Cheap food

Hey guys,

Well, we all are tightening our belts, nowadays. I just moved into a neighborhood that is mainly recent immigrants, and I can say, I'm learning at the grocery store to look hard at cuts of meat I hadn't looked at before.

These guys http://www.homegrownharvest.com/, have done a good job of providing bulk barley (not the pearl kind, unhulled), and other starches. A cup of barley can "stiffen up" a can of soup and make it a meal.

Liver, sweetmeats, and tripe here are very inexpensive.

I can't hunt, but any ideas for cheap, nutritious meals are welcome!

Best wishes

Using staples like flour and dry beans instead of prepackaged mixes will save you a lot too. Pancakes, biscuits, bread and quick breads are surprisingly simple to make and the raw materials are cheap.
Pressure cookers are money savers also, so if you have one get it out.
Beans cook fast in a pressure cooker and chili or other bean soups and stews are simple in either a pressure cooker or a slow cooker.
Along with tough cuts being tenderized by it you will find the tough meats have more flavour in them than the tender cuts.

Rice is a deal similar to barley, buy it in big bags to save.

Judicious use of a large freezer can be an economy measure depending on where you are. My parents used to buy beef a side at a time and cut, wrap and freeze it themselves.
Even if you can not handle beef a side at a time, many cuts of beef can still be had cheaper by buying primal cuts and breaking them down at home.


There are a lot of unfashionable vegetables. Turnips for example.
Those large swede rutabagas are usually fairly inexpensive, but are very good when boiled and mashed.

Another thing to look into is if there are any local food co-ops. Sometimes they can be very good.
Be careful about package meat deals or boutique producers though.

I second beans, and add potatoes to that list. Your "normal" potato and sweet potato or yam are all very nutritious and cheap. They can also be prepared in a wide variety of ways or used to bulk up more expensive ingredients like meat. Mashed potatoes are a favorite of mine, they can have all kinds of things added to them or be used to top shepherds pie which is another cheap, easy and nutritious dish. Cabbage is another good one. Eggs are cheap. A dollar fifty for a dozen eggs is a week's worth of two egg omelets at 25 cents each. Add a sprinkle of cheese, a bit of butter and a sprinkle of salt and pepper and you're looking at breakfast for less then fifty cents. Eggs can also be turned into a fancy sauce for a mundane meal. Like topping microwaved, frozen broccoli with hollandaise or bernaise sauce. Anyway you eat them, they're a good source of protein and other nutrition.

Your spice rack is also your best friend. Add a few spices to things can add huge flavor with relatively little impact on your wallet. A few of my favorites are mustard powder, chipolte, black pepper and paprika.

Like scafool said, if you buy it pre-made, learn to make it yourself. You can make almost everything you buy in a box yourself for much cheaper, and as a bonus it will be healthier and taste better. Take hot chocolate, make it yourself it contains cocoa powder, sugar and milk. Well... and optional salt, vanilla extract, chili powder, nutmeg or cinnamon, whatever you want. You can even decide what fat content you want in your milk. Buy it pre-made, it has an ingredient list two inches long in fine print. Mostly names only our chemist friend Blast could love. Likewise, the fancier the name on the package, the higher the profit margin. A great book for learning how simple these "fancy" dishes are to make is Cooking for Dummies. You may not want people to see it on your shelf, but they'll love the food you cook from it.

Finally, turn cooking into entertainment. If its a chore, you aren't going to want to spend the time to save the money. Cooking is how I decompress in the evenings. I don't have a significant other right now, but when I was in college, my girlfriend and I would cook together in the evenings. It gave us a chance to spend time together, talk about our days and share our schedules so we could plan events together. If you're like me and alone, a gourmet meal and half an hour of TV beats a microwave meal and two hours of TV any day. Plus, it gives you an excuse to invite someone over.

Lentils are another great legume that can be found for cheap, and are a lot easier and quicker to prepare than most beans.

Oats are another really healthy alternative, and have a lot of health benefits not found in wheat and rice. I like adding oats to ground meats to really stretch out things like meatloaf, meatballs, and such.

Some warnings, changing your food intake to include a steady diet of legumes can cause some gastric distress and flatulence problems. It is advisable to make such transitions slowly, and augment your diet with things like yogurt (Activia is good) and other cultured foods. Also, be aware that any radical increase in the consumption of carbohydrates can place some stress on your insulin supply system. I know of a couple people that tried to make the conversion and they ended up with diabetes shortly after starting. Also, some people become sensitive to glutinous food consumption (celiac disease?).

Economics may not give us much choice sometimes in being particular about what we can stock. We've come a long way in a very short 10,000 years, and being essentially omnivores has given us a lot of options about what we can put in our gullet. I can well envision a time in our near future where we might be eating something like a paste, or a moist loaf, or maybe little green wafers??? Nutritionally sound, but leaving a lot to be desired on the pallette. But if it is a choice of eating the same thing all the time or not eating, I will take what I can get I am sure.

Don't overlook noodles. They can often be found for cheap, are easy to store, easy to cook, easy to digest and versatile.

Not the little green wafers. Soylent's finest.

Excellent idea! I'm gonna have to try. Think you could put oats in soup as a thickener?

Scafool,

What's the difference between a Swedish rutabaga and a "normal" rutabaga? And what's a good way to prepare them?

Anyone have a good recipe for turnips? I can still remember eating slices of freshly pulled from the ground turnips that were grown by a neighbor of my Grandmother.

JohnE

Big Ben’s Bashed Neeps (Turnip Muffins)

When there ain’t much around to chow on, I guess you make do with whatever you can find. At least the Irish had taters… Actually, these ain’t that bad.

1 lb turnips, peeled and diced
2 Tbs Butter
Pinch of Mace (optional)[Mace is the outer husk or hull on Nutmeg]

Boil turnips until tender (10 to 15 minutes). Drain. Mash and mix in butter and season to taste. An authentic Scottish recipe.

Hmm, adding oats to soup might make it a bit too gooey for the palate. Kinda like too much boiled okra in the stewed tomatoes. Oats make a good porridge, and a healthier Congee than rice.

Haggus may be taking things too far, though. I prefer a less Spartan diet.

Thanks all for the tips, and I'm still wary of Soylent green.

@benjammmin, well, yeah, adding the barley to soup makes it rather solid, but when it is dinner? I appreciate the extra starc h. And its Barley, not oats, if I could get oats in bulk consistently? Yeah I would.

Get some barley. I can say, better than oats.

Though, I am fond of your turnip recipe. And you are 100% right, simple foods and spice it much later.

Allright, here is grad student chili. a recipe for disaster:

one cup barley, boil for at least 20 minutes. in three cups of water
a can of red beans
a can of spinach
a can of cream soup
chopped onion, some
hot sauce
This is something you can live on.

Thank you all that responded to this thread.

Swede or rutabaga is the same thing. My one grandpa called them swede, my other grandpa called them baggers, my grandma called them turnips when she set them on the table. So I tend to use all the names.
The Rutabaga is the big turnip which is orange/yellow inside. (Usually they are waxed for storage but not always. The wax is just to keep them from drying out.)
We called them swedes when I was a kid. I suppose because the Swedes were the first to grow them, or maybe because they came here from there was why they were called swedes.
When they were first grown they were for cattle feed. I can remember a hand cranked machine for shredding them on my grandfather's farm. They had to be roughly shredded so the cows could chow down on them. I don't know anybody who grows them for feed any more and the turnip shredder was never used in my memory.

Swedes are very common in the grocery stores here.
The smaller ones with white flesh which are intended for fancy table use do not have not nearly as much flavor and I never bother with them.

I usually just boil them and mash them with salt, pepper and butter.
My cousins like to mix them with mash potatoes. I know a lot of people who slice them into sticks and serve them raw like carrot sticks.

I didn't want to go far off thread.
There are a lot of other vegetables that seem under priced, beets are another example along with cabbage.
One reason is that most people are not sure how to use them or consider them poverty foods and only for poor people. Another reason is that they are not instant foods. Beets take a long cooking time.
A third reason is that a lot of them are not in single serving sizes. One Rutabaga is the vegetable serving for a medium sized family. It is the same with something like a Hubbard squash or a head of cabbage.

One other thing you can save on is making your own pickles and preserves. Sauerkraut is a natural, so are pickled beets, or kimchee. These are so natural that you don't even need to be a foody to do it, and fermented (natural) pickles are delicious.
If you go to the farmers you can buy carrots, cabbages, beets and potatoes by the bushel so cheap it would make your head spin.

You can figure that every level of distribution between you and the grower doubles the price, so 4 levels of distributors means 16 times the price.
This is why food co-ops make so much sense. A co-op might be able to cut out 3 or even 4 layers of distributors. You might have to deal with a bit of bulk and might need to volunteer to do a bit of repackaging, but if you can deal with it the savings are very worth while.
Even if you are just setting up a co-op with a few neighbors the ability to buy wholesale makes it worth the aggravations.
Fortunately most cities already have co-ops set up and looking for members.
I seem to be a bit of a fan for co-ops.

Walk into just about any grocery store and you can get the big four: Rolled oats, Chinese noodles, rice, and peanut butter.

A standard cardboard cylinder of rolled oats has thirty half-cup servings. Get the 'Old Fashion' style instead of the 'Quick'. They are larger and have more oat flavor and don't dissolve like the quick style into goo. Actual cooking time is roughly the same. Served alone, as abase or added to soups or sauces adds bulk, fiber and nutrition to the diet at minimal cost.

Chinese, Ramen, noodles go for about a quarter a pop when you buy then six at a time. Ask the store manager for a better price on a case. Eat them alone or slice and dice whatever you have into them.

A twenty-five pound sack of brown rice will keep you going for a long time. Good nutrition and versatile. Cooked rice can be refried or added to other dishes.

Peanut butter is a bargain. Find the #10 cans at bulk prices and it is really cheap per serving.

Any or all of these can be bases to which you add other ingredients. Wild onions, dandelion, mushrooms, etcetera can be added to make a meal. Fish and small game, or seasonal vegetables and fruits grown in your area, available on sale or at farmer's markets are bargains.

Canned salmon, tuna and sardines are quite cheap for protein. Most canned meats don't have actual expiration dates. They loose some flavor over time but unless the can is damaged or bulging it good. Seeing as that they can be stored for a long time without refrigeration when you see canned meat on sale stock up. Six and ten packs of salmon or tuna often go on sale for low prices.

Look up restaurant supply houses and bulk suppliers. Be polite and explain what is going on. I have found I can get very attractive deals on stuff not usually sold retail just by being nice. If they sell something you want only in huge quantities try to get people together to go in on a large purchases. Shortening was sold in fifty pound buckets. Dividing it five ways we all got a good supply at about half the retail price.

Get your spices at the restaurant supply house. Spices make wild game and canned food that has lost flavor more palatable and generally perks up meals. Buy the large containers and save. It helps to have smaller containers you can fill so you keep the balance vacuum sealed so it stays fresh longer.

Down here, you can't really find good deals on anything from a super market. Just won't happen. To give you an idea, milk by the gallon is about 6 bucks KYD ($7.31 usd or $8.86 CAD) - and thats not bad for here.

Now, thats here in Cayman where prices are inflated without any thought to why other then the owner of a market wants to buy a new 155' yacht, so need to up the prices.

What I found is that import companies that supply to restaurants and the like (exist everywhere), offer excellent deals and even items called 'restaurants packs'. Especially down here, you can get meat 'restaurant packs' where all items are individually frozen and all the perfect size (i.e. twenty 12 ounce NY strips). You can even get combo versions of them (steaks, chicken, etc). They have all sorts of these packs and probably will include what you want and call it a pack if your a good customer!

We know a guy that works at one of these supply companies and he gives us a typical restaurant discount (15% off the complete order) on top of the big discount compared to the super market.

" As God is my witness, I'll never go hungry gain" and as Scarlett raised her fist intermission came and people walked out for more popcorn and junior mints.

Timing?

Food is manipulated as much, if not more than tobacco. When 'famine food' becomes popular some director of marketting will mount a irish cooking campaigne and increase prices 20%.

Buy your turnip seeds now, before they get relabeled as Luxembourg potatos and show up on cooking shows.

I like the local food-buying co-ops. Let me find a link

Our local co-op is relatively new and they are trying to build up a client base, but I find them just a tad too vegan-politico in their marketing approach to suit my taste. I guess they are based a tad too close to Boulder.

But Ben, you only have to get them to try a monkey meat tamale once and then they are hooked.
Seriously though, the politics can come in second to the economics. Even if all your local co-op is ready to deal with is produce and grain you can use the savings there to balance some of the meat costs from other places.
You also have the option of exerting a gentle influence in them, as they attempt to indoctrinate you into their world view.
If they are trying to build clients it might be a good time to sway them towards organic free range meats.

It might also be a good place to get the contacts to start a beef ring where you and some friends can buy a beef and have it slaughtered for you.
Even though one of you alone could never deal with a whole beef at one time, several families together would have no trouble at all.
Before refrigeration was common beef rings were common in the west. They were usually set up by people who were raising beef and each one contributed an animal in turn.
They usually killed once a week and everybody got their share every week.
With modern refrigeration and market beef this could still be done today. A meat co-op could be set up to buy wholesale carcasses and just have a once a week cut and wrap session.
It might be easier to just buy the primal cuts too. That is how most of your grocery stores buy almost all their meats now instead of dealing with cutting in their own store.

A few years back I picked up a dehydrator for about 50 bucks and started dehydrating the apples growing on the trees on my land. Within a week I had more dammed dried apple chips than I knew what to do with so I ended up trading them with friends for stuff they had extra. I use it now for jerky as well as for making soup base, drying stuff like green onions and strawberries etc. I am in the process of experimenting with dehydrating whole meals to see how that works.

If times are tough, then a dehydrator is one heck of a way to start putting away meals for a rainy day. It a good way to use fruit and veg in bulk before it can spoil as well.

Around here they mostly do the expensive cuts of meat, eg pork chops. A Morrisons opened near me recently and they do some cheaper cuts, eg pork shank, which I've come to really like.

Buying in bulk definitely helped us with our food bill. We have a vacuum food saver, so it is easy to repackage and store.

Isn't bulk just abbout almost always the way to go, if you have room to store? For a couple, six months of food is going to weigh probably at least 500 lbs. and take up maybe 11 cubic feet of space. If you never eat the stored food, much of it will go to waste, as sooner or later it should need to be replaced. Buy in bulk, rotate stuff out of it. Just brought home 50 lbs of rice from Costco.

Sunchokes are one of my new favorites. Grow almost anywhere, look attractive (tall sunflowers) and most people would not know they have an edible tuber. My friend from the Ukraine refers to them as a "ground potato" fit for feeding to cattle. Wholefoods charges a couple bucks a pound.

This weekend I got 10 lbs of stawberries at 80 cents a pound. We sliced them up and are dehydrating most of them.

Yes, bulk is the way to go unless you are seriously space challenged. It can require some planning.

Bulk foods from the food co-op or even the local grocery store is cheaper than packaged, usually about half the price or less. Spices are great - don't let the $22/lb on top scare you off. I just bought two heaping spoonfuls of ground nutmeg for $1.56 and barely got it all into the jar. (I use smaller spice jars and buy more frequently -- still not all that often -- so they don't go flat or stale.)

Cereals are cheap -- I just got farina for $1.29/lb. I didn't have to pay for the box that said Cream of Wheat. They also have rolled oats and grains and granola.

All the seeds I've bought in bulk sprout just fine except for the ones that say 'milled' (millet and white rice come to mind), which is where they take off the outside hull. Seeds that will sprout have increased protein, suitable for man, beast or hen, and they will grow if sown. Far cheaper than designer packages.

I have a store not too far away that seems to have sales on certain things about the same time every month. The difference between whole chickens at $0.79/lb and $1.69/lb is literally two for the price of one. Mark your calender and see if your stores do the same.

Call your most-local Cooperative Extension Service (all U.S. offices listed here by state: http://www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/ ). If you have a small plot of dirt in sunlight, they can help you grow things. They can also tell you where to get info on a list of local U-Pick farms. Fruits and veg are at least half the price of store food, and of MUCH higher quality. Eat it fresh, can it, dry it, make jam.

Check out some of your local grocery stores about 5 a.m. Many of them put out boxes of discarded vegetables and fruit. You usually have to pick through all the lettuce and cabbage leaves, but a lot of it is still very edible (they don't want to mix fresh produce with the older produce). BE SURE to be neat about it, and don't leave a mess.

The neighborhood you described probably wouldn't be adverse to someone who has a few chickens or rabbits. They may have some of their own. Excess eggs distributed to immediate neighbors is a nice calling card and a good way to make friends.

Sue

Normally I wouldn't have an argument unsupportive of Co-ops, but the one I was working with just sent the wrong public message. Even so, I would probably still give them my business on at least a few items.

Sometimes I can afford to be political, not often, but sometimes...

I worked in grocery stores for over forty years, and learned a lot about eating cheap and never paying the full retail price for any food. The real key to doing this spending as much as you can the first time to build up a supply of the foods that you eat most often.

Then start watching the grocery adds from the local stores that are around you. Grocery adds have a cycle and pretty much stay on that cycle, for instance if a store has can vegetables on sale 3 for $1.00 one week most likely in about four to six weeks those can vegetables are going to be on sale again at 3 for $1.00

So buy enough to last until they go on sale again, and you will never have to pay the 75 cents for the same vegetables again.
The same goes for ground chuck $1.79 on sale $2.49 not on sale, large eggs .89 on sale $1.29 regular price.

The idea being, just about all food that you buy will be on sale at some point and usually it will be about a four week cycle. The same applies for sodas or snack foods.

I drink Maxwell house coffee and usually pay about $5.49 for the largest can when it is on sale so I buy two or three, when it isn't on sale it is about $6.79.

Milk freezes, so I buy three or four at 1.89 and freeze it regular price is 3.59.

You get the idea, if you have a place to store it and a freezer
you will never have to pay full price for any of your foods again.

Also monitor the adds from all the stores in your area and shop the best prices, don't be afraid to shop at all the different stores, I always take advantage of the buy one get one free adds and buy as much of the item as I can afford that the time , if I have coupons that is when I use them.

Watch the adds for a few weeks and you will see what I mean about the sale cycles if you pay attention you really can eat at a much reduced cost.

My family all get together a few times through out the year and "put up food". Last year we canned - peaches, applesauce, apple butter, strawberry jam, strawberry - rubarb jam, corn and something else that is eluding me. Anyway, the point being that including the cost of the lids, sugar, etc.. we saved about .20 - .50 cents a can compared to store bought canned foods. The intitial start up cost was moderate, but it payed for itself in the first year of doing this. The only thing you have to do is watch for low-acid foods. There is a risk of contracting botulism. Follow the canning cook books and there is not a problem.

We also make a trip down the baking eisle at the grocery store EVERY time we go. Last time I was there I found processed white flour (ya ya I know...) for $6 / 25lbs bag. We also look for rice, pastas, rolled oats, sugar, beans, and canned meats that are marked down or on a special. It is a crap shoot, sometimes you find good deals sometimes you end up just getting some exercise.

Long as we make it a family project, the cost is VERY low. Not only that but it is great family time together. It is also a great skill to pass on to younger generations.