Good food, that also happens to be cheap

[Hi There, Am Pam]

Today I bought a bunch of stuff on the premise of being a value shopper. I aimmed for inexpensive, but long lasting food. Here were my ideas:

Dozen eggs for scrambled eggs. Add mozt. cheese & Frank's hot sauce for some awesome eggs. Sometimes it's cool to add salsa.

Tina's Burritos. About 3 for a $1. Not much better than that.

Except for some other "family pack of burritos" I bought. 10, COUNT THEM, 10 burritos for a $1.50. I <3 sales.

PB & J. Oh fuck yeah.

Oatmeal, brownsugar, and milk.



I need some better recipies. I should make something with rice, which is rather cheap & easy to make. Any other ideas?

And Frank's hot sauce manages to make everything taste good.

[Drunkenmaster]

Originally posted by Hi There, Am Pam
Dozen eggs for scrambled eggs. Add mozt. cheese & Frank's hot sauce for some awesome eggs. Sometimes it's cool to add salsa.

You do put the salsa on after you cook the eggs, right?

[gangsta puffin]

hm well, have you recently ventured on your own and are now cooking for yourself or something? until danny got here and my meal focus kinda changed to vegetarian, i almost always made a grilled or baked chicken or fish for myself (buy a pack of chick breasts and split them up, 1 each in a freezer bag), salad, and a piece of bread or baked potato or something. easy, relatively inexpensive, healthy, and feels like a "real" meal. for a change cut up the chicken breast and throw it into a salad with dressing, mmm. i'm really into this post it seems! :-o

[Intern Kate]

Originally posted by Hi There, Am Pam


PB & J. Oh fuck yeah.







i eat heaping spoonfuls of peanut butter all by itself. i do not discriminate: smooth, chunky, organic, salted, w/sugar, honey-roasted, i love it all so much. OH! and, AND AND AND, i bought spicy peanut butter once, it had chili powder and red pepper in it. one of the best food-experiences of my life.

have you ever tried wasabi peas?

also, Bailey has taught me that red pepper flakes make any meal great.

[Depechekin]

a really cheap and easy meal is

packet of liptop asian side dish terriyaki noodles = .97

2 split boneless breasts = $2

Terriyaki Sauce = $1

Cut up breasts, cook in about 1/4 cut of terriyaki sauce until chicken is done.

Boil Noodles, add to chicken


stir

eat :D

[Hi There, Am Pam]

Originally posted by Drunkenmaster
You do put the salsa on after you cook the eggs, right?

Sometimes. Either that or right before the egg starts to solidify. If it's done at the last minute, it's ingrained into the egg without it burning and so forth.

Originally posted by Intern Kate
i eat heaping spoonfuls of peanut butter all by itself. i do not discriminate: smooth, chunky, organic, salted, w/sugar, honey-roasted, i love it all so much. OH! and, AND AND AND, i bought spicy peanut butter once, it had chili powder and red pepper in it. one of the best food-experiences of my life.

have you ever tried wasabi peas?

also, Bailey has taught me that red pepper flakes make any meal great.

Wow, that sounds.... interesting, and I mean that in a good way. Possibly.

Originally posted by gangsta puffin
i'm really into this post it seems! :-o


Originally posted by Depechekin
a really cheap and easy meal is..

Both of these sound pretty good. I also like the prepackaged salads, which really aren't that expensive. I NEVER get iceburg lettuce, there's really no point. It's just fiber & water.

[Intern Kate]

Originally posted by Hi There, Am Pam


I NEVER get iceburg lettuce, there's really no point. It's just fiber & water.

AMEN! which reminds me of how i was cornered by three Evangelists today, who talked to me about sinning 7,000 times a year and going to heaven, and what i would do if i saw someone spit into a 5 gallon communal jug of gatorade...it gave me such anxiety i had to immediately smoke a cigarette. religion-peddlars give me anxiety attacks.

anyways, i like baby spinach a lot. for salads.

[Drunkenmaster]

Originally posted by Intern Kate
what i would do if i saw someone spit into a 5 gallon communal jug of gatorade.. Well?

[Hi There, Am Pam]

The correct answer is to kick the people who asked you in the first place.

[Sandinista]

A very good and filling lunch or dinner can be found for cheap at Dos Reales. It is the 'el hongo quesadilla', and costs a mere $3.25. It is packed with mushrooms and cheese, has a side of salad, complete with tomatoes, sour cream and avocado. The water and the chips and salsa are free. I had that on Sunday.

[Kinbote]

I bought the other night a pound of bacon for $2.99 and a ten-pack of tortillas for $1.99. Microwave a half pound of bacon, place on tortilla, with ketchup if you like (I did). Two meals for a small price. And leftover tortillas, should you still be hungry.

[Peter]

Make rice. Put butter in with the water and all that so it gets butter cooked in.

In a seperate pan, sautee onions and green bell peppers.

Add sautee'd veggies to cooked rice.

Brilliant.

[motorcyclemptiness]

We live on all the many varieties of Hamburger Helper. I like the shells.

[Herr Lipp]

all food's cheap in america, WHAT YOU ON ABOWT! YA DIK-ED! (that was my devvo impression).

Or maybe I just think that cos the dollar is doing so crap at the moment.

[twee fangs]

Pasta has been one of my staple foods for awhile, both for its inexpensive cost and its yumminess. Of course, the Ragu variety gets old really quickly, so I like to prepare it like this:
Saute onions, red peppers and garlic in olive oil. Then add spinach and tomatoes to the pan. When the tomatoes start to stew, add your cooked noodles and, uh, stir it up. Top with your favorite cheese - I like ricotta with this.

Try adding some fruit to your veggie salads. I like red romaine lettuce, spinach, onions, red peppers, mozzarella cheese, and grapes with a balsalmic vinaigrette dressing.

Wraps are made easily and cheaply at home, using all of those veggies you bought for salads/pasta etc. Throw in some chicken or turkey, if that's what you like.

[Herr Lipp]

that all sounds nice but man when it comes down to it, do I take 30minutes/45minutes plus however it long took to get the ingredients plus all the time it takes washing up for my meal or just plop some bacon in the frying pan? blap. you know what makes sense :)

cooking is what mums are for :D . even when I move out Im still gonna make her cook for me. and do my washing.

[Divine]

we always ordee takeout. my favorite is catfish. mmm.

[milpool]

cereal+milk.

[Jackal]

Ramen noodles, 6 for $1.00. Mix with frozen veggies.

[Barbara]

I use garlic salt in my scrambled eggs, they are the best ever, and cheddar cheese sometimes if I'm so inclined

[teapots]

Originally posted by Walter Sopchak

cooking is what mums are for :D . even when I move out Im still gonna make her cook for me. and do my washing.

I hope she refuses, and slaps you for being such a wimpy little bitch!

[Static Split Screen]

Originally posted by Intern Kate
i eat heaping spoonfuls of peanut butter all by itself. i do not discriminate: smooth, chunky, organic, salted, w/sugar, honey-roasted, i love it all so much. OH! and, AND AND AND, i bought spicy peanut butter once, it had chili powder and red pepper in it. one of the best food-experiences of my life.

I love peanutbutter. I can eat a whole bottle in one sitting if I let myself. I like the smooth Jiffy stuff and actual natural peanut butter best. When I was little I'd make peanut butter concoctions with peanut butter, chocolate sauce, honey, sprinkles, and whatever else I thought would be nice. It was awesome.

[Pele]

no one's mentioned rice and beans?! it's dirt cheap (probably about 75 cents a serving if you get the good beans, about 5 cents if you use the dried ones and wait seven hours for them to cook only for them to be all cracked open and grainy) and you can flavor it any way you want. my favorite additions:

-cumin
-Sazon
-paprika
-good ol' salt and pep
-red pepper flakes
-tomatoes
-a little cinnamon. i saw that on the food network and it really does make everything better! for italian-style, use nutmeg.

[Static Split Screen]

Make cheesy rice! I love it. Takes about a minute to make too. Eggy rice is also good.

[Mary Alice]

we had some vanilla wafers on hand and OMG are they phenomenal with peanut butter on them.

Another desert I made was with stuff left around the house...mom got this light cool whip and angel food cake because she's on a diet and can't give up desert - my mom and I have the biggest sweet tooths known to man. We had raspberry jam left so I cut a few thin slices of the cake and put jam on top and heated it up in the microwave for 10 seconds. Then I took the cool whip out of the freezer (best place to keep it, I could never have ice cream as a kid because it made me sick so I'd eat frozen cool whip like it was ice cream) and put a bit of cool whip on top and it started to melt because the cake was warm. Not fancy for sure but I enjoyed it - and the angel food cake at publix is often on sale and cheap so...

The reason we had raspbery Jam was another recipe I tried...you take that frozen Pillsburys dough and put some raspberry jam and some almond paste inside it and bake and you've got an easy and great lil' pastry.

One of my fave things to make now is split pea soup. I have a spice mix I use with curry powder, cinnamon, paprika, tumeric, coriander, garlic powder, cumin and other stuff. I just measure out a few teaspoons of this and a few of that into a bag and shake it all up. I put a few tablespoons full of the spice mix in a pot of 2 quarts of water along with salt, fresh chopped up onion, and fresh chopped up garlic and a one pound bag of split peas. You bring it to a boil and reduce heat and cook for an hour. Stirring often. MMMMM. I was describing it to my friend who thinks the green color of split pea soup is gross, and because it was bubbling I said "this this green mess is bubbling, like the bog of eternal stench in the Labyrinth" ...but it smells so good that I'm sure it's what heaven smells like.

A bag of peas is like 50 cents at Publix. The only thing expensive is the spices but you can use them in lots of stuff. (I had that recipe first at the Grit, a restaurant in Athens, GA owned by Michael Stipe. The members of Jucifer used to work there :D My dad got their cornbread with his bowl of chili, with my bowl of split pea soup I got a samosa! It's a vegetarian restaurant with a rockin' cookbook and I should try cooking more out of it than the soup and the cornbread but I make the soup and cornbread often)

And how can you go wrong with cornbread? Cornbread will fill you up. Every New Years we have to have cornbread, black eyed peas, and collard greans as well as pork. I could care less about the pork but as far as I'm concerned I could live of of cornbread, collard greens, and black eyed peas. Cornbread can be cheap too - I know a great recipe from scratch but Jiffy mix is pretty classic too, cheap but still good.

eggs and salsa is awesome.

I also like sausage and peppers. Sautee the peppers with a little butter until they are kind of roasted and then put some cut up cooked sausage in there at the last minute. Serve with crusty itallian bread. MMMM. Mom has lately been on an expensive sauage kick, one was sweet with apples so she cooked it in some rice with apples, and another was spicy so she cooked it in cajun rice with peppers...I'm a bit spoiled with that...but I could always find cheap normal cooked sausage back in college and it still satisfied.

OK I am done editing now I swear...

[Molly]

rice needs to go die. i hate rice.

gimme cheesy toast any day.

does anyone know how to cook potatoes yummily? ive never been able to make them right. no cheese with it though. i hate cheese and potatoes. i also hate cheese and broccoli.

[homer j. simpson]

we have no food in this house, and i had $5, so i went to the grocery store with the intent of buying a cheap microwave dinner for myself. instead i ended up buying a box of jell-o mix and a bottle of soda. i'm really dumb sometimes.

[Pele]

dice the potatoes however you want. slice, dice, banana-shapes whatever. get a big ziplock bag, fill up with various spices/herbs. shake potato pieces in bag until evenly covered. place on pan, drizzle with olive oil, bake. so good!

[Sandinista]

Originally posted by Molly

does anyone know how to cook potatoes yummily?

If you could narrow down how you like them cooked, I could certainly provide the steps. Some people are just hopeless.

[Molly]

Originally posted by Pele
dice the potatoes however you want. slice, dice, banana-shapes whatever. get a big ziplock bag, fill up with various spices/herbs. shake potato pieces in bag until evenly covered. place on pan, drizzle with olive oil, bake. so good! how long do i cook them for?

hey joe, i like them cooked all ways, alright? so quit your moaning and email me back, bitch.
ps. i have a cold and sound like a troll.

[Lily]

brown hamburger, make white rice, stir together, add frozen veggies, worcestershireksdfjlaerj sauce and soy sauce to taste-- very easy and good.

cook macaroni, brown hamburger, stir together add cheese and salsa and sour cream. Yes.

[Lily]

Originally posted by Intern Kate

have you ever tried wasabi peas?



the dried ones? OH MY GAWD, I ate like 23947897984759487 2342390487234 million of them in the green room at the folk festival!

[Gutter Glitter]

Some of my favorite weekends are spent at the Dollar Craze weekends at my local krogers. They sometimes have things 10 for 10, but a dollar each at any number is better. Who needs 10 frozen pizzas???

I live on these lipton side dish thingies... its like garlic shells... i only get them when theyre a dollar each or 1o for a dollar

another cheap thing is buying bagels, any type of tomato sauce, and cheese for sale and making your own pizzas.

I also make my own pasta sauce with chopped garlic, olive oil, and whatever is in the house.


I am at my parents and the grocery store is too far away to walk to so all I have is a soy chicken with marinara italian dinner. My mother accidentally used my pasta sauce for their food. They use meat so its lost to me:(

[Gutter Glitter]

Originally posted by Molly


does anyone know how to cook potatoes yummily? ive never been able to make them right. no cheese with it though. i hate cheese and potatoes. i also hate cheese and broccoli.

i buy liptons soup mix for either onion or garlic & herb.

it has the recipes. you pretty much chop up the potatoes, put them in a pan with the mix and water i think and bake. good times. you can use the mix in mashed potatoes.

I'm a klutz with knifes so whenever I am at my parents I have my dad cut them up really tiny and drop them into our fry daddy deep fryer thing and its better that throwing frozen fries in there.

[cat]

Originally posted by Intern Kate

have you ever tried wasabi peas?


Oh yes, they're wonderful! :D [/BBderek]


I love how the wasabi suddenly (painfully) WALLOPS you in the sinuses :yes: :yes: but the flavour is so addictive that you just keep throwing more of them into yr mouth

[Hi There, Am Pam]

Oh yeah, wasabi peas are great! I meant to say that before.