If you buy milk alternatives regularly it might be worth getting a high powered blender and a nut milk bag and making your own nut milk. Any high powered (2200W) blender will work, you don’t need a $500 Vitamix, there are some brands for around $100 on Amazon- CasaCosa is a good one. But a regular or compact blender will not work.
There are shockingly few nuts in a half gallon of almond milk and it takes like 5 minutes including clean up. It only lasts about 4 days in the fridge, so it’s twice a week kind of thing, but it’s really not difficult. If you use cashews you don’t even have to strain it, since they have very little fiber.
If you do use a high fiber nut, like almonds or walnuts, you can save the pulp and use it instead of (or in addition to) regular flour to make quick breads (pumpkin, banana, zucchini, etc.) and pancakes.
Lots of beans and rice. So many different meals with beans and rice.
A garden. Or knowing someone with a garden, at some point we all get an excess of something, I gave a big bag of jalapenos to our yard guys at the end of the summer, they were so abundant.
We do use the Too Good to Go app, but not many participating restaurants here, it’s more for a treat.
Working at a restaurant that feeds you, I used to work at a place you could come for supper (teatime) before the evening shift. Not a chain place.
Set aside some part of the weekly budget for oil, spices, seasonings, chili paste, condiments. With these you can build variety of flavor into a basic cheap diet and they last awhile, you don’t have to buy all of them each time, but always buy some.
ETA: planning the week of meals saves more money than trying to buy cheap foods, for me, but we still have kids at home so the calculation is a little different. I just don’t like to - so I make a loose framework, know about 4 of the 7 meals, and keep dry/canned beans and pasta and rice on hand, and there is usually some veg in the garden, so I can leave some room for improvisation. Even that level of planning does save money.
I mean, you’re not wrong. Between not eating and having zero compulsion to drink, I saved a ton of money when I was a functional tweaker. Quitting meth turned me into a fat alcoholic.
If you are forced to consuming mostly cheap packaged goods like Hamburger Helper and the like, add the secret spice blend to make it actually have some flavor:
Salt*, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder and MSG.
*Check the sodium levels already in the packaged food first; if it’s already high, you can ignore adding more.
These spices are cheap and make everything so much better. Even non-savory stuff sometimes benefits.
You can make pasta with flour, water, and salt. Add yeast, and you can make country loaf bread. Add a little sugar, butter, & milk, and you can make white sandwhich bread, or dumplings for soup. These are absurdly easy recipes, almost impossible to mess up. Change the portions, and you have sugar cookies, like you said! Splurge on chocolate chips and you can have chocolate chip cookies. Get some baking soda, and you can make crackers.
Flour’s about 80¢/lb. Salt is $10 for 26 oz, which will last many, many recipes. Yeast is $1.50/oz. For $25, you can make about 25 loaves of bread, and still have a bunch of salt left over.
Flour is the single best, and most versitile, calorie-to-dollar value food.
Easy (relatively) chowder with random veg, protein and cheese
The only specific ingredients are onions, garlic, spices, heavy cream and at least some cheddar.
Before starting salt all of your veg. This is so they are INTERNALLY seasoned, otherwise you’ll have salty soup and bland veg.
Saute your onions (with any other hardy vegetables) and butter can be used if feeling indulgent. Salt as you saute
Once slightly tender add and cook a couple tablespoons of flour (depends on quantity of soup and desired thickness)
Add whatever stock or bullion on hand (I use home made with bones and veg scraps). You could also use plain water if really starving and desperate though.
Once the soup is boiling add a ton of (salted) minced garlic, FRESH CRACKED black pepper, rosemary, thyme, smoked paprika and a couple pinches of mustard powder. These can be fresh or dry, but I do like fresh garlic and fresh cracked pepper (many of the flavors and compounds are highly volatile and will literally float away if stored post cracking). Also be generous with your spices, makes it way tastier.
Add your veg. It can really be anything from broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes, corn, peas, carrots, mushrooms zucchini, celery, cabbage (not too much), bell peppers, etc. experiment and go nuts.
When pot is hot again add your protein, nothing specific. I’ve used ham, pork, ground beef, ground turkey, deli meat that was gonna go bad, breakfast sausages, Italian sausages, chicken breast and thighs and even tilapia. Make sure to salt them for 15 mins before adding.
When your proteins are not raw and almost cooked add heavy cream (if you don’t have much you can also add some milk, you can also freeze milk, let it melt and drip into a container, when halfway melted remove the frozen milk and whatever is collected is highly concentrated because all of the fats in the milk melt much faster than water)
When soup is reduced to desired amount turn off the heat and let it cool to a light simmer. Add your cheese and stir thoroughly. If soup is too hot your cheese will cook and clump up in nasty globs and will not thicken your soup either.
I usually hoard random bits of veg and protein and when I have enough I make like 5 gallons of soup at a time. Nothing is stopping you from adding more stuff later, when youre microwaving a serving of soup you can add some more steamed or roast veggies you have laying around.
It’s also excellent with toast. Additionally you can dry leftover bread, crush it finely and add the breadcrumbs to the soup too.
Literally any leftovers you have can be incorporated into the soup one way or another.
I had some unappetizing lasagna so I chopped it up and threw it in my serving of soup, the cheesy sauce makes everything edible lol.
Do you mean bare bones no cash for big output cheap food?
or do you mean “I can swing a big initial output of money to save tons”?
If its the first one, find a dollar general with a fridge/frozen food section. You can make quite a few good, low intiail cost meals from what you can get from there.
if you mean “I can swing a big upfront payout to get a lot of stuff thats bargain barrel price per unit”, then buying a whole pig or cow and having it butchered is probably the best way to get a ton of meat, dollar per pound wise.
Add comment