Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What do you eat when the budget is tight?

Raman noodles.
Back in the day it was cheap, now it’s just fast and easy.

Start water boiling, about 1/2 cup
.
*Open package and carefully throw out the “flavor packet”.*
Mix a heaping spoonful of quality chicken soup base like “Custom Gold lable”.
(this step is important)

Open refrigerator and find any/all leftover meat/fish/vegetables, chop up a cup full and throw in the pot.
Hot sauce and chili flakes to taste.

A lot of what makes food good is how hungry you are.

so very true.

leather britches, kraut.

rabbits, squirrels, possums.

never did do coons. but some did.

spring greens, wild lettuce, onions, grease.

creases, turnips, songbirds? say what, songbirds??

I draw the line at possums. I think I’d rather go hungry 😬

if de-haired and baked properly, they're really good. a bit fatty?

flush them with water and cornbread. and then de-hair.

bake and serve, with or w/o sweet potatoes.

it's all good, and protein is needed.

Cheap AND convenient:

1 Yeti of coffee
2 boiled eggs
Banana
Kale with olive oil dressing
Single serve brown rice and tuna pack
Protein bar
“Something” for dinner. Whatever is on closeout that I can piece together
Bowl of cereal night snack

Weekends eat out

Kale?


You serious clark?

been a long time since my budget was tight thank goodness. but when i used to live paycheck to paycheck i used to stock up on generic mac and cheese and a tub of fake margarine along with boxes of generic stove top stuffing. i made many meals of m&c and stuffing. ramen came into play as well. you could buy it for like a dime a brick and it lasted forever.

It’s gooooooood...

Keeps a lot longer than spinach.

This^^^

Deer, elk, homegrown beef. Rice....

Over the years I've been through it a few times.

in the late 70's working a job that paid OK, but there was girls and partying so food came 3rd. Butcher shop had $1 lb thick sliced bacon and beef liver. Sack of taters. Made for some cheap meal. ALWAYS have some noodles on hand (Imagine that, an Italian guy having pasta around). Noodles, butter, and some Parmesan cheese = dinner sometimes.

mid-late 90's at the University as a returning student of the starving type. Like Mt Boomer, $3 a day budget. Bulk noodles again $0.50 a pound, jar of store brand sketti sauce perhaps a buck 50, couple of dinners for less than $3 total. Bulk oatmeal $0.19 a pound and bulk bin raisins at $1.49 a pound. Handful of oatmeal and a half handful of raisins for a couple of years. Don't eat oatmeal much any more. Best deals while up there were "turkey wars ' between the Walmart, Safeway, and WareMart around the holidays. Turkeys went down to less than $0.25 a pound a couple of times. 12lb turkey for $3 will stretch a LONG way, especially when soup is made from the carcass.

While there I was also known by my advisor as "the Ultimate Forager". I could regularly be seen gathering mussels and big barnacles off the rocks below the marine lab (sometimes they went into that cheap spaghetti sauce) and took home things like herring and smelt from our collecting trips. Working for a timber company allowed for the gathering of quantities of chanterrelles on the drive back from our stream surveys. Albacore were available at the docks from the fishermen, no middlemen, for $1or $2 lb at the time, and I can get alot of meat off an alby. Rockfish heads have a lot of meat on them for soup too. Friends that had crab rings allowed for expeditions for Dungeness during the season. Volunteer to cook/serve/clean up at profession society meetings allowed for free meals also.

I get upset when "poor folks" say they can't feed themselves and kids on what the welfare gives them. Put back the f'n box of Cap'n Crunch and feed them kids a handful of oatmeal and raisins like I had to eat. No f'n KFC either, buy a whole dang chicken and make sure one of the kids eats the back and neck, or cook the carcass down for soup.

Our family was five kids, two adults on a one earner budget, with a couple of the kids doing a big part of their schooling in parochial schools. We ate a lot of hamburger brown gravy and rice, loads of spaghetti, roast chickens, "chuck roast" , and such. Not sure how folks do it feeding their kids all that 'fast" food crap. (Jim C excepted, I've seen pics of what his family eats )

Nowadays, we're pretty set for food but still eat rather prudently. Leftovers tonight, chicken thighs with mushrooms, onion, and garlic (the last two ingredients from the garden) over leftover..................................noodles (y'all about knew that was coming, right?)

Must be from growing up on it, but I like poor folks food.

Geno

Vienna’s. Tuna. Pork skins. Cheese. Eggs.

My fav is the German bologna from Walmart {gasp} deli. Like $3 pound.

Mullet and taters fried in used peanut oil.

Never really remember having the problem growing up or when I got on my own or got married and had kids.
Did I have ta eat stuff I didnt like or want
Yes
Mother and fathers decision on what we ate.
Mostly kid driven menu when raising up the rug rats till they got older and discovered food variety.
Ate well in the army at times and at other times I didnt.
Ate real well on offshore oil rigs.
Now that the kids are grown and gone
I eat what i want when i want.

Dont ever remember stretching money for food.


But it does piss me off seeing what people on welfare as a way of life buy with the ebt card my tax money pays for....

Been 30 years since money was so scarce I had to pay much attention but when it was I still ate pretty good. Big bags of thigh and leg qtrs. Rice. Dry beans of all sorts topped with rotel. I hunted hogs so I had plenty of wild pork. The farmer who had vegetable crops where I hunted told so long as I was shooting hogs I could help myself to the crop. Mostly bell peppers and acorn squash. These days I still enjoy pretty cheap eating compared to my friends. I don't buy any boxed or precooked foods. I buy in bulk when it makes sense and freeze things up. I make my own premium sausage for about a forth of what they sell the crap in the store for.

Mom found these boil-in-a-bag sliced roast beef or turkey breast with gravy. They came frozen and couple minutes in hot water and a slice of bread was dinner. Never got that bad for dinner but ate them for lunch.

I was real lucky for two semesters in College. Had a part time job delivering Pizza after class. Lived on leftover burnt pizzas. 😁

Ha ha... takes a certain kind of hunger to eat one of those nasty things!
Gus be a brave man!

Thank God that my wife and I haven't been that tight for grocery money in our 38 years of marriage. That being said, some plain old rice with a can of Campbells soup over it is tasty and filling.


Ron

The story goes, we in the PNW, Oregon specifically, didn't have opossum until the CCC boys from the SE brought them up, so they'd have them to et.