For me, first it is pinto beans and cornbread.
And spam and cabbage fried.
And scrambled eggs.
Canned mackerel fried like crab cakes.

Hamburger from freezer!

Beans and Cornbread. Cheap TV Dinners that cost $1.35
Ravioli that’s .75 cents a can at Dollar General. 😬

boilt pork neckbones, w/salt and black pepper.

add cornbread. maybe some potatoes.

Ramen noodles. They make an excellent base for about 2 quarts of soup made with sliced carrots, celery, onion, minced garlic, and a tuna-sized can of Walmart chicken breast. The whole meal costs maybe $1.50 and it's healthy and filling.
Jerry

fideo, papas caldutha stuff like that cheap good tasting mescan food.

Spam isn’t that cheap, anymore.

Sardines, oranges, almonds , boiled eggs. Black coffee in the morning kills my appetite and usually drinking a lot of water does too.

Depends on the time of year. Might be woodchuck and dandelion greens in spring/summer. Venison, rabbit or ruffed grouse with ramen noodles in fall /winter.

Ain’t that the TRUTH.

I buy cheap cans of tuna fish and boil eggs to make tuna salad sandwich’s. Add a little sugar, mayo, and sweet pickle relish to mine to make em tasty.

Ramen noodles suck.

You can buy a pack of those alfredo noodles for a buck. I like them even when I'm not on a budget,....a little milk,..a little butter. They're a meal.

This stuff.

https://www.target.com/p/knorr-174-pasta-sides-pasta-side-dish-alfredo-4-4oz/-/A-12936122

I had a student loan glitch in college.... zero money..... some friends had had a bumper crop of beets in their garden and gave me a huge bag full of them. I lived on beets and white rice (which was very reddish/purple after been steamed together....) for maybe 3 weeks. It was 20 years before I could even look at beets again.

Our eating habits dont change.

Always have staples like sugar, flour, rice and the like. If it got real tight, could get a bag of beans, otherwise it's canned beans for the convenience. Always have a six pack or more of the Sam's Club canned white chicken breast around. That's good for lots of stuff. Plenty of deer around if you're hungry.

If things are real tight and you can't shoot or catch something for some reason you can live for a week on a package of cheap bologna and a generic loaf of bread.

Venison, beans and rice

I’ll have to give those a try. I ate so many Ramen Noodles in College I don’t care if I ever eat another.

My budget hasn't been tight enough to have to carefully select food for a while. But there's still a lot of budget priced food out there that I eat because it's good.

Those packs of Knorr pasta dishes are good stuff.

Some of them only need water. Some of them need butter and milk.

All of them are good.

Thank the Lord my budget is not tight and hasn't been in many years. But we always spend wisely anyways. We've been eating from the garden and the elk killed last year. Tonight we had an elk roast, sweet corn, okra, yellow squash and red potatoes. Later gonna have some more watermelon and cantaloupe. In my 20s used to eat a lot of $1 frozen dinners. Or for a real splurge a $1.25 Totinos pizza.

I like ramen noodles. Got a case of them in the pantry right now. I like to boil them until tender, then drain off all the water, pour the flavor packet into the drained noodes and stir. Good by themselves. Better with some fried, cubed venison stirred into the beef flavored noodles or grouse/pheasant stirred into the chicken flavored.

A typical quick dinner around here is some polish sausage baked in the toaster oven and some Knorr Alfredo noodles boiled up on the stove.

Hardly any labor involved,...not much money,..and you have a big plate of sliced up polish sausage and Alfredo noodles to fill up on.

We have dinners like that all the time around here.

Kidney beans and smoked meat of some kind or pintos and ground venison or beef, sometimes cabbage or mustard greens, catfish or bream that we catch. Even though I can afford better now I still eat poor folks food. Most of the ethnic foods such as Mexican, Cajun, or Black folks food was cooked by poor folks getting by on what they had. A gumbo or a chili are both good examples of throwing together some cheap ingredients with seasoning. Bar b que started out about the same way thousands of years ago.

Mayonnaise sammich and hawaiian punch

I thought you were a Miracle whip fan??

When my budget was really tight. I ate fish, venison, potatoes and white bread. A few beans.Drank water and black coffee. Wasn't too bad.

There is a lot of economical food, it is boring.

You must think I live in a trailer

Put a slice of Velveeta on that sumbitch and eat like the rich folks.

I don't eat expensive food anyway.

No change.

I eat what I like. It's not hard to make even cheap food "tasty".


In college when we spent more on beer and girls than we should we'd go shoot a few jackrabbits and jerk their backstraps.

Fry them up chicken fried style, with mashed taters and homemade gravy from the drippin's, and eat like kings...

Darn. Makes me wonder what you eat when your flush.

I pitched a couple of chicken thigh and leg quarters in the last crock of pintos, chopped celery and onions, 2 beers, 2cups of coffee, water and Spanish Rice seasoning after the beans had cooked for 2 hours.
2 hours later it was great, Hastings. I sometimes pitch in a few cottontail hind quarters.

My budget doesn't get so tight I can't eat whatever I want.

Elk, then deer, then elk and deer, then deer and elk. Pancakes, eggs, oatmeal, canned veggies. Trying to avoid pasta but that got me by many times in many ways.

Well, I did. Lol

You posted you raise Sea monkeys in a MW jar?

A 'loney sammich, RC Cola, and a Moon pie.

As in the depression, on the farm there is food.

First couple of terms I had a budget of about $3/day that had to cover booze and cigarettes too. Slim pickings! I had help, food boxes and soup kitchens! And free dialup offers...

People here these days don't know poor. It ain't having a used car, small tv and cheap cell phone! I saw poor in the Philippines, no food boxes or soup kitchen, no car, no tv, just flip flops, t-shirt and a cheap cell phone....

I lived on rice, sweet potatoes, eggs, and whatever cheap greens were on sale for quite a while. I rode the schit out of bicycles and struggled to get enough calories on what the change in my couch cushions afforded me. Lol.

Pour a can of clearance soup on top and it was a feast!

I've lived so cheap all my life. One thing I dont skimp much on id food. I will however, buy a cheaper steak, like a shoulder steak instead of Tbones .

That’s a 3 course meal. You weren’t poor....

trapping rabbits and possums in rabbit boxes works as a supply of protein.

remember the dog has to eat too. showing ribs is ok, but not starving.

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.

Life is good. Instead of eating sardines cause I have to, I'm dinning on skinless boneless fillets in olive oil this evening.

Some day I am going to shoot some young ground hogs just to give em a try...
But opossum... man that is gross. Ha!

Believe or not a ground hog is fine eating cooked right it’s a dark meat and greasy like beef cook it slow in a crock pot bear meat is the same way

Lol. Someone’s been bottling up frustration from those brow beatings from the wife. It’s ok buddy, you can’t get hurt here. This is your safe space..

Fortunately I've never been poor enough to really restrict what I eat but I still eat things that are economical.

Lentils, rice, and beans are very healthy and cheap.

I don't know. Grandpa said not to eat anything that burrows. However, that was right after I told him I ate a gray digger (large ground squirrel). I know my dad et beaver tail.... Opossum is about the last thing that looks tasty to me! We had a couple Guinea pigs, I could definitely see skewering those tender little chits!

Bologna sammich

Idahoan instant garlic/herb mashed potatoes ($.89), can of corn/beans/peas ($.69), chicken thighs or drumsticks ($1.79 a lb.). I keep Cup-O-Noodles and tuna packets/crackers in my locker at work. Not so much because it's cheap, but because it's quick and easy. I can stuff it down my gullet and still get in a 35-minute nap at lunch.

Bottom line though is if you are willing to prepare it, it doesnt cost a great deal to eat.

Ruth's Chris Steak House.








I wish.

Fry it in a pan and top with a fried egg and THEN you got a damn good meal. 🤠

If you shop right you can eat pretty cheap. Been a while but a box of mac and cheese and burger or tuna. Potato and bacon soup. Venison stew was always a staple, potatoes, onions, and carrots are cheap. Oats and eggs, baloney sammichs are cheap.

Really we have it pretty good, tour around Africa a bit if you want to see poor.

this

I love homemade potato soup. And it’s pretty damn cheap too.

you can live on rice and fish, just don't be to picky on the fish

Or put it on the grill with bbq sauce and a slice of red onion.

In my first non-military job after college I pretty much lived on tuna fish, olives, and ramen noodles for a year. Occasionally I would go to Wendy's and get a cup of chilli. I wasn't making much.

One time I was out of work for a while. I went to a St Patrick's/ St Joseph's day parade in New Orleans were I lived. They threw cabbage, carrots, and potatoes off of the floats. I filled a couple of burlap bags with those. Add some tomato paste and I didn't have much of a food bill for three months.

Now THATS eating cheap. You win. 😜

Yep, PARADE FOOD WINS!

you mean the ones with high content heavy metal mercury..? .

No. The Starkist that’s on sale. 😜

I have graduated from so-called chunk light all the way to solid albacore.... Still fairly cheap, low carb, quick grub. Add some mayo and whole grain bread and it's lunch. Add rice, dinner.

When I was a kid, we ate a lot of watercress salads till the lettuce came in. Mom would have served Spam if Dad had let her, but he ate so much of it during the war, she was forbidden from bringing it into the house. When things get tight we eat a lot of eggs. Fried or scrambled for breakfast and egg salad for lunch or dinner. We'll scavenge the freezer and get creative if need be with whatever's left in there. We will eat canned tuna once in a while too. I always take whatever leftovers we have for lunch at work, and we get pretty ferocious with the coupon shopping too.

I'm convinced Bumble Bee is the best big brand. Hopefully not on the boycott list.

Hard to say about eating 'possum while sitting here all fat and happy with a full stomach. But knowing the kinds of things 'possums regularly eat, I believe I would just about have to be knocking on starvation's door, and even then 'possum would be near the very bottom of the list of meat that I would think long and hard before trying to eat.

I had some older relatives who raised gardens and also still ate 'possum for their meat source back in the day during hard times and said they were glad to have it at the time.

So, I suppose I could too if I got hungry enough and 'possum was all there was to eat and probably be just as glad as they were to have it, too.

knows a family that woz so poor they had to jrk the family dog off to feed the cat.

It wasn't 3 weeks, but I only had a 5 day meal ticket, while at college. So, I would tank up Friday night at the cafeteria, eat all I could, because it would be Monday morning before I had another meal. Then go down to Safeway's and on Friday they put the fruit on sale. For a couple of dollars, I would get a bag full of fruit, usually oranges. Whichever fruit was on sale, was what I ate for the weekend. I'll eat fruit, but not very often.

When my kids were little there really wasn't enough money to feed all of us with store bought food. We grew a big garden and ate game meat year round at nearly every meal. Store bought meat was a real splurge back then and happened only rarely. We grew several hundred pounds of potatoes, carrots and onions every year. we put the potatoes in burlap bags, tied the carrots and onions in bunches by their tops with twine and hung them from the floor joists in the cellar. They'd keep that way for months and combined with venison, rabbit, squirrel, woodchuck, wild turkey, grouse, pheasant, ducks and geese we always had the makings of a good meal. I learned back then no matter what to keep a good, accurate .22 rifle and some ammo on hand all the time because an 89 cent box of .22LR's could put hundreds of pounds of venison on the table if you were careful and you just can't get meat much cheaper than that. We did try eating a coon once but it was nasty and we threw it out after taking one bite. I really don't want to find out what possum tastes like and thankfully was never hungry enough to need to.

Agree that if you prepare your own food, cheap ingredients can make 5 star meals. My income has increased in the past 2.5 decades, and while I do feed more mouths, the cost per mouth probably hasn't changed much.

Yep, that's some cheap grub.

Got a powdered sugar donut once. Came out of the Sierras after hiking for a week or so, standing down on US 395 trying to hitch a ride down to Bridgeport. Station wagon with a good size family coming down the road, all of a sudden one of the kids in the back leans out the window, throws something at me and my bud. We looked pretty rough, "hippie like" if you will, and the kids and family looked a bit 50's like. Whatever he threw went over our heads, so I walked over and found the donut. We ate it, after a week of dehydrated foods a powdered donut tasted really good, and it was free!

Not when poor, but just because they were free for the taking I'd stop at a particular place near the WA/OR border on the south side of the Columbia river outside Wallula. Trucks hauling carrots, onions, and taters would dump their overweight portions before hitting the scales in a wide spot on the road. Free veggies are OK with me too, even when I'm flush and can afford to shop.

But burlap bags full of free stuff from a parade, that tops anything I've ever gotten.

Geno

When I was in college I worked in housekeeping at a ski resort. On “checkout day” I’d go through the units and inventory everything, then start cleaning. Folks would leave all kinds of stuff behind. Found a 1/2 eaten casserole one day in the fridge and figure that if they were rich enough to stay there they were probably decent people.....popped that thing in the oven and chowed down.

Grocery stores will throw away good food too.....so I have been told.

The thing with my old (now long deceased) relatives, though, was back during their hard times there were NO deer or wild turkeys anywhere at all around this part of the country, and other small game like rabbits, squirrels, racoon, quail (no pheasant or grouse here either), etc., etc., were hard to find because there were lots of other hungry people that hunted, trapped (and poached) them for food, too. Dogs pretty much had to hunt game or work livestock in order to earn their leftover scraps, otherwise they were soon gone.

Livestock like milk cows, hogs, chickens, goats and such were mostly for raising cash money to buy needed things they could grow or make by selling the milk, butter, cream, eggs, smoked cured hams, shoulders, bacon. and the like. Keeping beef cattle was almost unheard of for poorer folks back during their hard times.

I tend to look on the day old rack, the corner of the meat counter with mark down "old" packages, and the bags of good fruit that is starting to get a bit ripe and therefor marked down..................................before that stuff gets to the dumpster.

Have had numerous friends down on their luck that did their share of diving though.

Geno

I consider those corner bin steaks premium because they are "aged". Seriously, I snag that stuff all I can.

You just have to ask if they have anything that you could give to the hogs or chickens.

I assume.....

That would be college days for me, 1980-1985 central coast of California. So either cube steaks and Rancher beans or $.99/lb tri-tip and said beans.

When young and starting out, we would pick potatoes from the fields. What the machines left, usually a dollar for fifty pounds. I would pick any fruit and berries I could find. Lots of blackberrIes and raspberries where we live, growing wild. The wife would can or make jelly and syrup! Buy twenty pounds of beans. Deer ,elk or fish plus some hamburger. Make a large pot of chile, bake a couple potatoes! Pour child over potatoes, became one of my favorite dinners and still works well! Oatmea, and bulk rice made up breakfast most days. That was a long time ago. Eating good and cheap is possible if needed! We still can lots of garden food, and fruit! Somethings are just better made at home. Never liked Raman noodles so we passed on those cheap packages!

Venison
Wild Pig
Piquito Beans
Tortillas
Chicken

When I first got out of the Navy a homeless Eskimo showed me all the best places and times to dumpster dive. He used to sleep on a balcony of a hotel down in Va Beach during off season in the winter. Those were the days! When I was poor as dirt, I just had faith in God that things would work out.

Across the country, in western Oregon, foothills of westslope of the Cascade Mtn, my grandparents spoke of the same. There were times there were NO deer to be had.. Pure dairy farming, growing, preserving...

Things were tight for Mom when I was young, my father had been killed in an accident.
We had a garden, she canned everything we grew,
And anything other people offered.
She made all kind of pickles, sauerkraut, ketchup, spaghetti sauce...
I remember cousins giving her deer, we canned them, my uncle butchered, and gave her
all the bones. She cooked them off, and canned the broth.

We got government cheese and powdered milk.
Lots of Mac and cheese, powdered milk was mixed with a little
real milk if we had extra money. Then she started buying milk from a
cousins farm, I think they were helping her out. I remember her cooking
pudding if we had extra milk, making us egg custard if someone gave her
eggs.
Gravy bites for supper. (Broth made into gravy, over bread)

When I was around 7 my step dad showed up. When he started to eat
with us, he wanted meat. Remember mom griping, "He thinks every meal
has to have meat". Had been so long she forgot that was normal.

He started helping buy groceries.
Pork chops!
Steak!
2 chicken legs!

Us kids couldn't believe it. I was too young to understand it all.
Something made me put it all together a couple years ago,
I mentioned all the work and food to Mom, not the shortages.
She sat and cried, couldn't believe I remembered it.
She was ashamed, i was proud of her.
It took grit and work, she got us through.
Not by begging, and other than the govt surplus stuff,
She never got any welfare type help.

My wife and I haven't always had a lot of money, but she grew up that way,
so it wasn't a problem. Back then, we had a lot of deer, few permits.
But we lived on deer meat. Rarely bought any beef.

scrambled eggs and tuna is good.

I cruise the meat counters for marked down meat, and eat less. Don't eat junk food, drink pop, chips, desserts etc. My only food related weakness is too much beer. If I have to stretch stuff out more, it's stews and homemade soup.

Kroger and other stores have deli counters. They sell fried chicken and other stuff. The trick is to get to know the schedule and get to know the staff. My buddy Bob fed his family for decades off this trick. You show up as they're wrapping up for the night and play Let's Make a Deal.

Your daughter?

Back in the late 70's I was working a second shift in a factory in Clarksville TN. The plant's general foreman's youngest brother was working there, and he was case of someone who had a job solely because of family connections. The boy just didn't act right, and in addition couldn't speak real good. Anyway, he lived just down the road from the plant, and every night at supper break, which was 30 minutes, his wife would pick him up, take him home and feed him. One night he came back after supper and said that when they went home, there wasn't anything in the house to eat, so they just "funked".......his pronunciation of the word.

After that, if the wife ever told me that she didn't know what she was going to fix to eat, I'd always say well, we can just funk. Even worked a few times.

Interesting thread and some great points made here. As noted, stretching a dollar is not the same thing as suffering genuine poverty. Also when one is actually hungry one becomes a lot less picky about what taste good and what doesn’t.

Where I am I too thank the Lord for Tex-Mex restaurants 🙂

Otherwise, in addition to being on a tight budget I don’t have much patience for cooking, the microwave is my friend. A favorite breakfast is a paper plate, a bunch of corn tortilla, shredded mozzarella cheese, cherry tomatoes and an egg. Lay out the tortillas, lay the cheese and tomatos on top, break the egg on there too, microwave under cover (exploding tomatoes) for six minutes, Fast, minimum clean up.

My other staple is 50-50 raw oatmeal/granola, Kept at school. A simple pint of milk from home, eat the mix uncooked like cereal. A slow-release carb loading that carries me through the rest of the day. Fast, easy, simple clean up. No refrigeration needed.

When I was young, broke, and just starting out in the relationship thing it was pussy, now I am old and well settled in to marriage it is crow.

I was raised in a home that had priorities. First we are going to eat good food that is healthy for us. Second we are going to stay warm in the winter. Third we are going to be clean and have clean clothes that are fit to be seen in public.

All the rest is fluff anyway

I grew up on a farm and we raised a lot of the vegetables we ate. Green beans, butter beans, peas, squash, okra, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, etc. Most of the vegetables were canned and the freezer was for the meat. We raised cattle and hogs so butchering a calf/shoat was no problem, but we also hunted, so we had deer, squirrels, and ducks, to add variety.

My brother married a girl from Malaysia. She would see Mom get something out of the freezer and open something we had canned to cook and wanted to know if we raised everything we ate. She had never seen Mom come in with groceries.

To this day, my kids will tell you that venison and french fries is there favorite meal. .

Poor a church mouse after a divorce and got her business CC bills dumped on me. Child support etc.

Got paid every two weeks and fueled the truck... as money allowed would buy cases of canned spinach ($1 for 4 or 3 can) and cases of canned tuna ($1 for 2) from whoever had on sale. Ate that for a solid year plus... solved the debt and moved on.

Rough time. 48 was as high as I could ever set the heat.

On the bright side, I was fit as a fiddle and had 6 pack abs.

News for you Cash, that was your backbone.

I have never experienced a time when I either didn't know where my next meal was coming from, or things were so tight that we had nothing but the heel of a loaf of bread left in the house. Large household growing up, eight of us, but we lived on a farm, had a huge garden, killed a beef every year, had a flock of chickens, and I remember eating very, very well.

Same thing after I got married. Might not have had a filet mignon every other meal, but my wife has always canned and froze what we grew in the garden, and I've had everything to eat that I've ever wanted.

Something I learned a long time ago, is that the basics of food........beans, potatoes, corn, rice, tomatoes, and the such, are good to the taste, as well as good for you. Simple is sometimes best.

At one point Taco Cabana was a good spot for lunch when times were hard. $2 and change. Order a shredded chicken taco, cup of water, and free chips and salsa. The chips and salsa aren't free anymore and the price of tacos went up. Saved my ass many times back then.

you left out sausage

I could live on rice and beans but the old lady isn't a big fan. She grew up in Ireland eating poor people food so she cooks a lot of cheap dishes consisting of cabbage and potatoes. I'm not picky.

i love gabbage

When we were kids, money was tight.

I had a younger brother and remember having to make cereal for him so my mom could sleep in in the morning on Saturday.

I got up before my younger brother and there was only enough cereal for one bowl. So I ate it...

Of course my brother gets up and asks me to make his cereal. I told him we were out... He started squalling, and I knew mom wouldn't be happy at the intrusion, so I said sit down, you can try the "new" cereal.

A few minutes later mom got up and came into the kitchen where my young brother was eating Friskies cat food with lots of sugar and milk....

She beat my ass,... Then had my dad beat me ass again when he got home from work.

No, I left out chicken....lol.

I think the albacore has the higher mercury content, MB

budget never changes on food......

always good chow here........

watch for sales......freeze/store it.......

two big azz Ribeyes in fridge for tonight......

I waited tables at Steak and Ale in college for the left overs and free baked potatoes. I figured if a chick was clean and good looking I could eat her meat (left on her plate).

My wife grew up dirt poor.
She is kind and gracious even when times have been bumpy.
We love boiled cabbage and potatoes.

Never got that tight, that it changed my eating habits. Pay yourself first.

In college, bought 3 loaves of bread for a buck.

5 boxes mac & cheese for a buck. Can't remember what ramen noodles cost but they were cheap too.

Big jug of spaghetti sauce.

Government cheese my buddy got. We made a lot of little pizzas with the bread, cheese and sauce.

Pretty hard to pay yourself when the till is empty.

I just bought a 12 pack of ramen noodles the other day for $1.60 at Walmart.

That's cheap food, I don't care who you are.

Don't get there often as the nearest is now 3+ hours away, but if I lived where they had one I could get to every day Costco has a big slice of pizza, get the combo slice, for $2.14. Ask for a cup for water, two packs of Parm, and pack of hot peppers. Lunch, could be lunch and dinner if one was really strapped for cash.

Boiled cabbage, a few carrots, and some taters, maybe some greens especially the free ones in the fields and that can be pretty decent cheap food for sure. The more water, you have in it the more it stretches.

Friend in college used to go to the Safeway store at 5 PM, $1 loaves of French bread hot out of the oven. He'd get two and some milk, one for dinner, the other for breakfast. He was one of the guys with crab rings, so we ate french bread and crab a few times too.

Geno

It'll keep my thermometer stiff...

ROFL

Same boat. I eat really healthy which means lots of salads and meat. And then there is beer...

I remember mom telling dad that with these three growing boys that she was going to have to start frying 2 chickens instead of one. Dad said no, make a few more biscuits & stretch the gravy. I learned young about the tasty little hidden morsels of meat on chicken parts that are often thrown out, or that marrow is good.

After my divorce, I lived on venison, fresh fish, & other assorted wild game for about 6 months to get a couple bills cleaned up. Luxuries were a big bottle of gator aid & a six pack of Old Milwaukee per week.

Now days, cost aside I still love country food, wild game, soul food etc., foods that some call cheap.

My wife says I could live off whatever I could find in a ditch.
I have always eat good no matter the money. Its not hard when you're not picky. Evil wife #2 put me on beans and rice for a while but you can add anything to that and make a great meal.
Good thread.

Peanut butter on saltines. Creamed tuna on toast. Hot dogs and beans.

Damn, I'm getting teary eyed remembering how Mom used to stretch the budget.

Pinto beans, of course.

Tag

next great thread: How many bean recipes do you have? Best way to cook beans? Best dishes with beans?

My wife does not like beans so they are a treat to me now. She is just beginning to catch on why I encourage her to go visit family and spend the day with her friends.

Had a college professor attempt to describe his 'hardships' of pursuing his PhD to us in class.

He claimed he existed on pinto beans and tube steak.

Obviously the rumors were confirmed.

I've discussed my wife's cabbage rolls before. It takes a bit of time to prepare them but they're fairly cheap food. The ground beef costs a bit and if you want sour cream on them you have to pay a bit for that, also. But cabbage and rice make up the bulk of the meal,...and they're good stuff!

I could eat them every day.

With 6 mouths to feed and only dad working while mom stayed home to take care of us, the food budget was always pretty slim growing up. We ate game meat and locally caught fish alot, especially after my brothers and I got old enough to contribute. We always grew a big garden and mom spent alot of time canning vegetables. Other than that I remember alot of boxed mac- n -cheese with cheap hot dogs cut up in it, chicken and biscuits that was long on gravy and skimpy on chicken, pancake night, liver and onions once a week {yuck, but liver was cheap}, rice with gravy, chipped beef on toast and home made waffles. I still like most of that stuff with the exception of liver and onions.

Times have been tough a few times, but I never had to cut the budget like some of you folks, for which I'm grateful. That said, we buy half a beef every year, bulk chicken, pork on sale, 5 dozen eggs for $3.78. Fresh fruit and veggies whatever is in season cheap.

I notice that when I get to the checkout line at the grocery store, there's rarely anything with a brand label in the cart. Even spices, and the coffee is from the bulk bins. Today my food budget is the same as grad school in the late 80's, and I eat better.

But when things get really, really, REALLY tight, I guess I'll have to add beans to the chili.......

More than a few nights we had pancakes for dinner in our house growing up. Banana, chocolate chips, and on occasion splurging was some blueberries. Usually some sort of bottled "maple syrup" which is sugar water/corn syrup with flavoring in it. We kids usually looked at it as a treat. For me especially it beat the heck out of fish sticks on friday nights. I hated fish sticks.

Not much in the way of pots of beans in our house, as I said earlier it was pasta as a staple for us. Usually spaghetti or lasagna or such at least twice a week, first dinner and leftovers. Then there was a lot of tuna noodle casserole and baked mac and cheese on Fridays, no meat that day for a Catholic family. Lotsa noodles. I still love them.

My wife is the bean eater in our household. Many times she just opens a can of beans, usually black beans, and puts it over leftover rice, cous cous, or rice. Me, I can take 'em or leave 'em. They don't do much for me. And it's nice to knwo she can live "poor" too. Once she was purchasing a condo and survived on mostly hot dogs for a while in order to afford it. Bay Area you know, even years ago housing was expensive there.

Geno

Dutch,

Maybe some fish soup?

Geno

Well, the catfish hit a pound this month, so some caldo de bagre most definitely in the near future. Some pan-readies, too. And I do make a mean trout chowder......

A couple other things I remember eating alot of growing up was goulash and spaghetti. Usually made with venison burger and moms sauce made from our home grown tomatoes. Mom made darn good sauce so either was very good.

never had to skimp on food their is so much were I grew up . most things we did for fun was getting food shrimping ; crabbing ; fishing ;digging clams; getting oysters ; hunting ; gigging frogs. when my kids were young they had a lot of fun catching a fish in the back yard or shooting a dove off of the power line in the front yard with their bb gun then making a fire and cooking and eating it after they cleaned it . these days I would prob. get arrested for letting them do it . it was just how I grew up .these days I eat very little store bough meat and no bough fish

Baloney aka Horsecock sammachies!

First night at any camp dad made boiled spuds, green beans and venison burger patty. Next night, same but with fried venison steak. Pretty much the same as at home but we might get a night of pork chops or chicken too... Never had beef. Buckmeat sandwiches were common fare, on Wonder bread.

Never had catfish in soup. Might have to try it someday.

Geno

PS, I forgot my old buddy, who grew up in the midwest during the end of the Great Depression, told me he ate a whole lot of carp sandwiches for school lunches. Fried carp filet between two pieces of bread. So far I haven't been that poor.

We eat of squash our of the garden in the summer, wifey makes squash casseroles she freezes for winter.

Oh, that's right, you're one of those cold water trash fish guys.....

Carp ain't nothing to look down on. The traditional Christmas meal in Poland is a carp. But I side track... if your buddy is from the Midwest, carp sandwiches were just local food. Fall fisheries has processed and sold carp for decades, and Joe Tess still sells lots and lots and lots of fried carp sandwiches....

http://www.joetessplace.com/go/about-us/

Must be different from the european carp we get here, they smell like crap but if you hold your breath, suck on some petrol, and stick a lit stick of gelignite up your bum then it is possible to eat a small piece that has been smoked, without choking...just.

Grilled cheese and soup. I grew up on it but the kids hate it.

Same fish, different water. Fish taste like what they eat and the algae in the water they live in. If you'd pull some barcoo grunters out of the same water you got the carp from, they'd taste like kangaroo [bleep], too......

Likely one and the same fish. Just caught or raised in clean cold water. Our catfish can get the funky smell when caught in summer in some waters where they algae are going great guns. Go back in the winter or spring before the bloom and the catfish taste wonderful

Geno

Only catfish I've had tasted like mud. But then I like good lutfisk!

Oh boy, do you have me wrong. I love my salmonids for catching and even raising but I have a different philosophy about eating fish. I thought perhaps you might have noticed me espouse that belief on some of the other food related threads we've had here over the years.

My favorite fish?





the one that's on my plate!

I'll try any once at least. I've had deckhands on the boats out of San Diego look at me askance when I tell them to put "that" fish in my sac.

Geno

PS, when at school at that infamous "Salmonid U" I used to tell the salmon heads............."Real fish have spines in their fins"

Not a dang thing wrong with that for lunch or supper. Especially when made with good homemade bread and a nice cheddar or Swiss.

Fall is right around the corner so I'll have to keep it in mind.

I feel sorry for your kids.

Geno

Orrr.....American and sandwich bread.....

Jim,

I used to work for long shifts (10-12 hrs +) making "Wonder Bread" at 100 loaves a minute. Can't hardly think about eating balloon bread anymore. Used to take the white part out and roll it into a ball to eat after school when I was a kid though. Oh, I ate the crusts too, as not eating them wasn't allowed in our house.

And American is not cheese................I do believe the label says it's a Pasteurized Cheese Food Product. I do kinda like it on a burger though.

Geno

Been a lot of years since we experienced a truly tight budget. Don't recall it affecting the way we ate.

Its got cheese in it Dammit!

So does Cheese Whiz.

And Cheetos?

Geno

And your point is????

They's all tasty in the right circumstances?

But they ain't cheese, any more than American "cheese" is and the gentleman above said "grilled cheese". Not grilled pasteurized process cheese food "product".

Aren't you supposed to be out scarin' cows or feeding rabbits or watching the wheat ripen or something?

Geno

with a little garlic salt on the outside of the bread when you are flipping it over.

Wouldn't work in Northern Pennsylvania...................they'd tell you it was too "spicy".

Geno

For God's sake don't bring up Velveeta Jim.

Eleven years ago I had shoulder replacement surgery. I was to be off work for a year.

I made some payments ahead, and worked out a plan with the bank, as to the house. We has some temp disability funds coming in from work, and a bit of savings, so no real problem.

This was late 2008 and into the fall of 2009. Remember the 2007-2008 financial crisis? Remember all the "We Buy Gold and Silver" commercials? When silver topped $40 I made two consecutive sales to a local buyer.
Didn't make huge money that year, overall. I did finish the year out with all payments current, and a bit of weight gained from eating well and often.

If any haven't noticed, silver is available now at a fair price...

That stuff makes a dang fine fish bait. Caught an awful lot of trout on it over the years.

Forgot about that. Had a friend, came from a large Catholic Scandahoovian family, 9 kids or something. His dad would buy us blocks of Velveeta so we could ride our bikes over to the local reservoir and catch as many trout as we dared take home. Usually we drug our brothers over so we could catch extras to put on their limits.

Ate a bunch of trout every weekend.

Geno

I'd rather eat woodchuck and dandelion greens any day than anything with velveeta in it.

That stuff makes a dang fine fish bait. Caught an awful lot of trout on it over the years.

Forgot about that. Had a friend, came from a large Catholic Scandahoovian family, 9 kids or something. His dad would buy us blocks of Velveeta so we could ride our bikes over to the local reservoir and catch as many trout as we dared take home. Usually we drug our brothers over so we could catch extras to put on their limits.

Ate a bunch of trout every weekend.

Geno
[/quote]

Years ago was trout fishing with dad in southern Ky. Was coming back to camp and had to hold on to the willows on opposite side to get through a large still pool. Dad was up on the opposite bank talking to a woman using cheese for bait. True story, she had a whole piece of American cheese, hooked through the middle floating on top of the water.

The thing with my old (now long deceased) relatives, though, was back during their hard times there were NO deer or wild turkeys anywhere at all around this part of the country, and other small game like rabbits, squirrels, racoon, quail (no pheasant or grouse here either), etc., etc., were hard to find because there were lots of other hungry people that hunted, trapped (and poached) them for food, too. Dogs pretty much had to hunt game or work livestock in order to earn their leftover scraps, otherwise they were soon gone.

Livestock like milk cows, hogs, chickens, goats and such were mostly for raising cash money to buy needed things they could grow or make by selling the milk, butter, cream, eggs, smoked cured hams, shoulders, bacon. and the like. Keeping beef cattle was almost unheard of for poorer folks back during their hard times.




^^^^^^^^
Don't know if this was directed to my post or not. If it was the answer is, yes.

Back in those days farming equipment wasn't nearly as efficient as nowadays and a lot of grain, especially corn, would get knocked off the stalks and left laying out in the fields.

Poor folks would take burlap sacks and walk already harvested fields picking up any left behind corn (they called it "gleaning" corn) that was going to waste anyway to help feed their hogs, chickens and milk cow.

Hogs were also fed what was called "slop", "Slop" was just about any waste but hogs would still eat, including old leftover table scraps, potato, vegetable, fruit peelings and cores, raw skim milk, old used cooking grease, etc., etc.

The "slop" was generally saved in a 5 gal bucket over a day, poured into the feed trough along with a few ears of the "gleaned" corn thrown in with it at feeding time.
Chickens usually pecked around in the hog trough too for what ever morsels left that the hogs couldn't get to.

That's about goldang funny for sure.

Might get herself a big catfish, but certainly not a trout that way.

Geno

We've never scrimped on food due to necessity, but my wife is a quite thrifty person, so much of our food is killed or caught by me and the kids, or grown in our garden and canned or frozen for out of season consumption.

We even grow pinto beans. They are cheap enough that it doesn't make sense to do so, but my wife is convinced the ones we grow are better than store bought. Happy wife, happy life I suppose.

Haha! Thats exactly how I do it too!


Geno would still turn his nose up at it.


Unless it was cage free garlic salt......

What a fuggin high roller!

Wheat Montana Seed Lovers and sharp cheddar, makes a dandy grilled (real) cheese.

Big time sombitch.....

Apparently the farm's been sold to a Frenchman farmer? I am not using Brie! No damned way! No how!

I caught a Coca Cola cooler full of rainbow trout out of Laurel Lake using corn kennels for bait.

It took a while to catch the first one. I kept measuring my line out and finally found them at 35'. After I located their depth, I just hauled them in.

We had a big family fish fry after that trip.

In the morning I eat a banana. Or if I don’t want any sugars I eat a handful of unsalted mixed nuts. Sometimes after that I drink one them small low sodium V8s.

Haha!

Frog eating sunsabitches!

I don't feel that we ever had to go without good food as kids. The only thing lacking in our meals was flavor. Salt and pepper (very sparingly) was all dad would tolerate. We rarely ate at restaurants. I remember an uncle talking about eating at Burger King and fantasized how wonderful it must be.

Visiting grandma, on the other hand, was another story. No running water and food was scarce. Mostly bought with what my dad could spare after taking care of his own household. Tomato juice with shell pasta that she called "bugs", ketchup sandwiches, fritters made of flour and water and occasional snow ice cream. She always had a giant tub of lard on the back porch but I don't recall her frying anything.

Choice steak instead of prime.

When the money was good and we could buy whatever we wanted we would say we were eating like we were on foodstamps.

I used to like to look at the groceries of the people in line in front of me and guess which ones were on foodstamps. The ones on stamps always had a cart full of the best.

You could also tell who owned a taco wagon and was on stamps too.

Bb

I go to ALDI

After seeing lots of pictures of 'fire members I'm having a hard time believing that very many of you ever suffered from a lack of food.

Uhhhh......I am getting ready for winter.

I roll high, I roll low, I even been known to roll in the middle.

If'n it was free I'd never turn up a nose at that sammich.

That'd be like turning up my nose at a free Coors Light when I was a drinkin' man.

Everyone knows (don't they?) that the best beer is the one you are buying.

Geno

You could starve half the guys here to death on Beanie Weenies and Bud light.



Fancy themselves as prepared for anything. Ha!

Funny, sometimes when folks ask the ubiquitous question

"How ya doin'?"

I'll answer with

"I haven't missed many meals lately." and rub my stomach

Geno

I just tell folks

"I ain't fat, I'm just better at storing energy than some other people"

Geno

With all the talk of the EMP, gay army and coming nuclear winter.....who you reckon is gonna have a chance?

Heard tell you Eskimo folks are used to preparing for winter...................all ten months of it.

Geno

Thats all I do.....prepare for winter.


About December comes around.....and I buy every discount ham I can find. I dont even know where they are all stashed.


Just in case.......

Wife does not understand, but she is getting there.



Thats an Islander for ya!

What you’re saying is that you handle your hams the same way a squirrel handles his nuts?

Laughin' so hard at that I started coughin'

A hamaholic, gots 'em stashed all over the house...............just in case.

Geno

PS them islanders, what do they know about storing up. Nothing drifting in with the flotsam and jetsam on this side of the island just walk around the other side. But them Eskimo folks, nothing drifting in around Nome it's a long walk or umiak paddle to Nova Scotia or Greenland.

Exactly right.


Its a compulsion....and sometimes I lose one....or three.


Call it a "bonus" ham when it is found again.

Funny you should say that......I saw a Squirrel burying a nut in my yard last week and I immediately thought of Jim.

The days get short and I start acting like a meerkat who sees a snake coming down the trail.

My Grandmother and most of Her kin, wanted every possum that I could catch. They always wanted them alive and would put them in a coop and feed them corn for a while before butchering and eating them. I ate it when I was young, but do not remember much about it. miles

Cornfed opossum definitely sounds tastier than non-cornfed opossum.

Bologna and white bread.

Cornbread and milk.

Sand

I’m surprised nobody has said “ pussy” yet.

That's never out of season. Rich or poor.

And when they was no crawfish to be had we ate sand.

You ate sand?

We ate sand.

Tater tot casserole......without the tater tots

WTF ??? 😜

I could live on bologna and white bread. Or beans & cornbread.

But when I was a kid Grandma used to gross me out drinking soured buttermilk with cornbread in it. 🤮

i love buttermilk, drink a quart a week, but got to stop since i started this keto diet, to lose weight... no beer either.

Damn Roger. Can’t imagine you with no beer! 😳

Good luck on your diet !!!

got to get healthy blood pressure is out of control.

Good luck!

Cheetos and brownie bites

Food groups: dairy, fruit (blueberry flavoring) , bread of course, perfect amount of fat and carbs.

If you have stashed hams. Even better

Mine dropped dramatically when I lost 50 lbs last year.

I'm not sure what "soured" buttermilk is but I loves me some cornbread chunked up in a bowl of buttermilk.

Roger that is strange. When first diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, they gave me a lot of diet information and Buttermilk, regular, not Bulgarian, and sour pickles were things that there was no limit on. Eat and drink all of those that you wanted to. Bulgarian was listed with the sweet milk. miles

too many carbs for the diet i'm on.well maybe not looking on line about one cup would be 12grams carbs so about half the daily limit of carbs.

Cornbread crumbled into a glass of ice cold whole milk is one of my favorite foods. But, it has to be real cornbread baked in an iron skillet and it can't have any sugar or flour in it.

Wiener water soup.

hardly any work at all

Ate so much of this growing up it was coming out my ears.


Now it’s what I ask for my bday meal, we dress it up w fried potatoes and salad now, but that’s the main course

i asked my slavic grandfather why he came to this country in the beginnings of the last century. He said he really didn't know what the United States was, but it had to be better than the village he came from, where every winter people starved to death.
i remember a big ham in a pan setting on top of the wood fired stove as a kid, him and grandmother were spooning out the congealed grease to spread on home made bread before touching the ham. You need fat in your diet, it was a luxury in the old country.
My mother came through the depression not knowing there was a depression, they never had any money anyway. But they farmed pinto beans. She said you trade for anything with pinto's.
i could live very well with a big sack of pinto's, which i keep in stock, and tortilla's, my wife makes them.
that and given her southern heritage is cornbread in a skillet.
During college, i used to manage to feed myself on about three dollars a day. you just have to look around.
another family relative was in the german army in russia. he managed to live. he described living on erzatz bread after the war ended. basically bread made with sawdust. he said it was a real treat to get one spoonful of lard per week.
These people were survivors.

There are a few beers you can drink on keto, but not many, and those you can will likely not satisfy. Way too watery for me.

I'd rather have tap water than those so called beers, keto or not.

yeah i needed to stop anyway beer is why i gained the weight to begin with.

I'm cutting my beer consumption by replacement. Every other one is replaced by a big glass of water.

ha, been months since i had water, just beer. drinking tea now.

Budget food or bug out food....Fried taters with whatever added..

I can feed me and my 20 yr old son together on that today and have been off and on during the summer.

Local mom and pop grocery had oscar meyer hot dogs .99cent a pack. They got no-name hot dog buns also .99 cents a pack. I grabbed about 25 packs of them and dropped them in the freezer.

Family size bag of generic potato chips from Aldi for $1.89. Bottles of spring water.

😄👍👍

When we get sick of hot dogs, we can always use them for giving the dogs their pro-biotic.

I'd get a job.

I married Ebenezer Sue so that I wouldn't have to make decisions like this.

Well I remember back when Walmart started selling their Great Value brand bean soup for 50 cents a can, it was on the shelf next to the Campbells at $1.38 a can. Near as my taste buds can tell it is the same stuff, just like one week they run Wallyworld labels and the next week Campbells but the same soup just a label change. Ain't to bad if you put some black pepper on it. Real good, fact is you make 2 cans a time throwing some mixed frozen vegtables and a half pound of ground beef, venison , antelope etc. Seasoned with garlic powder and some cayenne it's great. Guy can add noodles or rice or other things ever onct and awhile for variety. Can eat all right for $30-40 dollars a month and not starve. good way to lose a little weight. One time I went to the check out with 30 cans a bean soup in my cart and a bag of dog food. The gal that was the cashier said your dog is eating better than you are, I said rightly so her nose is better and she finds the birds I eat with the bean soup. Did I find everything I was looking for? Yep I said got it all, don't need anymore rubber dogshit from Walmart today. Going to Walmart is entertaining , kinda like crossing a zoo with a freak show. But onct every 2 weeks or so is often enough for me. All the other grocery store in this town make you have a membership card or screw you on the price you gotta pay f'em. MB

What do you eat when the budget is tight?


Shadow soup

One hot meal a day, a bowl of steam.

Robert White: To tell the truth it has been so long since my budget "has been tight" that I don't remember.
I am thankful for that.
I like Spam and agree with the above poster, it is NOT cheap anymore!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

The corned beef in the trapezoidal can is also quite expensive these days.

Mac n cheese with ground venison in it and a little pepper. still like to eat it when I'm not broke and the cost is pretty low. Can't stand ramen or spam or other "traditional" broke foods.

Underwood devil

It's both food (I think) and a laxative

My paternal grandad was a small town blacksmith. Dad told me that his dad didn't get paid in full with cash money very often during the depression but they did always seem to have enough decent food to eat from customers trading goods in lieu for critically needed blacksmith work.

Hot Pockets fit that description, pizza rolls too.

My wife likes the Walmart store brand chicken noodle and bean soup better than the Campbell's.

joken2, yer wife is a good woman who is smart. A lot of folks think if they pay more they get better, that is true on some stuff but not with bean soup. This is exactly how Walmart makes their profit by screwing people who have perception and reality problems. Someone with little money has better reality than someone with a lot of money, Make do and find out what you can do for yourself. MB PS damn glad to know there are other people out there who know the value in a 50 cent can of soup.