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I'm a vegetarian. Faux meat protein is expensive, so I don't buy it. Beans and rice are a complete protein and are cheap. I make my own bean burgers (like garden burgers) and bean balls (like meatballs). I make my own seitan (wheat meat) from gluten flour.
I have a garden where I grow tomatoes and summer squash (easy!!!). I trade with other folks for their fruit. Some I eat, some I can.
I go to the farmer's market at the end of the day and prices are cheap because the farmer doesn't want to take it home to spoil.
Bread and tortillas are cheap to make - basically flour and water. As is cake or quickbreads made from scratch.
I buy grains and nuts from the bulk bins.
My carnivore family buys meat but eats it as a side dish, not the main dish.
During the winter, I make an inexpensive soup from the Holy Triad of carrots, onions, and celery, and homemade bouillon powder. It's filling and warming and not a lot of calories - we can throw pasta in there, and/or beans, and my family puts some chicken in there too.
I make my own kefir from living kefir grains I got for free from a probiotic board - and brought the nice lady a jar of my jam.
We don't buy soda. We drink homemade iced tea, or use the syrup I make and the soda stream for soda. I recycle glass bottles we bought that had other drinks in them; and I fill them up during the summer and keep in the fridge for drinks on the go.
When apples are cheap and fresh in the fall, I can them by making unsweetened applesauce.
Today, we just made banana "ice cream" with ripe bananas, coconut milk, regular milk, honey, ice, and vanilla. Cheap, fresh, and my kid loves it better than storebought. We make it in our blender.
It can be done. We all work full time, so it's hard to do, though. But convenience is expensive, and not usually healthy - premade is full of chemicals and preservatives, and we don't personally want to eat that.
Please share your $2 a day menu. And remember, 50% fruit and veg, 2000 calories.
2000 calories? I rarely reach that. Yesterday I hit 1,700 calories and that was because I decided to go wild and buy nutella and ice cream and mix them. If I ate 2,000 calories a day, surely I'd get fat.
Anyway, it isn't $2 a day. It comes out to an average of that MAYBE, but that certainly doesn't mean certain days won't be higher. Also, it is important to create a bulk component in your pantry. I may only spend $50 on groceries a month, but that is because I have bulk in my pantry already. For instance, I have a jug of soy sauce that has been kicking around for almost a year now. That was something like 7 dollars, and I cook with it nearly every day. So, $7 up front, but then divide that by 365.
An easy menu that works quite well for me is
Breakfast/Lunch: A bowl of rice, miso soup, tsukemono (pickled vegetables) or Kimchi.
You could have rice cooked in a dashi stock made from kombu, mushrooms, or katsuobushi, etc.
Lunch: Seaweed/Vegetables/Fruit
Dinner: Soba + mentsuyu + mackerel if you're feeling gluttonous
A pack of soba for 4 or 5 sometimes less dollars, miso for 3 dollars, a 15 pound bag of rice for 10 dollars, a big bag of tsukemono for 2 dollars, kimchi 10 dollars for 3 pounds, and mackerel for 2 dollars per 2 fillets. Seaweed big pack for 3 dollars, vegetables/fruit 1-3 dollars. The only thing that costs a lot is the mentsuyu, seeing as thsi consists of soy sauce, mirin, and sake. So the ingredients for this can cost something like $20 dollars. But you make it in high concentration and water it down and you only use a tiny amount per meal, meaning you can stretch these ingredients out over a year or two if you wanted to.
So let's break this down then
10 pound bag of rice has 94 servings in it. That means you get 94 days of rice if you get one serving of rice a day. That's 10 cents A DAY.
Miso soup 62 servings per container. That's 62 days of miso soup at 3 dollars. That is 4 cents a day.
Tsukemono 20 servings at 2 dollars. 10 cents a day.
Alt option Kimchi 10 dollars for 3 pounds 45 servings. 22 cents a day.
Seaweed 3 dollars for large pack of 10. 30 cents a day.
OR some other form of vegetable of fruit. vegetable you can make last over several days, usually would come out somewhere between 25 to 75 cents a day.
Soba - 15 servings per 4 or 5 dollars. at most 33 cents a day.
Mentsuyu - 5 cents a day.
mackerel - 4 servings 50 cents a day.
So breakfast is 10 + 4 + 10 = 24 or + 22 = 36. So between 24 and 36 cents.
Your snack will be roughly between 25 to 75 cents a day.
Dinner was 33 + 5 + 50 which equals 88 cents.
At most that totals to $1.99 and the lowest at $1.37. If you want more fruit and vegetable in your diet you can go with cheaper alternatives, such as frozen spinach, kale, etc. These things generally come out to about 25 cents per serving.
Let me give you an alternative menu with more vegetables, shall we?
Dashi stock, spinach soup.
The kombu to make the dashi is about 6 dollars a most with 13 servings. You can make two soups at least with each serving giving you at least 26 soups. That is 23 cents and 25 cents for a total of 48 cents for breakfast. oh and you can eat the kombu after you're doing using it to make stock!
Vegetable and fruit for lunch. 50 cent orange, some celery, about 75 cents together per serving.
kimchi fried rice. 10 cents for rice, 22 cents for kimchi, and then we have a new ingredient called gochu jang. 5 dollars for 100 servings. 5 cents a serving! Let's throw in some of that aforementioned celery for 25 cents, some dried mushrooms (4 dollars for 100 mushrooms! 4 cents a mushroom, go wild!), and some enoki mushrooms (which are a pricey choice, about 50 cents per serving)
So for breakfast 48 cents, lunch 75 cents and dinner comes to (assuming we use 10 dried mushrooms) $1.52, for a total of $2.75 cents. And you got, let's see... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, at least 8 servings of fruits and vegetables! Not only that, but you get tons of nice antioxidants (throw in tea!) as well as plenty of probiotics if you're into that kind of thing, etc. etc.
Again, this is just my lifestyle. It probably doesn't work for everybody and I'm not claiming it is the "ultimate diet". But it keeps me healthy and full and I don't have to break the bank to do it.
You are retired if I recall! So much more available time then! Especially compared to working a lot. My parents are retired and on a fixed income. My mom has time to garden (which provides half her produce, and she freezes stuff a lot) and time to scour the sales papers for deals and so on.
Well I'm not retired, and I've had to find ways to eat healthy while on a tight food budget. Even when my SO and I had 3 jobs between the two of us, we still found the time to have a vegetable garden (even if you live in an apartment, if you have a porch you can have a container garden) as well as looking at the sales papers for deals. Its about prioritization your time. With the internet, it really doesn't take long to look up sales ads. I can go to each stores website, click a link on the front page, and there are all the sales for the week. I looked up all the ads yesterday when writing a post about food prices. It took me less then 10 minutes to go through 4 store ads, and write down the prices and what I wanted to get.
I also clip coupons. There are even websites out there that will do most of the work for you when it comes to shopping with coupons. There are several sites I go to that have a list of everything on sale at a particular grocery store and then they tell you what coupons to use to get the best deal. I don't coupon as much as I used to, but when we were on a tight budget there were weeks where I would get $60-$70 worth of groceries for $15-$20. It really took very little effort on my part, and I was still buying healthy food. I wasn't buying cheap junk food.
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I actually live close to the grocery outlet. It is about a 10-15 minute walk for me (and faster on a bike). But if you are over in the lower bottoms of West Oakland? It is 2 or 3 buses and an hour on transit, and about 4-5 miles in total away. Not so close, but deals could be had if you can get there.
4-5 miles is not that far. We used to walk 5.5 miles to get to Sam's Club. It usually was a 3 hour trip when we did this (sometimes we'd stop at other places along the way like the used bookstore and hostess outlet store) but we made the time because it was best for our food budget. And again between the two of use we were working 3 jobs, so we had very limited free time. But we prioritized things and did what needed to be done.
Our main grocery store was a little less then a mile away. We also got stuff from Target, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. Target was the closest at 2 miles away, and then Trader Joe's and Whole Foods was another mile from there. We would pick one afternoon where we were both off work and hit all the stores. It took up the entire afternoon walking the 6+ miles round trip to get to all of the stores. But we knew we had to eat, and we had to stay within our food budget, so that was the sacrifice we had to make.
There was another grocery store and Trader Joe's on my way home from work. So I would usually stop on my way home to pick up any extra things we might need to make it the rest of the week (mostly produce since it doesn't last very long). So for those who live in West Oakland and don't have a grocery store close by, there might be one on their way home from work. I know grocery shopping is the last thing some people want to do after working an 8-12 hour day, but if it saves you from taking another 2 hour round trip later in the day, I think its worth it.
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Our philosophy on this is very American. We think that everyone has free will and choice to make rings happen, as long as you "pick yourself up by your bootstraps." This makes it really easy to scapegoat the individual instead of looking at the bigger picture on how our society is setup to make things much harder.
Oh and FYI, I'm an Ivy League student who also has an internship, a work study job, mountains of homework and studying every day, plus additional research projects on-going with several departments, as well as taking upon numerous additional responsibilities that are practically full-time jobs on top of daily chores of household life and making sure I provide well for my wife. I understand the complaint of "time restriction", but most people when they come home from their job are home from their job. It can be challenging sometimes, but the minute you decide to cut the excuses, it is possible.
Anyway, it isn't $2 a day. It comes out to an average of that MAYBE, but that certainly doesn't mean certain days won't be higher.
Oh, so then when you said your food budget is $50-70 a month you really meant 70+ a month.
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OR some other form of vegetable of fruit. vegetable you can make last over several days, usually would come out somewhere between 25 to 75 cents a day.
FYI 25 cents of vegetables a day is not eight servings. Rice is empty calories, especially if you're preparing it correctly. Sure we could all subsist on rice with seasonings and a few beans thrown in, but that's not a healthy diet. If you're counting the kimchee as a vegetable serving I'd love to know where you're getting it for 44 cents a cup!
An orange and a stick of celery for lunch (under 100 calories) is not a meal.
Soup which is only stock doesn't count as a meal, even if you eat the kombu and bonito after you've made the stock. Even with miso added it's only 80 calories a cup.
Last edited by WildColonialGirl; 07-11-2014 at 03:48 PM..
Oh, so then when you said your food budget is $50-70 a month you really meant 70+ a month.
FYI 25 cents of vegetables a day is not eight servings. Rice is empty calories, especially if you're preparing it correctly. Sure we could all subsist on rice with seasonings and a few beans thrown in, but that's not a healthy diet.
An orange and a stick of celery for lunch (under 100 calories) is not a meal.
Soup which is only stock doesn't count as a meal, even if you eat the kombu and bonito after you've made the stock. Even with miso added it's only 80 calories a cup.
It is a variable thing. The last few months I've been spending about 50 a month. 99% of the time it is under 70. And it isn't like it is a bragging or shaming thing, but rather, you know, just posting about how I spend my money for my diet. So why you feel the need have an attitude is beyond me. You'd be surprised! I'm not actually actively trying to spend this amount of money, I'm just reporting what the average of my grocery bill is.
Also, I never said 25 cents of vegetables a day. If you look clearly you can see there is a serving of kimchi (1 vegetable!), a serving of mushrooms (another!) a serving of seaweed (1 more!), a serving of spinach (one more!) at least two servings of celery (at least 2 more!) and an orange. Perhaps 10 mushrooms isn't a serving, so maybe the 8th one doesn't count? But I'm pretty sure it is close. FYI, a serving of celery is one and a half sticks according to this http://oneserving.com/oneserving/celery/ This morning I had cherries and an apple for breakfast. That was part of my $50 I spent the other day and I have plenty more fruit along side it. In fact, most of what I bought was vegetables and fruits. Why is that? Because I've bought bulk foods and seasonings continuously that do not spoil in and still have plenty of food from it left without needing to buy more, except for fresh produce. I can concentrate my money on fruits and vegetables. That is why it is not necessarily easy to give you a representative $2.00 meal--although I obviously managed that--because it is a $2 meal averaged throughout the entire year, understand? But some money is more upfront than others (not a significant deviation, though), but it saves in the long run. Simple concept.
Also, rice isn't empty calories. Rice is fortified and has nutrition to go along with everything else. It also is splendid at filling you up and giving you energy. Also, sorry to break it to you but yes, an orange and a few sticks of celery is a meal. It is called a "snack". I don't need 3 meals a day.A lot of places around the globe don't seem to either Also, try telling 2 billion people--a large percentage of which happen to be the longest living and least obese people on the planet--that these things are not "meals". Lordy, throw in a potato for 80 cents if you want more calories in a soup.
Edit: I'm pretty sure I'm getting my 3 pound tubs of kimchi for 10 dollars at the Korean supermarket called H-Mart. Along with a huge variety of really cheap vegetables that you would never EVER find in American grocery stores. Or one could just make their own kimchi for a fraction of that price even. It isn't particularly difficult.
If you just really don't want to shop somewhere cheaper than your corner store, just own up to it. But, don't give me this America makes things hard for people, so you have no choice.
I'm giving it to you right now: America makes things hard for people, and DENIES them choice.
There definitely are some healthy inexpensive food choices out there. Whether a person chooses to eat them is up to them. Not everyone will have the same taste buds.
One really inexpensive food I've been introduced to this year because a of CD poster is Oatmeal. I've bought a box from Costco and I get a lot of meals from that. I cannot believe how nutritious, fast, and affordable this superfood is! I mix it up with milk and protein power so it becomes more expensive but it's still on the cheaper side.
Another cheap food item I enjoy is potatoes. I buy a 20lb pound bag and get a lot of meals for the price. You can microwave the potatoes and use condiments sparingly. Eggs are pretty inexpensive, so is rice. There's bread, peanut butter, yogurt, frozen veggies.
There definitely are some healthy inexpensive food choices out there. Whether a person chooses to eat them is up to them. Not everyone will have the same taste buds.
One really inexpensive food I've been introduced to this year because a of CD poster is Oatmeal. I've bought a box from Costco and I get a lot of meals from that. I cannot believe how nutritious, fast, and affordable this superfood is! I mix it up with milk and protein power so it becomes more expensive but it's still on the cheaper side.
Another cheap food item I enjoy is potatoes. I buy a 20lb pound bag and get a lot of meals for the price. You can microwave the potatoes and use condiments sparingly. Eggs are pretty inexpensive, so is rice. There's bread, peanut butter, yogurt, frozen veggies.
Nah, you have it all wrong. Oatmeal and potatoes are surely empty calories.
I'm giving it to you right now: America makes things hard for people, and DENIES them choice.
Would you please provide an example of how America makes it hard for people to eat a healthy diet, and denies them choices?
My reality is the exact opposite. There are so many different stores to choose from, competing with each other for my business, with food available from all over the world.
And, if you are low income, there is a lot of free food out there.
So, honestly, how can you say America makes it hard for people and denies us choices?
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And it isn't like it is a bragging or shaming thing, but rather, you know, just posting about how I spend my money for my diet. So why you feel the need have an attitude is beyond me. You'd be surprised! I'm not actually actively trying to spend this amount of money, I'm just reporting what the average of my grocery bill is. 
