All-Time Favorite Cheap Foods
There are endless ways to stretch your food budget. With a little planning, one chicken can equal four meals—say dinner one night, chicken salad for lunch the next day, soup for a snack, and finally, leftovers stuffed into quesadillas. Combine a little rice here, some pasta and spices there, and an overall efficient, waste-nothing approach in the kitchen, and you can feed your family for pennies (OK, maybe quarters) per person. Today, we're celebrating a different kind of cheap eating: the foods you live off when you are college student poor. Two weeks until your first paycheck arrives poor. Lonely old shut-in poor.
To make the list, an item has to not only attract those of paltry budgets, but those with crazed schedules or organization problems as well—because when you don't have money, you generally don't have the time or wherewithal to plan much either. Prepare to be nostalgically transplanted to a time when your wallet was empty, your stomach was rumbling, and your cooking skills were nil. Are these foods good for you? Not necessarily. Do they even taste good? Again, not necessarily. Even so, there's something about them you just gotta love.
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3
Ramen noodles, hotdogs & beans, grilled cheese and tomato soup are crucial cheap foods. And how could one pass over p,b & j?
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2
I wouldn't classify either Pizza or Hamburgers (White Castle or any other variety) as 'cheap foods'. Yes, they're convenient for a heat 'n eat kind of thing, but they're not cheap anymore.
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Tuna isn't spendy, but you have to combine it with other things to make it palatable or it tastes like... well, fish. That adds to the cost.
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Bologna can also be spendy if you buy name brands (sometimes as much per pound as a good steak) and you have to toss in condiments or it tastes kind of bland on bread.
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But five out of nine isn't bad, although there are some who argue that Spam is more of a medium for sculpting repulsive figures than actually eating the stuff... Try making a list of foods that can keep one healthy adult alive for a year for a dollar a day or less. THAT would be worth the time.
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1
Back in college, we found canned soup over boiled rice cheap and filling. Boring, but who had time to cook when there were tests to cram for? (and parties to attend)
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