Posted on 01/18/2014 11:57:04 AM PST by nickcarraway
Donna D’Arabia has a show on Food TV “$10 dinners” (or something like that). Her schtick is feeding 4 people for 10 bucks (so that’s 2.50 each well within this budget for a day).
I watched a bunch of these while I was babysitting for a week. 3 days in a row she used black beans - which I thought was a little much, but she had a good hint with them.
She buys the dried beans and cooks up a whole huge batch, then she freezes them in cooking portions. When she needs the she just pulls the out of the freezer.
One point to be made is cooking from scratch does take time.
A second point to be made is I’m not eating squirrel!
I often have simmering rage when someone with a fancy new hair do, painted nails and an iPhone is paying with EBT, with more red meat and convenience food than I buy, trying to stay in our budget.
I’ve made more than one comment when someone spends more on EBT than I pay, then whips out cash for cigarettes or beer.
If you can’t afford to buy food, it should be illegal for you to buy cigarettes. Nicotine testing to enforce it. But they won’t even tolerate drug testing of welfare recipients, much less nicotine testing.
$5.25 per person for a family of 4. so $21 per day to eat. I could feed myself and 3 friends wonderfully on that ‘free’ money. I buy all these foods myself anyway and live cheap but have great meals when I have the time to prepare.
20lb sack of spuds, 20lb bag of rice, 20lb bag of flour, 20lb bag of sugar, a bunch of bulk spices from the discount food store, fresh vegetables, a gallon of vinegar, a gallon of oil. I have a $5 thrift store breadmaker I use almost daily. I eat lots of fish that is either free or bought from the boats (when in hawaii) or sold from coolers (in idaho).
I suggest the people that will complain about how little SNAP and food stamps are go visit a Mexican family for dinner. OH MY GOODNESS. Fantastic food with innexpensive ingredients. One word for cheap food of the gods, “TAMALE.”
Lysie, I grew up in a particular section of the inner city of Chicago, called Little Italy.. We lived in tenement houses, three stories tall, three apartments deep, called cold water flats..
Needless to say we didn’t have any AC or Hot water for that matter, but we did have ventilation slats in our doors, to get some kind of circulation in the summer.. But I digress..
Well, every night if you walked the halls, you could smell what every apartment was cooking, and baking, which could drive you to distraction.. These were all authentic Italians, mostly immigrants from all corners of Italy, each having there own particular specialties..
It was a cornucopia of scents and aromas that made you hungry, again, even if you had just eaten.. Lastly, we kids, hundreds of us greasers, all went to the show Saturday afternoon, and all of us brought our own homemade sandwiches, stuffed with imported pepperoni, salamis, and meatballs, and sausages, loaded with garlic and spices..
After the 1st movie, the first of 3, we would all open our lunch bags and the smell would explode, and permeate the theater, and waif out into the lobby, and out to the street.. People would snicker as they passed.. LOL
ROFL!!!! That's what we had for dinner tonight.
I always make a huge amount of them when I make them because they are time consuming, but they take the same amount of time to cook whether I'm making a dozen for us for one dinner or 8 dozen for 8 dozen for a dozen meals.
I also make my own sauces for them - which are really cheap because I grow my own peppers, tomatoes and tomatillos. But even buying dried peppers is dirt cheap, just a few go a very long way.
Something that is rarely talked about, and hardly ever promoted at all about SNAP funds, is they can be used to purchase fruit, vegetable, and herb seeds and plants. I know this because over the course of a couple of months I spent an entire month's worth of SNAP funds purchasing them back when we were getting SNAP.
“I wanted to check for tomato seeds my last trip past there, but they were already closed for the day.”
Have you looked at the tomato seeds on Ebay? You can get any kind of tomato you want. Many list their germination rate. You can check the feedback to ensure the seller has a consistently excellent reputation. The seeds are not expensive at all, providing you shop around. It would probably take all day to see ALL the tomato seeds offered. There are quite a few.
You complain about the cigarettes and beer, but only want it to be illegal to purchase cigarettes and want testing for tobacco - have a particular reason for that?
You are obviously not familiar with the “marker” for tobacco use. It is cotinin. Someone with a diet high in products from the night shade family will also test positive for cotinin. Common foods of the nightshade family include tomato, pepper, eggplant, and potato.......
Also, tobacco seeds are cheap and it is easily grown just about anywhere in the US.
As for alcohol, I make wine, nothing fancy, but it is fun and tasty - all the ingredients can be purchased with an EBT card and all are used in everyday cooking and eating.
Recently, I was in line behind a food stamp recipient. She had cigarettes in her pocket. So I guess she can afford cigarettes, but not food. Go figure.
Yes. I recently started making these myself. Cheap, easy, tasty and versatile.
About meats and people on food stamps ... I read one of those stories about people trying to survive on food stamps. For one meal, this mom prepared two pounds of ground beef for herself and three kids.
I was shocked. When we butcher we get ground beef in one pound packages and that’s how much I prepare for one meal for five people including my one son who is about 6 feet tall and still growing. The beef goes in sauces or casseroles and no one knows what’s in there ;-)
I’ve been pretty pleased at how filling Mexican foods are and how far tacos or something will stretch a pound of meat.
I get the most mileage from tamales. A pound of beef and some other odds and ends in tamales will fill everybody up. Problem is, you get every dish in the kitchen messy and have to steam them for over an hour. A very long hour or so with hungry kids!
Yeah, I don’t see eating these sorts of foods as deprivation at all. Inexpensive staple foods are flat out great eating when prepared well.
You get enough but you are not living high on the hog.
My family of 6 has been eating on less then $5 a day per person for years. Not really that hard to do, we eat well, and I could cut the grocery budget if I needed to.
Look at Budget101 dot com. She has a site showing how to make almost anything from scratch. She also gives away an e-book telling how she feeds her family of 4 very well for $200 to $250 a month. They eat meat, too.
We eat on less than that a month, being down to 2 people and a dog. I make her food from scratch for cheap, but it is well balanced and mainly good organic meat. Having a butcher/rancher nearby is helpful for getting good meats.
We do smoke, most is homegrown or in bulk additive-free. We shred and roll it ourselves. That adds $20 to our monthly budget.
Our garden, my shopping and cooking skills have worked well. We are very healthy, in good shape and all that good stuff. The only Dr visit was when my husband broke a rib a few years ago after falling off the roof. Even then, he was healed up in short order.
We are bombarded by ads that keep telling us that cooking takes too much time. Baloney. I can whip up a lovely, meaty stew in the crock pot, go about my day’s work and end the day with a great meal supplemented with a small salad and homemade bread, for days.
Debbi
How do you make Potato Egg Hash? Sounds good.
Really simple.
Just take old baked potatoes from the fridge that have been sitting in the foil in which you cooked them and cut into 1/8” slices. Fry them up in a good pan using any oil (I like peanut).
When browned on both sides, turn down heat and throw in 1 scrambled egg per large potato and just slosh all around untill egg is firm and dump onto plate. That’s it.
If you’re feeling extra daring throw in some cooked bacon bits when adding scrambled egg.
Yummy smell.
Well, at least it’s wholesome, decent food, unlike what’s allowed on EBT.
Enjoyed your post, Debbi. I’m fascinated how people feed themselves - especially when it’s from scratch. God Bless the crock pot! I made a soup yesterday with a Cornish hen and it turned into a thick stew once I threw in some pastina. We’ll have it today with - maybe- some homemade biscuits.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.