Frugal Living — Cheap + Healthy Eats

[NotMyProblemParticipant 965]

Upon examining my budget I noticed my biggest expense is FOOD.

I spend like $1000 a month on food. Ready to eat meals, take out, fast food etc.

My goal is to cut that down to $400 a month ASAP. I need to start cooking for myself again.

I’m gonna go ahead and list out some cheap, healthy options to replace the take-out bulls~~~ food. Maybe you guys can chime in with your own ideas.

BREAKFAST:
oatmeal, bananas, scrambled eggs, egg sandwich, hard boiled eggs, cereal(none of that sugary bulls~~~)

LUNCH/DINNER:
Note: I find it’s most efficient to just cook a big bowl of something on Sunday and eat at it all week

-Chicken and rice. boil a chicken, pull the meat off in bite size pieces, and add to some rice. Viola… enough to feed me for days. Super cheap + easy

-salmon and veggies. (stocked up on these huge wild salmon fillets months ago when they were in season) I cook one of these with lots of veggies/rice and a single fish can feed me 3 days in a row.

-chicken and veggies. Take 2 bowls- one with a few eggs beaten, and another with bread crumbs and spices. dip the breasts into the egg mix and then into the spice mix. Bake that s~~~(350 X 30m), steam/boil some veggies and boom 4-5 days worth of dinner. By covering it with the egg/spices it keeps the chicken from drying out.

-beef stew. I love my crock pot and I gotta learn to use it more.

Go ahead and add to the list. I need some more ideas.

Cheap and Healthy

Not my property... Not my problem

[Soldier-MedicParticipant 2566]

If you have access to a BBQ pit, then BBQ Chicken.

I have cooked a lot of chicken on the grill on a Sunday, and had it available for lunches for most of the week. They make great sandwiches, or by itself.

"I asked you a question. I didn't ask you to repeat what the voices in you head are telling you" ~ Me. ........Yes I'm still angry.

[NotMyProblemParticipant 965]

Mmmmnn BBQ. As soon as its not freezing out I’ll most definitely be grillin

Not my property... Not my problem

[Enjoy The DeclineParticipant 1719]

You should make your own pasta like I do. It takes amazing and it is very affordable. Here is what I do:

I try to get strained tomato glass jars not the one in the tin cans since tin cans can be very toxic if you eat pasta everyday like I do.

Try to get 100% whole grain pasta since it is very healthy for you and you will also feel fuller longer because of all the fiber in it.

Try to dice an onion and a bell pepper.

Put the diced veggies in the pot with a bit of olive oil and wait for the pot to sizzle a bit.

Put maybe 2-3 jars of strained tomatoes and rinse and put the water you used that you rinsed and filled up the jar with in the pot with the tomato sauce that is already in the pot.

Then put any spice of your choice like onion powder, paprika or even chili powder, but just put maybe a table spoon of all those spices combined in the pot because it is very potent. If you do not like your sauce that spicy, maybe put a teaspoon combined instead.

Let the sauce boil at 6-7 temperature for about an hour or an hour and thirty minutes or till it is thick or cooked enough to your liking.

Put water to boil in another pot, then boil the whole grain pasta and taste it once in a while till you like the texture of the pasta itself and maybe even put a bit of salt while cooking it. Make sure you put the dial at 6-7 temperature and this might take about 12 minutes.

Strain the pasta and put it back in the pot that you cooked the pasta in with some of the sauce you made. Mix it together.

Take as much pasta as you wish on a bowl to eat with.

In the end, you are gonna have a lot of extra tomato sauce that you can put it Tupperware containers. If ever you wish to eat pasta again, just boil pasta again to your liking, and take some of the sauce in your Tupperware container and put it in your freshly boiled pasta so your can have a feast with a bowl of home made pasta again in just under 15 minutes.

As for the Tupperware containers, make sure that that recycling arrows with the number on it is not a 3 or a 7, because I read out somewhere that Tupperware containers with a 3 or 7 can be toxic for you. Thankfully though, a lot of major plastic container companies like ziplock do not have this situation with their current products.

So overall, maybe half a box of 100% whole grain pasta worth 1 dollar with the portion of sauce with all the ingredients maybe 50 cents, you got a big good meal for about 1.50-2.00 dollars tops. I suggest having this for lunch though since they say people should eat carbs at lunch for weight management reasons.

I hope that this can help your situation for at least one of the meals of your day.

"Question everything" - Albert Einstein

[RoyDalParticipant]

@sovereign; A boxing coach, one who coaches professionals, recommends beans and rice in place of the meat in the “standard American diet” (or SAD).

Any old way, cooking for yourself is cost effective. Plant based foods are cost effective.

Mainly, when you cook for yourself, you know exactly what you are eating — and you know exactly what you are not eating. Both of which are absolutely required for the nutrition component of maintaining one’s health.

Edit: The coach meant brown rice. He rejects white rice as being nothing but empty calories. He also advocates peas and other legumes mixed in with the beans and brown rice.
A web search revealed that beans, legumes, and rice make up what is called a complete protein.

Society asks MGTOWs: Why are you not making more tax-slaves?

[Just a ManParticipant 934]

Cannot go wrong with a crock pot. Make sure ya get tupperware, preferably meal size and many of them. Masking tape and a permanent marker to put the dates on them. Freeze them and bingo, ready made meals and all home cooked. Crock pots usually come with a small recipe book and once you get used to the amount it will hold you can go online and go crazy.

Philosophy, the female repellent

[RedDawnParticipant 1391]

Smokey Beans
1. Get some cans of beans kidney, borlotti, white, butter beans anything you like.
2. Get some Passata (liquified tomato in a bottle, it’s nice)
3. Get BBQ sauce, honey, tabasco, mustard, chipotle basically anything you’d do ribs with
4. Put it all in a oven dish and put cheese on top.
5. Into the oven for 15 mins on a standard heat, so that the cheese melts and it’s good and hot.

Voila, smokey beans.

Courage is the key to life itself - Morgan Freeman

[SpacemonkeyParticipant 1481]

NotMyProblem wrote:

My goal is to cut that down to $400 a month ASAP.

That’s going to be a tough task. I think the best way to achieve this would be to cut down on meat, which is a very expensive and inefficient way of getting protein. Beef is particularly bad. Chicken is good but try to get free range organic chicken, its going to cost more but at least it hasn’t been rinsed in bleach. Oily fish is good, you mentioned salmon which is great but think about mackerel, herrings and sardines too. Make friends with beans ( pulses ) and legumes like peas and peanuts ( no, a peanut isn’t a nut ) Nuts are great, but not cheap and we are talking about cutting costs here as well as being healthy.

Never waste anything!! That chicken you picked all the meat off, put it in your stock pot. Same with vegetable pealing and offcuts, even the water you boiled your vegetables or rice in.

NotMyProblem wrote:

-Chicken and rice. boil a chicken, pull the meat off in bite size pieces, and add to some rice. Viola… enough to feed me for days.

Be very careful about keeping cooked rice, it is a great way of getting food poisoning. I wouldn’t keep cooked rice in a fridge for more than 24 hours.

Just a Man wrote:

Cannot go wrong with a crock pot. Make sure ya get tupperware, preferably meal size and many of them. Masking tape and a permanent marker to put the dates on them. Freeze them and bingo, ready made meals and all home cooked. Crock pots usually come with a small recipe book and once you get used to the amount it will hold you can go online and go crazy.

F~~~ing A, bro! This is precisely what I do. The crock pot will become your best friend.

“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”

[Crazy CanuckMember 4215]

If you’re going to eat meat often I suggest you buy a quarter of a cow or a whole cow if you can get friends to buy with you because it’s a lot cheaper by them like that. Typically it’s about $5/lb hanging weight.

Making your own pasta is sure a lot cheaper.
You can buy 40 lbs bag of rice much cheaper at the Asian grocery stores.
Buy things on sale and in bulk. For example you can buy toilet tissue on sale, if you buy a s~~~ load it’s enough for the year or more.
Buy some Dr Bronner’s sal suds. It a multi purpose cleaner. I use a few drops to wash my dishes. I can make a cheap cleaner with it also. One quart bottle lasted me several years and it costs me around $15 Canadian.

Sal Suds Dilution Cheat Sheet

Want to save money on tooth paste? Use dr bronner’s organic soap. I use 1 to 2 drops and it’s fine, it’s much cheaper to crappy toothpaste.

"If pussy was a stock it would be plummeting right now because you've flooded the market with it. You're giving it away too easy." - Dave Chapelle

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