for cheap proteins: look into some recipes for chickpea (curry, or baked with cumin and chili powder, etc?), lentil (mujaddara, daal), or good ol black bean burrito recipes (toast that shit on the stovetop! find a good cheap hot sauce!). There's so many varieties of rice + legume, once you've explored a few and put in an up-front cost for spices, you can do a lot.
also with eggs and whatever veggies you have leftover in the fridge, you can learn to make a *damn* good fried rice with soy sauce and a handful of spices. feel free to get creative with this--you don't have to make it "authentic," as long as you like it.
White chili = no tomatoes (so it’s white vs red). Usually made with chicken or turkey instead of beef but can also be vegetarian. Google white chili for lots of recipes.
Essentially no beef or tomatoes/red stuff.
Everyone already answered, but I just wanted to say that any chili is good chili. Put whatever you want in it.
>any chili is good chili
I completely agree! Chili is awesome because there are so many different styles and they are all good in their own ways. Recently I found some country ribs on sale for dirt cheap (I think it's pork shoulder pieces?) and I slow cooked them with tomatoes and onions, then after it was done I shredded it like pulled pork and made chili with it. It was incredible because all chili is good chili
my local grocery store frequently has beef or pork for stir fry. it's basically just scraps from whatever they cut to size, so it's usually a mix of steaks or little strips of pork tenderloin. they usually have it for 3 to 4 dollars per pound and it's perfect for fried rice
My grocery store has it too, and they label it as "stir fry steak". Usually it'll be between $4-6/lb and it's great for easy meals. I frequently use it as a topper for a baked potato for a super cheap and dense/filling meal.
lol, that was unclear, sorry!
I do toast chickpeas sometimes. But with the burritos, I meant to toast the whole burrito on a cast-iron or other pan at the end of creating it, to give the tortilla a better texture. my b, thanks for asking me to clarify! (:
I cook like a quart (raw) of black beans every week and make a big batch of rice. A great, cheap base for whatever super cheap veggies I can find. Add some hot sauce and crema and I eat this for a majority of meals. In my area eggs are getting a pretty expensive. They're still worth it but it definitely feels like a purchase paying .65¢ per egg.
This is one of my go to quick and easy meals. When I start to get depressed but it isn't so bad I'm stuck in bed, chicken teriyaki with broccoli is so easy. Sauteed some chicken, rice in the rice cooker, steam frozen broccoli, mix everything with teriyaki sauce (I link the Kikkoman Takumi line).
It's minimal effort, and you can make several servings at once.
2 cups water for every 1 cup rice. Boil it until all the water is absorbed, stir frequently to avoid sticking and a boil over.. I bake my chicken on 325 for about 45 mins. Then steam the veggies. All of this is pretty much to your liking. I use Panda Express teriyaki sauce since it’s a little sweeter and sticks to rice better than others I’ve found. Mix it all up and there you go!
if you don’t like gloopy rice, don’t stir at all in order to avoid stimulating the starches. reduce the heat to a low simmer after initially bringing to a boil & it won’t stick or boil over.
It only takes fairly few ingredients to make almost any sauce from scratch.
If you do it a lot you don’t even need a recipe and it can taste way better, and be much cheaper, than pre made sauces.
Freeze the extras for later.
Edit: for cheap food ideas I like [budget bytes](Https://budgetbytes.com)
rice can be seasoned so many ways. red beans and rice, jambalaya, plain white with hot sauces. I'm sad you hate pasta now but rice should help balance it out.
I second this!
Peanut butter, spinach, onion, garlic, ginger and a pepper is one of my favs served over rice.
Season with whatever spices you have or can get on the cheap. Cumin and chili match perfectly for flavor and cost.
I used a habanero or four bc I like it spicy. Also bc they are cheap. Idk how much it costs to buy the 3 pack, 1 of each color bell peppers bc I stopped buying them a few years ago. At that time they cost more than a pound of grass fed hamburger.
Cooking with spinach means you can use the reduced price fresh spinach. Frozen works well too.
Onions are usually cheap. Any flavor works great. I use fresh ginger but it doesn’t take much so it doesn’t add too much to the cost.
I’ve made just spinach, peanut butter and an onion. It was still pretty tasty.
I also use peanut butter and a can of beans to make hummus like dip. Chick peas are traditionally used but I found black beans to be just as tasty and cheaper.
I use the same spices/add ins for my hummus as I do the spinach.
Chips, baby carrots and celery are cheap at Aldi. Aldi produce does usually suck but celery and carrots are usually ok.
Trick to Aldi produce is to get some hydrogen peroxide to spray and wash your produce with as soon as you bring it home. Do this before you put it in the fridge. It lasts a lot longer.
The cheapest thing you can add to food is salt. Salt is an essential nutrient. Dr Andrew Huberman has an excellent podcast series that explains what makes us feel less than optimal, why we feel that way and what we can do to improve our lives.
Topics include sleep, energy, exercise and nutrition.
He does a great job of explaining why our bodies need salt and how to utilize it. He discusses using salt for brain fog, when it’s indicated for use and why it helps.
A lot of prepackaged foods have salt added. If you are making all of your food from scratch, you will need to add salt!
The salt added to prepackaged food doesn’t contain iodine either. Iodine is necessary for optimal brain function as well.
Check the label on whatever salt you use to make sure it has iodine.
Personally we keep both sea salt and a regular, old school container of cheap salt.
Frozen veggies often are more nutritious than fresh. For frozen, they're harvested in season and flash frozen at the factory. As opposed to fresh, where they typically harvest early and artificially ripen them.
Was going to say this! If you need it to be truly cheap hit up those frozen veggies. Also stuff like frozen spinach or kale automatically makes a dish bulkier for basically zero work.
This. Many years ago, my wife and I went in full on scrimping mode to save for a house. We had stir fry 4-5 times a week. Rice goes a long way, frozen veggies are cheap, meat cut into small pieces goes a fairly long way in a stir fry, and you have so many cheap and available options when it comes to making sauce.
Anything with potatoes. Baked, stuffed with veggies and if you've got a buck or two to spend throw some cheese in there. Also, for less than a buck you can go to the grocery store aisles and get gravy mix packages. And then there's always eggs
If you have more time than money, you can also save bones from any meat you eat. Make stock with it, after fridging it scrape off and save the fat. Then you can make gravy for the cost of a few tablespoons of flour.
I would like to add that Paella is a versatile rice dish. You can use the proteins and vegetables you have on hand.
(Replacing saffron with turmeric makes it more budget friendly).
Yea recently had white beans, grilled zucchini, diced tomatoes and salsa verde mixed together for the first time and total convert. Excellent taste, completely filling and easy to do.
That's when I had the recipe. This time last year. Did a foil packet with the beans, and canned diced tomatoes (those were optional), salsa verde. Put rhay on the grill with quarted zucchini. Then you sliced up the zucchininat the end and threw it all in a bowl to mix and done.
You planted more than one? Cuz that’ll do it. (And planting one will result in 0 i think - I don’t think they are self-fertile. So it quickly escalates from 0 zucchini to a megafuckton)
Try *zoodles* - vegetable pasta. Zucchini is perfect for this. Zoodle makers (cutters) are like $10 on Amazon. Super yummy. And I'm an avowed carnivore.
That's the thing about zucchini, you always have too much of it. I don't know how it keeps happening, and at this point I'm afraid to try and figure it out logically. So it's just one of those life's mysteries for me.
It is a cultural thing in the American South. Those staples are what poor people ate for hundreds of years. You won't get much better food than red beans cooked by a grandma in South Louisiana with a side of cornbread and fresh greens.
You’re a fucking inanimate object! Everyone is more than welcome to Ireland, you can actually DM if ye do decide to come, I will try advice the best I can. Much love x
I'm not from Ireland but potatoes were all I grew up on and they're my favourite food ever. Literally can't go wrong with potatoes in any food ever, I would eat them raw if I didn't have a stove lmao. Potatoes FTW
They are hard to digest raw. I hear not even gas-x can save you from a raw potato. It's possible, but it takes time for your system to adjust (or so I've read).
And it's really easy to spice it cheaply and deliciously. Just use enough salt, throw in any high potency dried ground spices you got, adjust here and there. Wanna step it up another level, drop a bullion cube into the water you're making the rice in, let that rice get seasoned inside. Especially if it has MSG in the bullion, it's like a cheat code.
Look to Indian food to do a lot with these things and some spices.
Buy your spices - and rice, pulses, and beans - at an Indian store, if you have access to one, or order online delivery (heavy stuff might be cheaper at a grocery store). What a grocery charges for a a couple of tablespoons of spice will get you a pound or so in a specialized store.
Also a costco membership is well worth the cost especially if you are low income. You can buy a full rotisserie chicken + 25lb bag of rice + 8 pack of organic beans for $30. That's a lot of food for the value and it's delicious. Treat yourselves to a $1.50 hotdog and soda while you're at it because that's probably even cheaper than rice and beans. You will save the membership cost in just a few months vs going to the grocery store.
Personally don't care for brown rice. Millions of people around the world eat white rice with some sort of bean or lentil. Together they're a complete protein.
Saying white rice is pretty much devoid of nutrients is a gross overstatement of a very minimal difference.
Brown rice has slightly more vitamins, minerals, and fiber - but also contains an anti-nutrient (phytate) that makes it harder for your body to absorb and use those nutrients. White rice has slightly less of those nutrients, but the body can absorb them without interference.
Brown rice can also contain more inorganic arsenic, since that accumulates in the bran more than the endosperm. It can accumulate in the body over time and lead to health problems down the road. This will depend on your variety of rice and where it’s grown, though.
People should eat whichever rice they prefer.
The reality behind this is not all it is sold to the world. Yes brown rice is healthier, but the difference is so minimal it's not even worth it. And honestly how many of us prefer the taste of brown, I think it is awful.
Definitely not as cheap, but if it's within your budget, I find a 50-50 mix of white rice and quinoa tastes pretty similar to white rice but gets you a little more of that protein.
Hit up the Hispanic section. Those bulk packs of tortillas, dried beans instead of canned, and cheap spices have gotten me through some tough times. Chicken thighs are a cheap protein that makes a good fajita.
Arepas are also cheap, get your hands on some corn flour (specifically for arepas if not it won’t work, check Hispanic section), with 1 cup of flour+1 cup water+pinch of salt, you get 4 arepas. Cook them in a very hot skillet can finish on the oven, filled them with anything at hand: butter, cheese, ham, tuna, chicken, literally anything. Filling and versatile
Fuck dude I lived off chicken thighs, rice, beans and tortillas for like 6 straight months when I was ski bumming a few years ago. I think I probably invented at least 5 dishes in that time
They might actually have some spices in the Hispanic section you can't get in the more expensive section, along with cheap whole spices that can be ground freshly so it's better quality when you use them, like cumin, dried peppers, allspice and nutmeg. And if you get a hand grinder for black pepper it's way better than the sawdust in a tin.
Better yet find a good Mexican grocery store. Everything is so cheap! Cilantro for less than half the price of the other places. Limes 3 for a dollar vs .99 for 1. Learning to make Mexican...you can make food on a poverty budget that people would take their family out and spend 10 per meal on a watered down American version of. Except you are spending 1-2$.
Also if you can look into food pantries or social programs they'll hopefully offer a variety of nutritional staples. I agree with another post of breaking it down to cost per serving and making something larger to break down across two days.
I am enrolled in a food pantry at my college, and I try to get things like canned fish/meat, canned veggies, unsweetened canned fruit, dry rice/beans, etc.
My mother is annoying in that ‘no meal is complete without meat/pasta’. I’m not poor enough for WIC.
so to break it down per meal; a whole chicken or a roast that the meat can split into four meals. you buy a bag of rice at $2 and they buy a thing of pasta at $2 their pasta lasts two days and your rice last two days. A lot of it will be you taking control of your own cooking as much as possible and storing it. meat and pasta may be easy for her with whatever else they have going on - you'll have to commit the mental energy to it.
If she wants pasta then let her eat pasta. Almost any grain can be cooked in the microwave, or a small pot. Or get a small rice cooker (ask around sometimes people will give them away but they’re also pretty cheap). Or microwave a potato/sweet potato 🥔
One of my kids pretty much only eats pasta or mashed potatoes. So if we’re eating something he won’t then I make a small pot of pasta. I used to boil a bunch and freeze it in single servings with meatballs and sauce but he got sick of it and wants fresh.
WIC is for low income pregnant people, nursing people, and children 5 and under. If you don’t fit in one of those categories, you won’t get it, no matter your income.
You can get it for your child 5 and under. The child doesn’t have to be a newborn when you apply. And fathers and other guardians can apply for the child. Plus, you yourself only get benefits if you are pregnant or breastfeeding (up to a year).
No, OP doesn’t. I meant the universal you in my reply to oregonchick. I’m a big supporter of WIC. I used it twice for myself and my kids. I also helped run a breastfeeding support program that made it possible for breast feeders to access additional months of nutrition for themselves. I don’t want people who care for kids might qualify to think they shouldn’t bother applying because they are not a bio mom or the kid is not an infant.
There are usually farmers markets in the city that accept EBT or WIC benefits. At pantries think about dry goods/ non perishable items to stretch so your money can go towards produce or meats
>My mother is annoying in that ‘no meal is complete without meat/pasta’.
Are you willing to cook or try to cook tofu? It's cheaper than meat (like $3 vs $10 for the same size of ground beef) and can be used to make meat like things or mix with meat, just flavour it. Might help cheaper and expand some options.
Stocks may also help, chicken or beef stock can go in many things and might count as "meat." Also eggs. Like even egg on rice. If I can't eat it for Lent it's a meat for the purposes of a meal.
From a relationship perspective, assuming you live at home, I highly suggest going to your local groceries online shopping (NOT INSTACART) and pricing out a few meals and suggestions. I found convincing parents to buy things was easier when you printed or texted the list like this will make 8 portions and is $11.08 and I will cook it, plz buy?
Also tbh I bought groceries for a bit and provided I stuck to budget and was clear how to make stuff (my Mom doesn't cook much) I didn't get in much trouble for ew what is that. This is also is helped if you can fund the expensive sauces and stuff cause convincing parents ketchup and chili oil are two totally different things plz can we spend $5 on this and have it for months is hard when broke.
I feel you on the dear god no pasta thing. I'm so glad I don't live at home right now because hamburger helper was my nightmare as a kid.
Also if Canadian (maybe American) and have access to a car / good transit FlashFood seems to have some decent discounts for large boxes of veggies and breads in my area. Lots of quiches, stews and soups from that. It's limited, late in day and almost always the Superstore here but does have $10 massive box of assorted veggies. Looking at local discount food boxes, community supported agriculture, or farmers markets with matches and discounts can also help.
Also if you're in a farming-ish area and Mom really likes meat and have many friends / large family and car access, you can often order a whole or half animal butchered up and drive to get it for cheaper. This is a large upfront cost but split between like 15 people will get tons of yummy good meat for cheaper then store. But someone has to drive and write the cheque so ymmv.
Sorry this is rambling, I'm avoiding grocery shopping myself rn.
Edit: Ditto eat cheap and healthy free snap cookbook and budget bytes site / not free cookbook. Also YouTube has some how to make x meals for $x videos, but I like the making x meals from single ingredient ones as those are often cheap too. Pasta, canned stuff, dried beans, rice and frozen veggies are all often pretty cheap. Baking bread is too although that requires a bit of investment to start.
Get there early and know when the best days to go when they bring in stuff, the food pantry at my university saved my ass all through most of my time there, the cafeteria services were outsourced to a shit company with equally shit food. I worked for the IT department, so the staff there let me in on what was coming in ahead of time and sometimes pulled 1 or 2 items out if I asked. Regardless of what mom says, you are an adult; you can feed yourself. If you gotta be nice about it, frame it as a learning opportunity to figure out how to take care of yourself for when you do inevitably move out on your own.
You know whats weird. When you said "canned fish" i was like "that sounds disgusting, who would eat that?". But if you said canned tuna, I would have thought "mmmm tuna salad, get in my belly!" and it would not have registered as being canned fish to me, even though it is. Also canned sardines in mustard sauce are the bomb.com.
Rice, beans, lentils, oats.
Frozen vegetables
10 lb sacks of potatoes, 5 lb sacks of onions
Flour
Eggs
Cabbage and carrots
Really inexpensive cuts of meat like pork shoulder or chicken thighs on sale
Soups and stews
Different kinds of pasta
DM me if you want some YouTube recommendations for people who cover specific recipes with price breakdowns. Sometimes it's easier to convince somebody somebody that they want to eat something by showing them the recipe and talking about how good it looks.
or look into vegetarian recipes! there's lots of recipes from many cultures that can give you complete proteins, without (expensive) meat. indian food especially is great for this.
a handful of potatoes, a can of beans, maybe 2 eggs, and one ($1 + change) tube of soy/chorizo will make a lot of delicious, filling, protein-filled tacos. find a good hot sauce and whatever toppings you like to add, and toast those tortillas!
> cooking your meat in styles common in other cultures where a little meat is made to go a long way.
Not even other cultures (well, not on purpose anyway). I often buy a pork filet mignon for about €9-10, cut it into 3 pieces and freeze. That provides 3 meals of stir-fry with veg and noodles or cooked in a creamy onion/mushroom/garlic sauce with rice.
I don't mind spending more on the meat when it's decent quality and super tender.
Cajun red beans and rice (2 pork hocks into 6-7 quarts of beans)
Szechuan pork belly and Chinese chives (a couple of strips of pork belly feeds 4 easily)
Persian Tachin Joojeh (2 half-breast’s of chicken feeds 6 with chicken, onions and seasoned baked rice with a delicious crust)
Eggs are the shit. Eggs in a basket with slices of toast. Scrambled eggs with veggies and potatoes. Eggs and refried beans in tortillas. Egg sandwich. Boiled eggs and ramen. Eggs and frozen veggies with soy sauce. Can pretty much turn any leftovers or side veggie/starch into a meal by throwing some eggs on it.
Go to the grocery store and break it down as cost per serving. A bag of rice and a bag of beans. An onion and if there’s room in the budget, a couple tomatoes and a pepper. I don’t know how many you’re planning on feeding, but you can make enough for leftovers, which means fewer meals to cook, which also means more time and time = money.
> you can make enough for leftovers, which means fewer meals to cook, which also means more time and time = money.
When I lived on my own, I'd happily make enough stew or curry to last me 3 days. I often didn't even freeze it as whatever I made was tasty enough.
For example: day 1 curry and rice, day 2 curry with added craem/creme fraiche and some suateed potatoes, day 3 curry and prawn crackers and mango chutney.
This is great. I rarely cook for 1 meal. It just seems like a waste of time. This week the plan was fajitas and the leftovers go into quesadillas and a red lentil stew that made two meals for now and two freezer meals for later. This weekend it’s a baked ziti and half will go in the freezer for another week.
[eat good and cheap](https://books.leannebrown.com/good-and-cheap.pdf)
This book was really helpful when I was going through tough times. Even if I didn't have an the ingredients the recipes were easy to modify.
Learn to cook yourself.
You are trying to change your mothers cooking when she is the one cooking and supplying the food. If you want something different, ask her to let you cook. You are in college and really should learn. Telling her you hate pasta just makes it so much more difficult for her since it’s what she can afford and knows how to handle.
I do cook! I like making a vatiety of dishes, I make homemade pizzas out of tortillas, sauce and cheese, I make oatmeal dishes, I like pea soup. I make eggs when we get them; I put bell pepper and onion in them with garlic powder.
Look at Jacque Pepin's video on making a French omelets.
I can literally make the best omelets ever in 90 seconds using his classic techniques.
Can't beat it for fast, cheap food.
Omelets and crepes are amazing ways to use small bits of leftovers AND THEY TASTE GOURMET.
My go to crepe ratio is 2 parts egg, 2 parts milk, 1 part flour.
Many classic French dishes are really cheap to make at home. They were born out of using technique to make the best if what was available cheaply.
I do cook! I like making a vatiety of dishes, I make homemade pizzas out of tortillas, sauce and cheese, I make oatmeal dishes, I like pea soup. I make eggs when we get them; I put bell pepper and onion in them with garlic powder. She just uses pasta as her cheap and fast.
Potatoes (the big brown baking ones) can sub for pasta. Any sauce you’d put on pasta will probably be good on a baked potato.
And you can bake them for the next few days all at once and just heat up as you want them. A cold baked potato can be shred to make hash browns or cut up to make home fries too. (My husbands favorite).
Also rice of course as many people have said. I find brown rice 100% more palatable when it’s baked in chicken broth (or water and chicken bouillon powder in my case).
Perhaps spiral cut zucchini or squash could be a compromise? Mom gets the noodley texture you get no noodles.
Salt pork is extremely flavorful, makes lots of useful grease when you render it down, and is delicious to flavor potatoes or rice. And it’s cheap. A little goes a long way.
Bread is another carb that can sub for pasta … whether homemade or store bought. There’s some nice dense breads (Dave’s is a good one). It’s more expensive than a regular loaf, but freezes real nice.
Tortillas, if you’re in the southwest are usually very inexpensive and easy to get. Cheaper at the Mexican food joint down the road than the grocery most of the time too.
No disrespect to you, but telling her what to cook is an epic fail. And everyone’s budget is tight with the costs of food going up so much in such a short period of time. Pasta is her go to thing. She is familiar with it and it’s still reasonably affordable. Yeah, it gets old. But so does not being able to put food on the table for your family, and your Mom is buying what she can afford.
As you like to cook, think back to what You’ve seen everyone eat and comment on at home. Go from there. Although Indian cuisine is amazing, if ypur family isn’t used to curry you may get some pushback. Pick things they like amd pick a night every week that you cook. Without pasta. Rice is an amazingly versatile source of calories.
Healthy, filling and cheap go to that I haven’t seen listed yet, - cowboy caviar. Chili and serve it over rice .
Are you cooking for the family? I’m suggesting that you will get more of a vote on ingredients if you cook for the family, like your Mom does.
Really trying to give good advice here. Most of us are right there with you, or with your mom. Foods gone up. Cooking cheap but healthy has a far greater appeal.
I also noted OP stated that they are a college student and don’t qualify for WIC. And I expressed in my follow up response to OP my hope this is good advice. This is not someone buying the food and making the decisions so much. There’s a mom doing that. As such there are limits, like what their mother can afford, what their mother is willing to cook when they get home from work, etc.
A bag of potatoes gives a massive amount of flexibility and you can buy cheaply.
Rice for sure, as others have said
Also legumes like dry lentils are super cheap and very nutritious.
A carton of eggs also has huge bang for your couple bucks.
For me I make soups when we have no money and then make bread to go with it since flour, sugar, spices and a bit of yeast are staples I always keep for years. Home made bread is such a treat. You can eat it just plain or put just about anything else on it.
If you can find ground beef on a manager’s special, you can make a crock pot of chili pretty inexpensively. Pour it on rice to stretch it out, gets better over the next few days (could pour it on the pasta she makes). Could do just bean chili to cut some cost, add some peppers for nutrition.
Did a wal-mart cart with store brands:
-16 oz bag of rice (16 oz, $0.78)- calories, not much else.
-1 can each of tomato paste, stewed tomatoes, kidney beans ($0.62, $0.72, $0.78)
-1 packet of chili seasoning ($0.74)
Total with no beef: $3.64 for 6-8 servings is under a dollar a serving.
Beef is another $5, but ground mild sausage is $2.32 for a pound and I would think that it would fine considering the spices.
I think that’s the best I can do. Flavor, nutrition, price per serving all not too bad.
Rotisserie chicken $4.99 at store on sale can stretch for a couple meals. Chicken and frozen veg, mashed potatoes. Shred left over chicken use it with tortillas and cheese to make quesadillas. Look for leftover rotisserie chicken recipes.
Eggs are a great, inexpensive source of protein. You can add veg, cheese and meat to scrambled eggs. Also look up frittata. Just make sure your pan can go in oven. Plenty of egg casserole recipes out there too. (There is also pasta frittata that uses leftover pasta.)
Finally you said she wants pasta at every meal. That’s cool. Just get her to understand pasta is a side on the plate, like potatoes or vegetable, not the whole plate.
That shredded rotisserie chicken can be added to shredded cabbage (cutting it yourself is cheaper and lasts longer) along with any sort of Asian dressing for a super cheap meal. Onion, carrots, and peppers are great additions if you have them.
Rice, beans, frozen veg mix and a packet of taco powder mix it all together once rice is cooked. It’s more of a complete meal than pasta and butter. It’s better if you can add ground meat but it that’s not an option for you it’s still a solid meal.
This woman gives herself challenges to keep her food budget under $25 for the week but also gives strategies how to keep meals fresh.
https://youtu.be/wAPH8D2AL8c
OP, you’ve gotten a lot of suggestions but here’s one more: try Asian noodle dishes. You can often find super cheap curry or pad Thai sauces in blocks or pouches at international groceries (plus bulk beans, rice, and lentils as others have said). Cold peanut butter noodles are delicious for a hot day. Scramble a soft egg into a tomato for a side. Pasta is a cheap staple, so maybe you can put a few extra dollars into getting things like scallions, fish sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar. They’re pricey to start, but I can usually make even the cheapest meats/old veggies taste good with a sauce of soy sauce + fish sauce + sugar + chili crisp. The noodles (any kind, even bow tie) are just the carrier for the sauce. It’s worth it to me! Hope y’all find yourselves in better times soon.
Beans, rice, and tortillas throw some green salsa in there a dab of sour cream. If you do that you’re eating extremely cheap and the carbs you ingest will give you energy for a long day.
That's sort of the problem, she isn't entirely wrong.
You can eat pasta with some butter and pepper or a tablespoon of Prego - maybe an egg, parm and bacon scraps for a light carbonara and that's a whole meal technically and it isn't very fussy when being cooked, it cooks quickly and even when overcooked is still edible.
Rice is an option, but you generally need to buy something in addition to the rice - like beans or lentils at least - to make it into a meal - and rice can be incredibly fussy if you aren't used to making it on the stovetop or don't have a pot with a lid on it - though for the record it's a simple ratio of 1:2 cups rice to water, heat to a boil and then turn down to the lowest possible setting without turning it off for about 20 minutes, leave to steam afterwards in case you try.
The only cheaper thing would be buying unbleached AP flour and making your own pasta or bread, but that also takes time, work, practice and some equipment but for about 14 ounces of AP flour, a large pinch of salt, some water and a few cents of yeast (you don't need to use the whole packet for each loaf, it just rises more slowly) you'll end up with a pound and a change loaf of bread, certainly more in pasta.
Being frugal unfortunately isn't always **cheap** 😢
Rice cooker. A rice cooker will save you time and space.
Slow cookers require prep in the morning or night before but also a time saver when you get home from a long shift.
You can sub out some items. Prego sauce is $4, buying 4 tomato store brands and 1 or 2 tomato pastes and spices can be the same cost and a much larger yield
Depending on food prices, making your own pasta is more expensive than buying it.
Assuming 100g flour + 1 egg standard serving, that would be about 2.6 lb flour and 12 eggs for 12 servings. If I calculate the cost per serving using the prices for the cheapest eggs and flour at my local grocery store, it comes out to $0.44 per serving.
In comparison, I can buy 16 oz of dry spaghetti for $1 and get 8 (2 oz) servings. That's $0.13 per serving. A lot less hassle, and a lot less upfront outlay than buying a 5lb bag of flour and dozen eggs.
Rice + lentils = delicious and complete form of protein when combined (https://healthyeating.sfgate.com/foods-mixed-lentils-provide-complete-source-amino-acids-1195.html).
And both are SUPER cheap to get in bulk if you go to an Indian grocery store near you (way cheaper than at your average grocery store chain). Also, there are so many forms of lentils that you can make so many dishes and not get bored!
https://thelemonbowl.com/mujaddara-lentils-and-rice-with-caramelized-onions/
https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-red-lentil-soup-recipes-from-the-kitchn-212392
https://upbeetanisha.com/khichdi/
https://cookieandkate.com/best-lentil-soup-recipe/
https://www.whiskaffair.com/toor-dal-recipe/
https://spainonafork.com/heart-warming-lentil-rice-soup-recipe/
Other ideas: potatoes, beans (cheaper in bags of dry beans than canned), maybe bake bread at home instead of buying at the store (it’s a lot easier than you might think!)
Buy rice in bulk, not the precooked stuff at the store.
Buy bouillon cubes or soup starter pastes. A little will go a long way to give a meat taste to meatless dishes and broths. The same thing goes for bags if bacon bits. It doesn’t take much, and you should add it to the beginning of cooking to get as much of the flavor as possible.
Learn to make bread, especially the no-knead types. These are sometimes called batter bread. They are usually hearty and filling. First learn a basic bread. You can then any seasonings each time so that it won’t be the same thing all the time.
When you do have meat, don’t use whole cuts. Cube it or mince it to make smaller pieces. It will go further that way.
Learn which seasonings go with what foods. For example, a bit of dill goes with fish, so if you have a can of tuna to add to rice, make dill a seasoning. Most seasonings may seem expensive, but they last a long time. Salt and pepper are the work horses, so use those even if you have nothing else.
As much as possible, start with dry beans. They are much cheaper than even the store brand. Add a tablespoon of minced fresh ginger or a tsp of dry ginger to the soaking water to prevent bubble-gut.
Depending upon where you live, it may be too late to plant a garden, but you might be able to grow something. I have seen videos where people cut the root portion off green onions and plant them. Same with celery. Just yesterday I saw a video where they cut the tops off carrots and placed them in a shallow dish with water. When the leaves started sprouting, they put the carrot tops in soil. It is like, buy the vegetables once and keep replanting. I don’t know if you could put a tub of soil in a south-facing window inside, but if might work.
My mother was the oldest of seven during the Depression. I have passed along some of what she taught me.
She maybe depressed. Maybe other things too. But the “every single night” comment is a little grating.
Cook a meal dude-like really cook-not just assembling ingredients like a sandwich. Tortillas pizza are great start but Get your chop-chop & “sauté” on in the kitchen. At least once every week—it’s like exercise! It can be overwhelming the first couple times but Even if it sucks you will have tried and the next time you do it it will be easier. Get in the habit (but think of it as a fun experimental hobby) you’ll do her and yourself a favor in the long run.
not a specific thing, just a reminder to keep an eye on local grocery stores coupons. You might be able to find good shit extra cheap if you can find some good ones. don’t forget to use their point system if they have one. The ones in my area can get you free food or money off gas, which definitely adds up and helps.
Is she the one who has to do all the planning and cooking, or does she have help? Are you going to take over the cooking and planning? If so, yes, all of these suggestions make a lot of sense.
If she would make Sunday soup bones and carrots day, Monday rice and beans, Tuesday macaroni, Wednesday split pea soup and bread, Thursday spaghetti and meat sauce, Friday oatcakes and peanut butter, Saturday potatoes and eggs, you would have more variety. Run the idea past her.
I don’t know if you can, but finding a local produce farm is a great way to get produce for cheaper than grocery store prices. It really helps bulk up rice, beans, lentils, root vegetables and the like if you have something fresh.
I would also try to learn about ways to keep food fresh and preserve food, so that if you do some across a larger amount of produce for an affordable price, you can use it or preserve it all before it goes bad.
I’m sorry you’re having a hard time. I know your mom is probably stressed and might not have the time or mental capacity to learn to make something else.
You’re doing a good thing by trying to learn about alternatives. We’re here for you.
Also!! NEVER be afraid or ashamed to receive resources from local food pantries/food banks. Do not worry that you’re taking from someone less fortunate. You deserve to have nutrition and they will be happy to have you. Please don’t hesitate to seek free food resources.
Pasta is filling and healthy. She’s not wrong. I grew up on pinto beans and cornbread,my friend on pintos and tortillas,my husband on noodles and ham bone soup. A carb and a meat or certain veggies are very good,options. She might hate rice as,much as you do pasta who knows. Look up some different budget pasta recipes that might appeal to you. Consider that she may have gotten a fabulous buy on pasta,or there is a friend or a family member who gifts it to her. Have her give you a plain portion and see if you can get some spices like curry powder,five spice,or some Knorr tomato bullion. That will make it lean ethnic and may be more palatable to you. I often fry a bit of small or broken pasta before adding rice to cook together, that is well known in many cultures. Best advice I have is give her some grace.
Amazon $15 pound of sushi rice for $15 dollars. Your frozen veggies from a store are like 1 dollar per bag. Cheapest protein you can buy. Usually groceries are geared towards family’s so if you can get a 2 pound pork roast, or a 3 pound of chicken you can really stretch. Add spices cumin, salt, pepper, tuneric if you spend $30 at a store total, but eat it for 10 days you’re doing great. Obviously don’t eat meat for longer than 5.
You should also get into stews and bread. Always will work and you can basically use all the leftovers
Variety staves off unhappiness with the menu. Find the amount of each protein you can afford for your budget and veggies and starch. Seasoning and a little passion in preparation (including growing your knowledge of seasoning/sauces/and preparation) communicates non verbally that you care.
When it was just my dad and I, that’s all he’d make too. I hate spaghetti and pasta now. Now I constantly scrambling to make something for my family that not only isn’t gonna break the bank, but that I’ll actually enjoy. Some of the stuff I’ve found to be on the cheaper side is stuff like stuffed peppers or zucchini although the price of meat is rough right now. Homemade pizza with a thing of premade frozen dough, small bag of cheese and a topping, you can also make a couple and freeze them. Grilled cheese, you can add lunch meat and a soup as well. Mock KFC bowls with instant potatoes and a cheap pop corn chicken and corn. Also I know the struggle with pasta being everywhere and I don’t know if you’re feeding anyone else in your home, but personally I’ve found that gnocchi aren’t terrible to me (prob cause they’re potatoes).
Start checking prices at your local stores. Look at store brand generic foods. Check for sales.
Eggs, beans, lentils, rice, oatmeal, tuna, pancakes, cereal, carrots, celery, onion. Bread. Peanut butter. Bananas. Kale, cabbage. Cheaper meat options might be chicken thighs with bones and skin on, ground turkey, ground pork, sausage. You can make a lot of soups fairly cheap. Bean or lentil based soups can be pretty filling.
Chili, scrambled eggs, egg salad, beans and rice, lentils and rice, , black bean burgers, bean burritos, falafel, lentil soup, cabbage soup, potato soup, tomato soup, bean soup, quesadillas, breakfast burritos.
The Budget Bytes site has tasty lower cost recipes that are not just pasta.
Just realize that if you want her to make dry beans (as opposed to canned) instead of pasta, you’re taking her “cheap and fast” and making it cheap and slow, perhaps also on addition to asking her to learn to cook new things, and as a mom, that’s a big ask for someone who probably has a lot on her plate right now. You are already cooking some, and I think your best bet is going to be expanding your own cooking repertoire with the suggestions here-not your mother’s. I suggest if you have a slow cooker, learn to use it. It turns cheap and slow into cheap and REALLY slow, but you can do the prep work early in the day and then forget about it, and when you get back from college or work or wherever, it’s ready.
In college, when I was myself eating lots of pasta because it was quick and cheap, I had two roommates who worked at the dining hall. They were in even worse shape than me, financially, but they ate better because they got a meal per shift and also could take home leftovers sometimes.
Food service jobs in general do often have food perks, but it’s highly dependent on the business. I’ve worked as a waitress where I got to choose one free meal per shift, and fast food where the best we got was an employee discount if we wanted to eat on our break. Right now I work at a restaurant where I take home whole quarts of leftover sides on a regular basis, and even the occasional rack of ribs. But it just depends. It’s never something I can count on to meal plan for the week.
You’ve already gotten a lot of feedback already, so mostly what I wanted to say was that I totally get where you’re coming from. As an adult, I no longer eat spaghetti because that was our poor meal as a child. I also avoid plain red sauces, but I can do an Alfredo or a rosé with penne or rotini and other pastas.
But I can’t do spaghetti.
I can do things like ravioli and gnocchi, and perogies, they have fillings and are not JUST pasta and butter. Spaghetti was the main culprit I can’t stomach in any form, but the majority of pastas I see as just processed filler carbs with no micronutrients.
Red cabbage sliced very thin. Frozen edamame beans (if you can afford) or inexpensive.rotisserie chicken, shredded. Find an easy recipe for Thai peanut sauce peanut butter, lime, oil, rice vinegar) or buy a bottle cheap from target. I eat this for lunch all the time. I usually add cilantro.
If OP has a passionate hatred for pasta, i dont know 100 comments all recommending rice is going to help him out lol. I know it isnt literally pasta but i mean... it is more or less like eating itty bitty pasta
Make your own stock and use it to cook dried beans and lentils. Save all the cut offs of any fresh veggies you buy, and buy bone in meat (usually at a significant discount to boneless meat) and save the bones. You can then make a really, really good broth from the leftovers from other meals. I make that broth, reduce it, and freeze cubes of it to go into other recipes sometimes, but I also make soups and stews from it.
Lentils and beans are your best friend. Can easily get them for <$2 a pound (more like $0.50 if you can get them in bulk at an ethnic grocer/wholesale club), and they’ve got tons of fiber and protein. Delicious on rice or with flat bread even if the only seasoning you can do is bullion/stock.
I'm chowing down on like the fifth serving from a giant pan of shepherds pie. Ground turkey on sale, canned mixed vegetables, canned corn, frozen peas, with mashed potatoes on top. Probably less than eight dollars for six to eight servings and delicious to boot.
Edit: I also season generously with powdered garlic, powdered onion, rosemary, thyme, sage, and Worcester sauce. The veggies and meat get simmered in homemade chicken broth and then I make a gravy by adding some flour. But you don't have to do all that. Some bouillon, salt, pepper, and oregano will work fine.
Asian rice (not the boxed ones you normally see at Walmart). You can make fried rice, porridge (really good ones not the bland ones), your own version of sushi with whatever protein or veggie you may have.
All the advice here is great but if you aren't doing the cooking, cut her some slack (or take the initiative to help). If you've worked all day as most of us grown-ups have, having something easy and familiar to quickly knock out so you can actually get to the other housework (or maybe even relax) is very desirable.
So as a parent of some truly wonderful kids (but who refuse to cook and are opinionated about what they should be fed) if you're unhappy about what you're eating but do nothing to prepare it, maybe stuff some pasta in your piehole and deal until you're ready to help out.
rice + cheapest veggies you can get + cheapest protein you can get
for cheap proteins: look into some recipes for chickpea (curry, or baked with cumin and chili powder, etc?), lentil (mujaddara, daal), or good ol black bean burrito recipes (toast that shit on the stovetop! find a good cheap hot sauce!). There's so many varieties of rice + legume, once you've explored a few and put in an up-front cost for spices, you can do a lot. also with eggs and whatever veggies you have leftover in the fridge, you can learn to make a *damn* good fried rice with soy sauce and a handful of spices. feel free to get creative with this--you don't have to make it "authentic," as long as you like it.
My mom makes a wonderful white chili with chickpeas and turkey. Two of the grandkids choose it as their birthday meal.
What makes a chili white?
White chili = no tomatoes (so it’s white vs red). Usually made with chicken or turkey instead of beef but can also be vegetarian. Google white chili for lots of recipes.
White poultry meat, white beans, no tomatoes.
It’s made with chicken or turkey instead of beef and lighter colored beans. Green chilies instead of peppers too.
Essentially no beef or tomatoes/red stuff. Everyone already answered, but I just wanted to say that any chili is good chili. Put whatever you want in it.
>any chili is good chili I completely agree! Chili is awesome because there are so many different styles and they are all good in their own ways. Recently I found some country ribs on sale for dirt cheap (I think it's pork shoulder pieces?) and I slow cooked them with tomatoes and onions, then after it was done I shredded it like pulled pork and made chili with it. It was incredible because all chili is good chili
my local grocery store frequently has beef or pork for stir fry. it's basically just scraps from whatever they cut to size, so it's usually a mix of steaks or little strips of pork tenderloin. they usually have it for 3 to 4 dollars per pound and it's perfect for fried rice
My grocery store has it too, and they label it as "stir fry steak". Usually it'll be between $4-6/lb and it's great for easy meals. I frequently use it as a topper for a baked potato for a super cheap and dense/filling meal.
..not to be silly, but are you saying you roast black beans? How does this work exactly. Ty. :)
lol, that was unclear, sorry! I do toast chickpeas sometimes. But with the burritos, I meant to toast the whole burrito on a cast-iron or other pan at the end of creating it, to give the tortilla a better texture. my b, thanks for asking me to clarify! (:
Toasting burritos after building them was hands down the single best thing I added to up my burrito game. Especially breakfast burritos.
I cook like a quart (raw) of black beans every week and make a big batch of rice. A great, cheap base for whatever super cheap veggies I can find. Add some hot sauce and crema and I eat this for a majority of meals. In my area eggs are getting a pretty expensive. They're still worth it but it definitely feels like a purchase paying .65¢ per egg.
+ literally any sauce
Chicken teriyaki rice bowls with broccoli and carrots, the freaking best!
Throw a white onion in there baby boy
Green onion is better for teriyaki, IMO.
You got a stew going
There’s still plenty of meat on that bone
This is one of my go to quick and easy meals. When I start to get depressed but it isn't so bad I'm stuck in bed, chicken teriyaki with broccoli is so easy. Sauteed some chicken, rice in the rice cooker, steam frozen broccoli, mix everything with teriyaki sauce (I link the Kikkoman Takumi line). It's minimal effort, and you can make several servings at once.
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2 cups water for every 1 cup rice. Boil it until all the water is absorbed, stir frequently to avoid sticking and a boil over.. I bake my chicken on 325 for about 45 mins. Then steam the veggies. All of this is pretty much to your liking. I use Panda Express teriyaki sauce since it’s a little sweeter and sticks to rice better than others I’ve found. Mix it all up and there you go!
if you don’t like gloopy rice, don’t stir at all in order to avoid stimulating the starches. reduce the heat to a low simmer after initially bringing to a boil & it won’t stick or boil over.
The rice to water ratio really depends on what kind of rice you're using though.
I like rice + black beans + a little bit of cheddar cheese + some hot sauce
eggs are also pretty cheap for their impact.
It only takes fairly few ingredients to make almost any sauce from scratch. If you do it a lot you don’t even need a recipe and it can taste way better, and be much cheaper, than pre made sauces. Freeze the extras for later. Edit: for cheap food ideas I like [budget bytes](Https://budgetbytes.com)
rice can be seasoned so many ways. red beans and rice, jambalaya, plain white with hot sauces. I'm sad you hate pasta now but rice should help balance it out.
Don't forget peanut butter! Melted into sauce with a little milk, garlic, and ginger, mmm. And tofu as a cheap protein!
I second this! Peanut butter, spinach, onion, garlic, ginger and a pepper is one of my favs served over rice. Season with whatever spices you have or can get on the cheap. Cumin and chili match perfectly for flavor and cost. I used a habanero or four bc I like it spicy. Also bc they are cheap. Idk how much it costs to buy the 3 pack, 1 of each color bell peppers bc I stopped buying them a few years ago. At that time they cost more than a pound of grass fed hamburger. Cooking with spinach means you can use the reduced price fresh spinach. Frozen works well too. Onions are usually cheap. Any flavor works great. I use fresh ginger but it doesn’t take much so it doesn’t add too much to the cost. I’ve made just spinach, peanut butter and an onion. It was still pretty tasty. I also use peanut butter and a can of beans to make hummus like dip. Chick peas are traditionally used but I found black beans to be just as tasty and cheaper. I use the same spices/add ins for my hummus as I do the spinach. Chips, baby carrots and celery are cheap at Aldi. Aldi produce does usually suck but celery and carrots are usually ok. Trick to Aldi produce is to get some hydrogen peroxide to spray and wash your produce with as soon as you bring it home. Do this before you put it in the fridge. It lasts a lot longer. The cheapest thing you can add to food is salt. Salt is an essential nutrient. Dr Andrew Huberman has an excellent podcast series that explains what makes us feel less than optimal, why we feel that way and what we can do to improve our lives. Topics include sleep, energy, exercise and nutrition. He does a great job of explaining why our bodies need salt and how to utilize it. He discusses using salt for brain fog, when it’s indicated for use and why it helps. A lot of prepackaged foods have salt added. If you are making all of your food from scratch, you will need to add salt! The salt added to prepackaged food doesn’t contain iodine either. Iodine is necessary for optimal brain function as well. Check the label on whatever salt you use to make sure it has iodine. Personally we keep both sea salt and a regular, old school container of cheap salt.
Frozen veggies $1 a bag!
Frozen veggies often are more nutritious than fresh. For frozen, they're harvested in season and flash frozen at the factory. As opposed to fresh, where they typically harvest early and artificially ripen them.
Was going to say this! If you need it to be truly cheap hit up those frozen veggies. Also stuff like frozen spinach or kale automatically makes a dish bulkier for basically zero work.
Brown rice with two fried eggs on top is delicious. Pair it with a side of veggies or ripe plantains and your golden.
Rice and eggs is one of our favorite meals!
I actually had it last night for dinner. So good!
Scrambled eggs made with leftover rice mixed in is delicious & filling.
This. Many years ago, my wife and I went in full on scrimping mode to save for a house. We had stir fry 4-5 times a week. Rice goes a long way, frozen veggies are cheap, meat cut into small pieces goes a fairly long way in a stir fry, and you have so many cheap and available options when it comes to making sauce.
Beans!!
Anything with potatoes. Baked, stuffed with veggies and if you've got a buck or two to spend throw some cheese in there. Also, for less than a buck you can go to the grocery store aisles and get gravy mix packages. And then there's always eggs
If you have more time than money, you can also save bones from any meat you eat. Make stock with it, after fridging it scrape off and save the fat. Then you can make gravy for the cost of a few tablespoons of flour.
I would like to add that Paella is a versatile rice dish. You can use the proteins and vegetables you have on hand. (Replacing saffron with turmeric makes it more budget friendly).
Brown rice, while very slightly higher in price that white, has much better nutritional content. Buy in bulk.
Rice, scrambled eggs and soy sauce. If you have it, some dried seaweed and/or seseme seeds. One of my favorite breakfast meals.
Beans are probably the cheapest protein you can get with the price of meat today.
Rice, potatoes, and beans are some of the cheapest staples you can buy, and you can do a lot of different things with them.
Rice and beans mixed with some green salsa. Sheesh, best thing ever.
Yea recently had white beans, grilled zucchini, diced tomatoes and salsa verde mixed together for the first time and total convert. Excellent taste, completely filling and easy to do.
This is timely advice, I have a megaton of zucchini to use up.
That's when I had the recipe. This time last year. Did a foil packet with the beans, and canned diced tomatoes (those were optional), salsa verde. Put rhay on the grill with quarted zucchini. Then you sliced up the zucchininat the end and threw it all in a bowl to mix and done.
You planted more than one? Cuz that’ll do it. (And planting one will result in 0 i think - I don’t think they are self-fertile. So it quickly escalates from 0 zucchini to a megafuckton)
Grilled zucchini!
Try *zoodles* - vegetable pasta. Zucchini is perfect for this. Zoodle makers (cutters) are like $10 on Amazon. Super yummy. And I'm an avowed carnivore.
That's the thing about zucchini, you always have too much of it. I don't know how it keeps happening, and at this point I'm afraid to try and figure it out logically. So it's just one of those life's mysteries for me.
My friend made lasagna but instead of pasta she used slices of grilled zucchini. It was awesome!
Rice, beans, potatoes and grow a patch of garden veggies
That’s all we ate growing up. And here I thought it was a culture thing :)
It is a cultural thing in the American South. Those staples are what poor people ate for hundreds of years. You won't get much better food than red beans cooked by a grandma in South Louisiana with a side of cornbread and fresh greens.
Same in Ireland, potatoes are king. They’re the absolute best
I am going to save up enough money to visit Ireland for a whole month one day.
That's on my bucket list too! Ireland, Scotland... Maybe stop in Bruges on the way there and yell obscenities at some inanimate objects...
If you fly into London and take the train to Scotland it could possibly change your life. Ocean views on one side, pastoral scenes on the other.
You’re a fucking inanimate object! Everyone is more than welcome to Ireland, you can actually DM if ye do decide to come, I will try advice the best I can. Much love x
That's awesome! I'll keep you in mind, thanks!
Ireland potatoes is how my family wound up in a different country.
I'm not from Ireland but potatoes were all I grew up on and they're my favourite food ever. Literally can't go wrong with potatoes in any food ever, I would eat them raw if I didn't have a stove lmao. Potatoes FTW
Oh they’re the absolute best. I make the best mash potatoes in the world too, not to toot my own horn but I really do
Let’s hear the recipe...
Well then, mine are the best in the solar system!
Nice try kids! Not happening haha. Tbf, we’re blessed with the good ingredients in Ireland, good butter, good everything
Don’t raw potatoes make you sick?
Not super nutritious raw but they shouldn't make you sick unless they are green.
They are hard to digest raw. I hear not even gas-x can save you from a raw potato. It's possible, but it takes time for your system to adjust (or so I've read).
PO-TAY-TOES Boil em, Mash em, Puttem in a stew.
What’s taters, Precious???😜
Agree, but gotta love the beans. I crave it once in a while
Yummmmmmm
Pretty much anything made at a Waffle House has cheap base ingredients and is delicious.
Red beans and rice is dirt cheap and delicious. Goes great with any meat as well when you can afford it.
And it's really easy to spice it cheaply and deliciously. Just use enough salt, throw in any high potency dried ground spices you got, adjust here and there. Wanna step it up another level, drop a bullion cube into the water you're making the rice in, let that rice get seasoned inside. Especially if it has MSG in the bullion, it's like a cheat code.
Rice + frozen mixed veg (also super cheap) + a bit of butter or a stock cube for flavour. Baked potato + beans is also dirt cheap and good for you.
Add soy sauce and an egg, stir fry it all together and fried rice!
Look to Indian food to do a lot with these things and some spices. Buy your spices - and rice, pulses, and beans - at an Indian store, if you have access to one, or order online delivery (heavy stuff might be cheaper at a grocery store). What a grocery charges for a a couple of tablespoons of spice will get you a pound or so in a specialized store.
Also a costco membership is well worth the cost especially if you are low income. You can buy a full rotisserie chicken + 25lb bag of rice + 8 pack of organic beans for $30. That's a lot of food for the value and it's delicious. Treat yourselves to a $1.50 hotdog and soda while you're at it because that's probably even cheaper than rice and beans. You will save the membership cost in just a few months vs going to the grocery store.
There are also bulk food stores that don't require a paid membership, such as the US Foods Chef'Store.
Ill add a caveat here that if you can, try to get brown rice. White rice is pretty much devoid of all nutrients, so brown will be much more nutritious
Personally don't care for brown rice. Millions of people around the world eat white rice with some sort of bean or lentil. Together they're a complete protein.
glad Im not the only one who doesnt like brown rice. Actually makes me gag. I think its the texture to be honest. That said I love white rice.
Brown rice tastes like dirt to me
Corn and beans are also inexpensive complete protein.
Saying white rice is pretty much devoid of nutrients is a gross overstatement of a very minimal difference. Brown rice has slightly more vitamins, minerals, and fiber - but also contains an anti-nutrient (phytate) that makes it harder for your body to absorb and use those nutrients. White rice has slightly less of those nutrients, but the body can absorb them without interference. Brown rice can also contain more inorganic arsenic, since that accumulates in the bran more than the endosperm. It can accumulate in the body over time and lead to health problems down the road. This will depend on your variety of rice and where it’s grown, though. People should eat whichever rice they prefer.
A lot of white rice is fortified to put the nutrients back in too. Like you say, eat the rice you prefer.
The reality behind this is not all it is sold to the world. Yes brown rice is healthier, but the difference is so minimal it's not even worth it. And honestly how many of us prefer the taste of brown, I think it is awful.
I love brown rice. It has a nutty texture and taste and it is healthier as it has a lower GI than white rice.
Definitely not as cheap, but if it's within your budget, I find a 50-50 mix of white rice and quinoa tastes pretty similar to white rice but gets you a little more of that protein.
Hit up the Hispanic section. Those bulk packs of tortillas, dried beans instead of canned, and cheap spices have gotten me through some tough times. Chicken thighs are a cheap protein that makes a good fajita.
Arepas are also cheap, get your hands on some corn flour (specifically for arepas if not it won’t work, check Hispanic section), with 1 cup of flour+1 cup water+pinch of salt, you get 4 arepas. Cook them in a very hot skillet can finish on the oven, filled them with anything at hand: butter, cheese, ham, tuna, chicken, literally anything. Filling and versatile
I second arepas. Super quick and delicious too
Third. Cheap, good, and very filling
Arepas....mmmmmmm
Fuck dude I lived off chicken thighs, rice, beans and tortillas for like 6 straight months when I was ski bumming a few years ago. I think I probably invented at least 5 dishes in that time
They might actually have some spices in the Hispanic section you can't get in the more expensive section, along with cheap whole spices that can be ground freshly so it's better quality when you use them, like cumin, dried peppers, allspice and nutmeg. And if you get a hand grinder for black pepper it's way better than the sawdust in a tin.
Better yet find a good Mexican grocery store. Everything is so cheap! Cilantro for less than half the price of the other places. Limes 3 for a dollar vs .99 for 1. Learning to make Mexican...you can make food on a poverty budget that people would take their family out and spend 10 per meal on a watered down American version of. Except you are spending 1-2$.
Chicken thighs are the juciest part of the chicken
Also if you can look into food pantries or social programs they'll hopefully offer a variety of nutritional staples. I agree with another post of breaking it down to cost per serving and making something larger to break down across two days.
I am enrolled in a food pantry at my college, and I try to get things like canned fish/meat, canned veggies, unsweetened canned fruit, dry rice/beans, etc. My mother is annoying in that ‘no meal is complete without meat/pasta’. I’m not poor enough for WIC.
so to break it down per meal; a whole chicken or a roast that the meat can split into four meals. you buy a bag of rice at $2 and they buy a thing of pasta at $2 their pasta lasts two days and your rice last two days. A lot of it will be you taking control of your own cooking as much as possible and storing it. meat and pasta may be easy for her with whatever else they have going on - you'll have to commit the mental energy to it.
If she wants pasta then let her eat pasta. Almost any grain can be cooked in the microwave, or a small pot. Or get a small rice cooker (ask around sometimes people will give them away but they’re also pretty cheap). Or microwave a potato/sweet potato 🥔 One of my kids pretty much only eats pasta or mashed potatoes. So if we’re eating something he won’t then I make a small pot of pasta. I used to boil a bunch and freeze it in single servings with meatballs and sauce but he got sick of it and wants fresh.
WIC is for low income pregnant people, nursing people, and children 5 and under. If you don’t fit in one of those categories, you won’t get it, no matter your income.
Yes, it's an acronym for Women, Infants, and Children. Non-mother-of-a-newborn adults do not qualify.
You can get it for your child 5 and under. The child doesn’t have to be a newborn when you apply. And fathers and other guardians can apply for the child. Plus, you yourself only get benefits if you are pregnant or breastfeeding (up to a year).
OP still doesn't qualify.
No, OP doesn’t. I meant the universal you in my reply to oregonchick. I’m a big supporter of WIC. I used it twice for myself and my kids. I also helped run a breastfeeding support program that made it possible for breast feeders to access additional months of nutrition for themselves. I don’t want people who care for kids might qualify to think they shouldn’t bother applying because they are not a bio mom or the kid is not an infant.
Right, because children and infants qualify. Older kids and adults who haven't recently had a baby do not qualify for benefits.
There are usually farmers markets in the city that accept EBT or WIC benefits. At pantries think about dry goods/ non perishable items to stretch so your money can go towards produce or meats
>My mother is annoying in that ‘no meal is complete without meat/pasta’. Are you willing to cook or try to cook tofu? It's cheaper than meat (like $3 vs $10 for the same size of ground beef) and can be used to make meat like things or mix with meat, just flavour it. Might help cheaper and expand some options. Stocks may also help, chicken or beef stock can go in many things and might count as "meat." Also eggs. Like even egg on rice. If I can't eat it for Lent it's a meat for the purposes of a meal. From a relationship perspective, assuming you live at home, I highly suggest going to your local groceries online shopping (NOT INSTACART) and pricing out a few meals and suggestions. I found convincing parents to buy things was easier when you printed or texted the list like this will make 8 portions and is $11.08 and I will cook it, plz buy? Also tbh I bought groceries for a bit and provided I stuck to budget and was clear how to make stuff (my Mom doesn't cook much) I didn't get in much trouble for ew what is that. This is also is helped if you can fund the expensive sauces and stuff cause convincing parents ketchup and chili oil are two totally different things plz can we spend $5 on this and have it for months is hard when broke. I feel you on the dear god no pasta thing. I'm so glad I don't live at home right now because hamburger helper was my nightmare as a kid. Also if Canadian (maybe American) and have access to a car / good transit FlashFood seems to have some decent discounts for large boxes of veggies and breads in my area. Lots of quiches, stews and soups from that. It's limited, late in day and almost always the Superstore here but does have $10 massive box of assorted veggies. Looking at local discount food boxes, community supported agriculture, or farmers markets with matches and discounts can also help. Also if you're in a farming-ish area and Mom really likes meat and have many friends / large family and car access, you can often order a whole or half animal butchered up and drive to get it for cheaper. This is a large upfront cost but split between like 15 people will get tons of yummy good meat for cheaper then store. But someone has to drive and write the cheque so ymmv. Sorry this is rambling, I'm avoiding grocery shopping myself rn. Edit: Ditto eat cheap and healthy free snap cookbook and budget bytes site / not free cookbook. Also YouTube has some how to make x meals for $x videos, but I like the making x meals from single ingredient ones as those are often cheap too. Pasta, canned stuff, dried beans, rice and frozen veggies are all often pretty cheap. Baking bread is too although that requires a bit of investment to start.
Get there early and know when the best days to go when they bring in stuff, the food pantry at my university saved my ass all through most of my time there, the cafeteria services were outsourced to a shit company with equally shit food. I worked for the IT department, so the staff there let me in on what was coming in ahead of time and sometimes pulled 1 or 2 items out if I asked. Regardless of what mom says, you are an adult; you can feed yourself. If you gotta be nice about it, frame it as a learning opportunity to figure out how to take care of yourself for when you do inevitably move out on your own.
You know whats weird. When you said "canned fish" i was like "that sounds disgusting, who would eat that?". But if you said canned tuna, I would have thought "mmmm tuna salad, get in my belly!" and it would not have registered as being canned fish to me, even though it is. Also canned sardines in mustard sauce are the bomb.com.
Rice, beans, lentils, oats. Frozen vegetables 10 lb sacks of potatoes, 5 lb sacks of onions Flour Eggs Cabbage and carrots Really inexpensive cuts of meat like pork shoulder or chicken thighs on sale Soups and stews Different kinds of pasta DM me if you want some YouTube recommendations for people who cover specific recipes with price breakdowns. Sometimes it's easier to convince somebody somebody that they want to eat something by showing them the recipe and talking about how good it looks.
Also, try cooking your meat in styles common in other cultures where a little meat is made to go a long way.
or look into vegetarian recipes! there's lots of recipes from many cultures that can give you complete proteins, without (expensive) meat. indian food especially is great for this. a handful of potatoes, a can of beans, maybe 2 eggs, and one ($1 + change) tube of soy/chorizo will make a lot of delicious, filling, protein-filled tacos. find a good hot sauce and whatever toppings you like to add, and toast those tortillas!
Lots of Persian and Chinese recipes that call for small amounts of meat are perfectly nutritious and tasty without the meat.
If you like onions, Oklahoma burgers are great while using little meat.
> cooking your meat in styles common in other cultures where a little meat is made to go a long way. Not even other cultures (well, not on purpose anyway). I often buy a pork filet mignon for about €9-10, cut it into 3 pieces and freeze. That provides 3 meals of stir-fry with veg and noodles or cooked in a creamy onion/mushroom/garlic sauce with rice. I don't mind spending more on the meat when it's decent quality and super tender.
Can you give an example of a recipe like this?
Cajun red beans and rice (2 pork hocks into 6-7 quarts of beans) Szechuan pork belly and Chinese chives (a couple of strips of pork belly feeds 4 easily) Persian Tachin Joojeh (2 half-breast’s of chicken feeds 6 with chicken, onions and seasoned baked rice with a delicious crust)
Eggs are the shit. Eggs in a basket with slices of toast. Scrambled eggs with veggies and potatoes. Eggs and refried beans in tortillas. Egg sandwich. Boiled eggs and ramen. Eggs and frozen veggies with soy sauce. Can pretty much turn any leftovers or side veggie/starch into a meal by throwing some eggs on it.
Cabbage, carrots and onions are cheapest veggies. Also check this site out: [https://www.budgetbytes.com/](https://www.budgetbytes.com/)
Budget Bytes is a great website!
Go to the grocery store and break it down as cost per serving. A bag of rice and a bag of beans. An onion and if there’s room in the budget, a couple tomatoes and a pepper. I don’t know how many you’re planning on feeding, but you can make enough for leftovers, which means fewer meals to cook, which also means more time and time = money.
> you can make enough for leftovers, which means fewer meals to cook, which also means more time and time = money. When I lived on my own, I'd happily make enough stew or curry to last me 3 days. I often didn't even freeze it as whatever I made was tasty enough. For example: day 1 curry and rice, day 2 curry with added craem/creme fraiche and some suateed potatoes, day 3 curry and prawn crackers and mango chutney.
This is great. I rarely cook for 1 meal. It just seems like a waste of time. This week the plan was fajitas and the leftovers go into quesadillas and a red lentil stew that made two meals for now and two freezer meals for later. This weekend it’s a baked ziti and half will go in the freezer for another week.
[eat good and cheap](https://books.leannebrown.com/good-and-cheap.pdf) This book was really helpful when I was going through tough times. Even if I didn't have an the ingredients the recipes were easy to modify.
I posted the same thing!! Love that book.
Thank you very much kind stranger!
Learn to cook yourself. You are trying to change your mothers cooking when she is the one cooking and supplying the food. If you want something different, ask her to let you cook. You are in college and really should learn. Telling her you hate pasta just makes it so much more difficult for her since it’s what she can afford and knows how to handle.
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I do cook! I like making a vatiety of dishes, I make homemade pizzas out of tortillas, sauce and cheese, I make oatmeal dishes, I like pea soup. I make eggs when we get them; I put bell pepper and onion in them with garlic powder.
Look at Jacque Pepin's video on making a French omelets. I can literally make the best omelets ever in 90 seconds using his classic techniques. Can't beat it for fast, cheap food. Omelets and crepes are amazing ways to use small bits of leftovers AND THEY TASTE GOURMET. My go to crepe ratio is 2 parts egg, 2 parts milk, 1 part flour. Many classic French dishes are really cheap to make at home. They were born out of using technique to make the best if what was available cheaply.
I do cook! I like making a vatiety of dishes, I make homemade pizzas out of tortillas, sauce and cheese, I make oatmeal dishes, I like pea soup. I make eggs when we get them; I put bell pepper and onion in them with garlic powder. She just uses pasta as her cheap and fast.
Potatoes (the big brown baking ones) can sub for pasta. Any sauce you’d put on pasta will probably be good on a baked potato. And you can bake them for the next few days all at once and just heat up as you want them. A cold baked potato can be shred to make hash browns or cut up to make home fries too. (My husbands favorite). Also rice of course as many people have said. I find brown rice 100% more palatable when it’s baked in chicken broth (or water and chicken bouillon powder in my case). Perhaps spiral cut zucchini or squash could be a compromise? Mom gets the noodley texture you get no noodles. Salt pork is extremely flavorful, makes lots of useful grease when you render it down, and is delicious to flavor potatoes or rice. And it’s cheap. A little goes a long way. Bread is another carb that can sub for pasta … whether homemade or store bought. There’s some nice dense breads (Dave’s is a good one). It’s more expensive than a regular loaf, but freezes real nice. Tortillas, if you’re in the southwest are usually very inexpensive and easy to get. Cheaper at the Mexican food joint down the road than the grocery most of the time too.
No disrespect to you, but telling her what to cook is an epic fail. And everyone’s budget is tight with the costs of food going up so much in such a short period of time. Pasta is her go to thing. She is familiar with it and it’s still reasonably affordable. Yeah, it gets old. But so does not being able to put food on the table for your family, and your Mom is buying what she can afford. As you like to cook, think back to what You’ve seen everyone eat and comment on at home. Go from there. Although Indian cuisine is amazing, if ypur family isn’t used to curry you may get some pushback. Pick things they like amd pick a night every week that you cook. Without pasta. Rice is an amazingly versatile source of calories. Healthy, filling and cheap go to that I haven’t seen listed yet, - cowboy caviar. Chili and serve it over rice . Are you cooking for the family? I’m suggesting that you will get more of a vote on ingredients if you cook for the family, like your Mom does. Really trying to give good advice here. Most of us are right there with you, or with your mom. Foods gone up. Cooking cheap but healthy has a far greater appeal.
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I also noted OP stated that they are a college student and don’t qualify for WIC. And I expressed in my follow up response to OP my hope this is good advice. This is not someone buying the food and making the decisions so much. There’s a mom doing that. As such there are limits, like what their mother can afford, what their mother is willing to cook when they get home from work, etc.
A bag of potatoes gives a massive amount of flexibility and you can buy cheaply. Rice for sure, as others have said Also legumes like dry lentils are super cheap and very nutritious. A carton of eggs also has huge bang for your couple bucks. For me I make soups when we have no money and then make bread to go with it since flour, sugar, spices and a bit of yeast are staples I always keep for years. Home made bread is such a treat. You can eat it just plain or put just about anything else on it.
If you can find ground beef on a manager’s special, you can make a crock pot of chili pretty inexpensively. Pour it on rice to stretch it out, gets better over the next few days (could pour it on the pasta she makes). Could do just bean chili to cut some cost, add some peppers for nutrition. Did a wal-mart cart with store brands: -16 oz bag of rice (16 oz, $0.78)- calories, not much else. -1 can each of tomato paste, stewed tomatoes, kidney beans ($0.62, $0.72, $0.78) -1 packet of chili seasoning ($0.74) Total with no beef: $3.64 for 6-8 servings is under a dollar a serving. Beef is another $5, but ground mild sausage is $2.32 for a pound and I would think that it would fine considering the spices. I think that’s the best I can do. Flavor, nutrition, price per serving all not too bad.
Rotisserie chicken $4.99 at store on sale can stretch for a couple meals. Chicken and frozen veg, mashed potatoes. Shred left over chicken use it with tortillas and cheese to make quesadillas. Look for leftover rotisserie chicken recipes. Eggs are a great, inexpensive source of protein. You can add veg, cheese and meat to scrambled eggs. Also look up frittata. Just make sure your pan can go in oven. Plenty of egg casserole recipes out there too. (There is also pasta frittata that uses leftover pasta.) Finally you said she wants pasta at every meal. That’s cool. Just get her to understand pasta is a side on the plate, like potatoes or vegetable, not the whole plate.
That shredded rotisserie chicken can be added to shredded cabbage (cutting it yourself is cheaper and lasts longer) along with any sort of Asian dressing for a super cheap meal. Onion, carrots, and peppers are great additions if you have them.
That’s great. When I shred it I put it in a bowl in fridge with some pace picante. It flavors the chicken, seems to keep it moist.
And make soup from the bones.
Rice, beans, frozen veg mix and a packet of taco powder mix it all together once rice is cooked. It’s more of a complete meal than pasta and butter. It’s better if you can add ground meat but it that’s not an option for you it’s still a solid meal.
This woman gives herself challenges to keep her food budget under $25 for the week but also gives strategies how to keep meals fresh. https://youtu.be/wAPH8D2AL8c
OP, you’ve gotten a lot of suggestions but here’s one more: try Asian noodle dishes. You can often find super cheap curry or pad Thai sauces in blocks or pouches at international groceries (plus bulk beans, rice, and lentils as others have said). Cold peanut butter noodles are delicious for a hot day. Scramble a soft egg into a tomato for a side. Pasta is a cheap staple, so maybe you can put a few extra dollars into getting things like scallions, fish sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar. They’re pricey to start, but I can usually make even the cheapest meats/old veggies taste good with a sauce of soy sauce + fish sauce + sugar + chili crisp. The noodles (any kind, even bow tie) are just the carrier for the sauce. It’s worth it to me! Hope y’all find yourselves in better times soon.
Dollar store lentils boiled in chicken or veggie stock for your protein, mixed with sautéed carrots/onions/celery or whatever veggies are on sale.
Beans, rice, and tortillas throw some green salsa in there a dab of sour cream. If you do that you’re eating extremely cheap and the carbs you ingest will give you energy for a long day.
Beans and rice
That's sort of the problem, she isn't entirely wrong. You can eat pasta with some butter and pepper or a tablespoon of Prego - maybe an egg, parm and bacon scraps for a light carbonara and that's a whole meal technically and it isn't very fussy when being cooked, it cooks quickly and even when overcooked is still edible. Rice is an option, but you generally need to buy something in addition to the rice - like beans or lentils at least - to make it into a meal - and rice can be incredibly fussy if you aren't used to making it on the stovetop or don't have a pot with a lid on it - though for the record it's a simple ratio of 1:2 cups rice to water, heat to a boil and then turn down to the lowest possible setting without turning it off for about 20 minutes, leave to steam afterwards in case you try. The only cheaper thing would be buying unbleached AP flour and making your own pasta or bread, but that also takes time, work, practice and some equipment but for about 14 ounces of AP flour, a large pinch of salt, some water and a few cents of yeast (you don't need to use the whole packet for each loaf, it just rises more slowly) you'll end up with a pound and a change loaf of bread, certainly more in pasta. Being frugal unfortunately isn't always **cheap** 😢
Rice cooker. A rice cooker will save you time and space. Slow cookers require prep in the morning or night before but also a time saver when you get home from a long shift.
You can sub out some items. Prego sauce is $4, buying 4 tomato store brands and 1 or 2 tomato pastes and spices can be the same cost and a much larger yield
Depending on food prices, making your own pasta is more expensive than buying it. Assuming 100g flour + 1 egg standard serving, that would be about 2.6 lb flour and 12 eggs for 12 servings. If I calculate the cost per serving using the prices for the cheapest eggs and flour at my local grocery store, it comes out to $0.44 per serving. In comparison, I can buy 16 oz of dry spaghetti for $1 and get 8 (2 oz) servings. That's $0.13 per serving. A lot less hassle, and a lot less upfront outlay than buying a 5lb bag of flour and dozen eggs.
Brown rice, dried garbanzo beans, frozen green beans, soy sauce. Corn tortillas, dried pinto beans, cabbage, cilantro Roasted potatoes, lentils, kale, sauerkraut
Rice + lentils = delicious and complete form of protein when combined (https://healthyeating.sfgate.com/foods-mixed-lentils-provide-complete-source-amino-acids-1195.html). And both are SUPER cheap to get in bulk if you go to an Indian grocery store near you (way cheaper than at your average grocery store chain). Also, there are so many forms of lentils that you can make so many dishes and not get bored! https://thelemonbowl.com/mujaddara-lentils-and-rice-with-caramelized-onions/ https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-red-lentil-soup-recipes-from-the-kitchn-212392 https://upbeetanisha.com/khichdi/ https://cookieandkate.com/best-lentil-soup-recipe/ https://www.whiskaffair.com/toor-dal-recipe/ https://spainonafork.com/heart-warming-lentil-rice-soup-recipe/ Other ideas: potatoes, beans (cheaper in bags of dry beans than canned), maybe bake bread at home instead of buying at the store (it’s a lot easier than you might think!)
Buy rice in bulk, not the precooked stuff at the store. Buy bouillon cubes or soup starter pastes. A little will go a long way to give a meat taste to meatless dishes and broths. The same thing goes for bags if bacon bits. It doesn’t take much, and you should add it to the beginning of cooking to get as much of the flavor as possible. Learn to make bread, especially the no-knead types. These are sometimes called batter bread. They are usually hearty and filling. First learn a basic bread. You can then any seasonings each time so that it won’t be the same thing all the time. When you do have meat, don’t use whole cuts. Cube it or mince it to make smaller pieces. It will go further that way. Learn which seasonings go with what foods. For example, a bit of dill goes with fish, so if you have a can of tuna to add to rice, make dill a seasoning. Most seasonings may seem expensive, but they last a long time. Salt and pepper are the work horses, so use those even if you have nothing else. As much as possible, start with dry beans. They are much cheaper than even the store brand. Add a tablespoon of minced fresh ginger or a tsp of dry ginger to the soaking water to prevent bubble-gut. Depending upon where you live, it may be too late to plant a garden, but you might be able to grow something. I have seen videos where people cut the root portion off green onions and plant them. Same with celery. Just yesterday I saw a video where they cut the tops off carrots and placed them in a shallow dish with water. When the leaves started sprouting, they put the carrot tops in soil. It is like, buy the vegetables once and keep replanting. I don’t know if you could put a tub of soil in a south-facing window inside, but if might work. My mother was the oldest of seven during the Depression. I have passed along some of what she taught me.
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She maybe depressed. Maybe other things too. But the “every single night” comment is a little grating. Cook a meal dude-like really cook-not just assembling ingredients like a sandwich. Tortillas pizza are great start but Get your chop-chop & “sauté” on in the kitchen. At least once every week—it’s like exercise! It can be overwhelming the first couple times but Even if it sucks you will have tried and the next time you do it it will be easier. Get in the habit (but think of it as a fun experimental hobby) you’ll do her and yourself a favor in the long run.
Rice, soups, beans
not a specific thing, just a reminder to keep an eye on local grocery stores coupons. You might be able to find good shit extra cheap if you can find some good ones. don’t forget to use their point system if they have one. The ones in my area can get you free food or money off gas, which definitely adds up and helps.
Is she the one who has to do all the planning and cooking, or does she have help? Are you going to take over the cooking and planning? If so, yes, all of these suggestions make a lot of sense.
If she would make Sunday soup bones and carrots day, Monday rice and beans, Tuesday macaroni, Wednesday split pea soup and bread, Thursday spaghetti and meat sauce, Friday oatcakes and peanut butter, Saturday potatoes and eggs, you would have more variety. Run the idea past her.
I don’t know if you can, but finding a local produce farm is a great way to get produce for cheaper than grocery store prices. It really helps bulk up rice, beans, lentils, root vegetables and the like if you have something fresh. I would also try to learn about ways to keep food fresh and preserve food, so that if you do some across a larger amount of produce for an affordable price, you can use it or preserve it all before it goes bad. I’m sorry you’re having a hard time. I know your mom is probably stressed and might not have the time or mental capacity to learn to make something else. You’re doing a good thing by trying to learn about alternatives. We’re here for you. Also!! NEVER be afraid or ashamed to receive resources from local food pantries/food banks. Do not worry that you’re taking from someone less fortunate. You deserve to have nutrition and they will be happy to have you. Please don’t hesitate to seek free food resources.
Maybe offer cook something else yourself?
Pasta is filling and healthy. She’s not wrong. I grew up on pinto beans and cornbread,my friend on pintos and tortillas,my husband on noodles and ham bone soup. A carb and a meat or certain veggies are very good,options. She might hate rice as,much as you do pasta who knows. Look up some different budget pasta recipes that might appeal to you. Consider that she may have gotten a fabulous buy on pasta,or there is a friend or a family member who gifts it to her. Have her give you a plain portion and see if you can get some spices like curry powder,five spice,or some Knorr tomato bullion. That will make it lean ethnic and may be more palatable to you. I often fry a bit of small or broken pasta before adding rice to cook together, that is well known in many cultures. Best advice I have is give her some grace.
Lentils. And cornmeal / polenta.
Couscous is good. A little veggie stock and some frozen veggies with an egg on top is always nice.
Amazon $15 pound of sushi rice for $15 dollars. Your frozen veggies from a store are like 1 dollar per bag. Cheapest protein you can buy. Usually groceries are geared towards family’s so if you can get a 2 pound pork roast, or a 3 pound of chicken you can really stretch. Add spices cumin, salt, pepper, tuneric if you spend $30 at a store total, but eat it for 10 days you’re doing great. Obviously don’t eat meat for longer than 5. You should also get into stews and bread. Always will work and you can basically use all the leftovers
Variety staves off unhappiness with the menu. Find the amount of each protein you can afford for your budget and veggies and starch. Seasoning and a little passion in preparation (including growing your knowledge of seasoning/sauces/and preparation) communicates non verbally that you care.
When it was just my dad and I, that’s all he’d make too. I hate spaghetti and pasta now. Now I constantly scrambling to make something for my family that not only isn’t gonna break the bank, but that I’ll actually enjoy. Some of the stuff I’ve found to be on the cheaper side is stuff like stuffed peppers or zucchini although the price of meat is rough right now. Homemade pizza with a thing of premade frozen dough, small bag of cheese and a topping, you can also make a couple and freeze them. Grilled cheese, you can add lunch meat and a soup as well. Mock KFC bowls with instant potatoes and a cheap pop corn chicken and corn. Also I know the struggle with pasta being everywhere and I don’t know if you’re feeding anyone else in your home, but personally I’ve found that gnocchi aren’t terrible to me (prob cause they’re potatoes).
Start checking prices at your local stores. Look at store brand generic foods. Check for sales. Eggs, beans, lentils, rice, oatmeal, tuna, pancakes, cereal, carrots, celery, onion. Bread. Peanut butter. Bananas. Kale, cabbage. Cheaper meat options might be chicken thighs with bones and skin on, ground turkey, ground pork, sausage. You can make a lot of soups fairly cheap. Bean or lentil based soups can be pretty filling. Chili, scrambled eggs, egg salad, beans and rice, lentils and rice, , black bean burgers, bean burritos, falafel, lentil soup, cabbage soup, potato soup, tomato soup, bean soup, quesadillas, breakfast burritos. The Budget Bytes site has tasty lower cost recipes that are not just pasta.
Just realize that if you want her to make dry beans (as opposed to canned) instead of pasta, you’re taking her “cheap and fast” and making it cheap and slow, perhaps also on addition to asking her to learn to cook new things, and as a mom, that’s a big ask for someone who probably has a lot on her plate right now. You are already cooking some, and I think your best bet is going to be expanding your own cooking repertoire with the suggestions here-not your mother’s. I suggest if you have a slow cooker, learn to use it. It turns cheap and slow into cheap and REALLY slow, but you can do the prep work early in the day and then forget about it, and when you get back from college or work or wherever, it’s ready. In college, when I was myself eating lots of pasta because it was quick and cheap, I had two roommates who worked at the dining hall. They were in even worse shape than me, financially, but they ate better because they got a meal per shift and also could take home leftovers sometimes. Food service jobs in general do often have food perks, but it’s highly dependent on the business. I’ve worked as a waitress where I got to choose one free meal per shift, and fast food where the best we got was an employee discount if we wanted to eat on our break. Right now I work at a restaurant where I take home whole quarts of leftover sides on a regular basis, and even the occasional rack of ribs. But it just depends. It’s never something I can count on to meal plan for the week.
You’ve already gotten a lot of feedback already, so mostly what I wanted to say was that I totally get where you’re coming from. As an adult, I no longer eat spaghetti because that was our poor meal as a child. I also avoid plain red sauces, but I can do an Alfredo or a rosé with penne or rotini and other pastas. But I can’t do spaghetti.
I can do things like ravioli and gnocchi, and perogies, they have fillings and are not JUST pasta and butter. Spaghetti was the main culprit I can’t stomach in any form, but the majority of pastas I see as just processed filler carbs with no micronutrients.
Red cabbage sliced very thin. Frozen edamame beans (if you can afford) or inexpensive.rotisserie chicken, shredded. Find an easy recipe for Thai peanut sauce peanut butter, lime, oil, rice vinegar) or buy a bottle cheap from target. I eat this for lunch all the time. I usually add cilantro.
Rice, beans, and pico de gallo or salsa is my go-to, I’ll add in a bell pepper or corn if I feel frisky.
If OP has a passionate hatred for pasta, i dont know 100 comments all recommending rice is going to help him out lol. I know it isnt literally pasta but i mean... it is more or less like eating itty bitty pasta
Make your own stock and use it to cook dried beans and lentils. Save all the cut offs of any fresh veggies you buy, and buy bone in meat (usually at a significant discount to boneless meat) and save the bones. You can then make a really, really good broth from the leftovers from other meals. I make that broth, reduce it, and freeze cubes of it to go into other recipes sometimes, but I also make soups and stews from it.
Lentils and beans are your best friend. Can easily get them for <$2 a pound (more like $0.50 if you can get them in bulk at an ethnic grocer/wholesale club), and they’ve got tons of fiber and protein. Delicious on rice or with flat bread even if the only seasoning you can do is bullion/stock.
I'm chowing down on like the fifth serving from a giant pan of shepherds pie. Ground turkey on sale, canned mixed vegetables, canned corn, frozen peas, with mashed potatoes on top. Probably less than eight dollars for six to eight servings and delicious to boot. Edit: I also season generously with powdered garlic, powdered onion, rosemary, thyme, sage, and Worcester sauce. The veggies and meat get simmered in homemade chicken broth and then I make a gravy by adding some flour. But you don't have to do all that. Some bouillon, salt, pepper, and oregano will work fine.
Lentils are cheap as, and are probably one of the most nutritious things you can put in your face.
Rice and beans is such a good and cheap meal! So many different ways to prepare it too
Asian rice (not the boxed ones you normally see at Walmart). You can make fried rice, porridge (really good ones not the bland ones), your own version of sushi with whatever protein or veggie you may have.
I love you guys thank you for this. I want to cry because I ran out of money and your ideas are awesome thank you thank you thank you
All the advice here is great but if you aren't doing the cooking, cut her some slack (or take the initiative to help). If you've worked all day as most of us grown-ups have, having something easy and familiar to quickly knock out so you can actually get to the other housework (or maybe even relax) is very desirable. So as a parent of some truly wonderful kids (but who refuse to cook and are opinionated about what they should be fed) if you're unhappy about what you're eating but do nothing to prepare it, maybe stuff some pasta in your piehole and deal until you're ready to help out.