for a long time, then cook on a pressure cooker (on low heat, hot enough for the pressure cooker to keep at full pressure though...but it doesn't take much heat to do that). I have a Hawkins classic pressure cooker. Apparently the Hawkins Futura line is even more efficient.
- tunesmith 12y ago
  Hmm, 6-qt Fagor Duo pressure cooker, $85. Dried black beans, $1 - $2/pound. Can 15oz black beans containing 1 1/3 cup drained beans, about $2. 2 cups dried beans yields 5-6 cups cooked drained beans. 1 pound dried beans = 2 cups dried beans. Rinsed, un-presoaked black beans cooking time: 25 minutes, after maybe 5-6 minutes of bringing it to boil and reaching pressure level. Cooking time for can of beans: 5 minutes.
  - adsfasdf23f23f 12y ago
    Isn't cook time usually closer to 55 minutes after pressure?
    - tunesmith 12y ago
      I did two cups in my Fagor Duo last night at 25 minutes - they turned out great.

buro9 12y ago

Anyone serious about living on little should read http://www.theskintfoodie.com/recipes.html http://www.theskintfoodie.com/recipes.html And if you're really serious about living on less than that then I can only recommend Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London" for the wonderful tip of smearing garlic on a knife before you put butter on bread to convince your body you've eaten a hearty meal. I personally lived a couple of years on http://www.complan.com http://www.complan.com which is about as close to Soylent as you get when you're homeless and broke in 1994 and holding on to the hope that it might stave off whatever the next illness is going to be. My personal tip: Stale bread, old tomatoes, old cheese = pizza for less than 20p.

josephschmoe 12y ago
I usually just dice up garlic and throw it inside a partially filled bottle of olive oil. IIRC olive oil is actually cheaper than butter.
- splat 12y ago
  Just be careful about botulism! You can mitigate the risk by straining the oil or keeping it in the fridge.
- HNJohnC 12y ago
  Better throw some acid in there or you run quite a significant risk of death from botulism.
  - josephschmoe 12y ago
    Holy shit TIL. You may have just saved my life. Thank you!
ErikAugust 12y ago
OP here - thanks for the fantastic resource. I plan on incorporating some of those recipes into the fold.
- 12y ago

jug5 12y ago

What a bad joke this is, only in the third world would this qualify as "eating well."

maxerickson 12y ago
"well" is used in a different sense than you are using it. They mean enough calories with a reasonable amount of nutrition. From a feed-your-body perspective, peanut butter on whole wheat bread is pretty decent food (it's even protein complete). To me the silliest part of the article was Food is one of the few true necessities in life, yet overlooked in mainstream thought. I would say that mainstream culture is obsessed with food.
- ErikAugust 12y ago
  Good call - that was a vague statement - I've refined it a bit: "Food is one of the few true necessities in life, yet alternatives to junk food and eating out are often overlooked in mainstream thought." At least closer to what I mean, anyway. Thanks for checking out.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    I think there is a good chance you are taking an observation from your life, something about lots of people being uncertain about cooking, and (falsely) translating that into a lack of consideration for cooking. Even something crassly commercial like "The Food Network" spends an awful lot of its time on real actual cooking (and there are dozens of cooking shows on other channels). And it just goes on from there. What could be more mainstream than Rachel Ray and her talk show? And she is big on ingredients and cooking them. Or do a survey of "food section"s in print. The HuffPo, of all things, focuses on recipes: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/food/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/food/ Lots of real papers have lots of recipes and content that is not restaurant reviews. Sorry for focusing on one small point and being cranky about it.
    - ErikAugust 12y ago

applekor 12y ago

Pretty great cookbook I've taken a few meals from: http://www.leannebrown.ca/cookbooks/ http://www.leannebrown.ca/cookbooks/ Rather than cheap food that happens to be edible, she tried to focus on actually good food that happens to be cheap. Really well done. Free electronic copies are always a plus too...

bch 12y ago
A book that has been fascinating me lately is How to Cook a Wolf[0] by MFK Fisher[1], which is absolutely lovely, inspiring and amazing. A sort of home ec., slice of life bunch of anecdotes, ideas and story-telling. [0] http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Wolf-M-Fisher/dp/0865473366 http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Wolf-M-Fisher/dp/0865473366 [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._F._K._Fisher#Books http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._F._K._Fisher#Books

nisa 12y ago

35$ are about 26€ - it's definitely possible in Germany. You can buy 1kg oatmeal for 1€, 1kg yoghurt for 1.50€. 2kg whole-grain bread for 3€, 2kg potatoes or pasta or rice for 2€, 10 eggs for 1€, Then you have plenty of possibilities and still 17€ to add vegetables/oil/spices and other ingredients and create tasty meals. The difficult part is planning meals for 1 or 2 weeks in advance and keeping variations alive. Also avoid soda of all kinds and only drink tap-water and coffee/tee to safe the money. Also preparing sandwiches in advance while travelling saves a lot of money... It's surely possible to live healthy on the cheap but it takes a lot of effort and time and structure to do so..

incision 12y ago

Looks familiar. I grew up eating lots and lots of rice, beans and frozen vegatables and I'm still pretty fond of them - cheap and tasty, cheaper if you do your own seasoning and cheaper still if you buy dry beans and aren't particular about your rice. Personally, my big issue in weekly food cost is eating out at work - paying $10+ per day for worse versions of stuff that could be made for 1/5 that price with the right discipline.

aceperry 12y ago

Shopping at Trader Joes is a good start for keeping within budget, but you can't really make the case for eating well on $35/week if you go out occasionally and DON'T count that in your budget.

drz 12y ago
Under this system, I'd just eat out for every meal and net a budget of $0/week.

oniTony 12y ago

Is "bought from a store" a requirement here? I've built a small garden on my balcony, and it seems that such could meaningfully supplement a $35/week budget; especially given an objective of "organic". > I will likely spend up to 20% more to buy organic.

findjashua 12y ago

tldr: grains and legumes are cheap and healthy

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mmcclellan 12y ago

Dang, not bad. I also buy my food weekly at Trader Joe's and have been spending twice that much ($70 a week): 7 * 1lb Grass Fed Angus Beef $6 = $42, 2 * 8oz Kerrygold Unsalted Butter $3.25 = $6.50, 2 * 12oz Kerrygold Dubliner Cheese $4.50 = $9, 2 * 12 Cage Free Eggs $3.25 = $6.50, 2 * Charles Shaw Cabernet $3 = $6

drz 12y ago
Are you on a paleo-and-wino diet?

dzhiurgis 12y ago

If you are taking supplements clearly you are not eating well.

funkyy 12y ago

I am happy to see this. Coincidence is that I am on €49 budget right now (training self discipline). Thats €7 a day. BUT - I do not eat anything from cans or anything pre-made. All fresh meat, veggies and self made food - for 2 people. No bread and avoiding packaged food. Sure - you wont get any Whiskey or Cola for it. You wont be able to go to restaurant. Or buy crisps. But thats the point - living healthy. I dont like how author lives off cans - its not that healthy. You can make most of food much cheaper at home. Cans are mostly unnecessary. I propose to all to try this. Leaving for udner $10/€10 a day out of all healthy and self made foods.

drz 12y ago
As long as you avoid dented cans (risk of botulism) and strain off the liquid before using the contents (too much salt, risk of high blood pressure and kidney failure), canned foods are perfectly healthy.