Broke Food

Money is almost always tight in my household, and even more so now that I've lost my job. We've been eating alot of hamburger - I can do all sorts of wonderful things with it. I can make a small package stretch for two meals, maybe even three. We also use Hilshire farms smoked sausage and fry it with onions and potatos. A small package of that fried up with the veggies can feed you for days. Spaghetti is another thing we eat alot of. And dishes cooked with rice. I buy the generic minute rice and can toss it into alot of meals to make it stretch. We really eat pretty good considering the lack of money we usually have. Luckily, we don't have kids to feed. (Unless you count the four footed ones) Oh also - have you ever had those Totinos party pizzas? They are ALWAYS under a buck each. Often they are on sale for 70 cents or so. I never mind sharing recipes to anyone interested, but I'll have to have an email to send them to if anyone is interested.

Hello Dark dancer. You know what you described with the corn meal is what I would have for breakfast and something supper when I lived with my grandparents some 50 years ago. When you decide to cook it down to fry like a pancake try putting some cooked sausage in it. My grandmother would cook beef neck bones, remove the meat then add the corn meal to the broth and cook it down as you did and slice it and fry it nice and crisp. She called it scrapple. Get you some dry beans. You can get them for about $1.20 per pound. They are very nutritious and full of protein. Add some onions if you have them and the sausage. Put them in a crock pot if you have one and let them cook a good part of the day. add some corn brad and you have a meal made in heaven. If you have to cook them on the stove they do take a while to cook. I get the self rising corn meal too make the corn bread then I only have to add water and an egg. Most people I know like pinto beans, but I like the white northern ones

erm it all depends really i like to keep a few tins of things in incase we run out of food or like yourself money is a little tight if that is the case we tend to have beans or spagetti on toast, pasta and tuna and we always have porridge oats in too so we can have some porridge incase we are short of food

I also like corn meal for a good, cheap meal; even though the price of that has gone up, it is still not terribly expensive. I like the cornmeal mush for breakfast with syrup, you can also use the cornmeal to make polenta, which can be eaten with tomato sauce, or make cornbread. I like to have ramen noodles on hand also, as they can be eaten as soup or as a side dish with something else. The sodium content is high so you do not want to eat this all the time. If it is really a desparate situation and there is no food and the house, and no money, then it is whatever is on sale at the store. A few years ago, at one point I was eating tuna fish and cookies for close to a week, along with 29 cent and 39 cent burgers at McDonalds when they had those promotions on Sundays and Wednesdays, I believe it was. I even bought extras to heat up the next day. Not the healthiest way to live, but I was able to live on $5 for close to a week. Now I would prefer to eat healther, and food is even more expensive, so if I found myself in that situation again, I would probably check out deals on canned fruits, vegetables, beans, and rice, along with "manager's specials" on fresh fruits, veggies, dairy, etc. (food discounted because it is close to expiring.) Some stores have these and some don't. Actually I look for these no matter what, as I am always trying to save money on food, and it is getting so much more expensive.

I cook 'broke food' all of the time, because it's a game for me to make good food on very little money. Homemade pasta is about the biggest cheapie food we do. We buy flour in big sacks (less than $.50/lb) and make the noodles. A pound of pasta ends up being very, very, very cheap. We make our own pasta sauce with cans of crushed tomatoes, which comes out to being about $2, including spices and oil, for a big pot. We figured it out, once, and that meal lasted us for about 20 servings and cost only $4. That's about as cheap as it gets! We also buy meat on discount and freeze it. Ground turkey usually ends up being about $1/lb and makes about 3 burgers, which is also very inexpensive, and they taste better to me than regular hamburgers. Rice and beans with a can or two of crushed tomatoes and spices is also great. I buy sausage during the $1/lb sales, and that makes a nice addition. You can really come up with some great combinations when you give yourself a certain number of main ingredients to work with. We've scrapped together some things during tight times or times when we didn't want to leave the house that we cook even after a nice, fat paycheck!

Hi DarkDancer, I would buy bag of chickens and make stew with all sorts vegges, its quite cheap if you get them very late in the market. The stew will go and long way and if you have rice you make fried rice, that will strecth as well. Tamara

hi dark! i am also tightening belts here and there for the last 3 months. but this month, or week specifically, i cant do anything coz i was expected to give treats to family because its is my birthday. but it is okay, it wasn't really much, but well...at least we had fun. anyway, i guess we just have to earn all we can, save all we can, and share all we can.:) good day and God bless you! :)

I think chicken is a good idea, but my favourite is always egg with rice, either fried or soft-boiled!

Erm...usually alot of vegetables and noodles. For example, right now we've a TON of onions and radishes lol. I dunno why, I guess they're just the cheapest things around we can buy. Meat can't compare.

we buy a lot of pasta and just make meals with pasta since its cheaper