beans, rice, hummus powder, red wine vinegar, oil, misc vegetables (fresh chopped or frozen), such as spinach, turnip greens, corn, peas, etc. Optional: a few ounces of hamburger.

Can be eaten for every meal. Cold or hot.

On my blog — frugalscholar.blogspot.com –I have recipes for a middle eastern lentil, rice, and onion dish and a potato and sausage burrito.

Check them out.

I will shortly be posting on red beans and rice–even with sausage, this New Orleans staple comes in very cheap (red beans, onion, bell pepper–and sausage). Don’t forget the hot sauce!

Red beans and rice are a traditional meal in South Louisiana, where I learned to love them. They are traditionally made on Mondays when they can slow cook while the other Monday tradition of doing laundry is followed.

This recipe will make about 4 meals, more or less, but can be scaled up or down. In a big pot:

2 cups red beans
Small chopped yellow or white onion
2 pressed or minced cloves of garlic
2 teaspoons salt or to taste
bay leaf
cayenne pepper to taste

bed a plate with hot cooked rice and optionally serve with a link of hot cajun or creole style sausage.

A very frugal and inexpensive part of your meals can be homemade pita bread. Here is a link to a great recipe, http://www.recipelink.com/cookbooks/1999/0767900324_2.html from ‘The Best Bread Ever’ by Charles Van Over. Its a great book if you like to bake bread, all of his recipes are ‘no knead’ and use a food processor to do all the work. You can make 12 pitas from 1 pound of flour, 1tsp yeast, 2tsp salt, 1tbs oil and water. I have found that stores in my area will charge around $3 for 6 pitas, or you can make 12 yourself for around 50 cents or less depending on what you pay for flour. I make around 3 batches, 36 at a time as they can be frozen and will thaw out in about 10 seconds in the microwave.

Here is my recipe for homemade Spaghetti sauce, spaghetti, and meatballs (optional). If you divide the total cost of this by serving size, it qualifies easily.

1 28oz can tomatoes, ~$1.19 @ trader joe’s
1 6 oz can tomato paste .20 if you buy on sale
1 16oz package pasta, ~$.80
optional meat
1 lb ground meat/pork/turkey, whatever your preference, I always buy on sale $2

total cost $4.19 (with meatballs, 2.19 without)
This will easily feed me, wife, 3 young kids with 1 serving left for dad the next day. Lets say 6 servings, cost per serving .70 with meatball, .37 without.

recipe; sautee garlic/onion/pepper, whatever you prefer in olive oil, then add tomatoes and paste, 1 tsp sugar, 1tsp salt, other spice to taste. Bring to boil, turn down to simmer. Season ground beef to taste, roll into meatballs, add to sauce, simmer for 2 hours.

When I make this recipe, I use the above recipe x 6, we eat 1 family serving the day of and freeze 5 more. All we do the day of is boil a new package of pasta, thaw and warm the sauce.

Crockpot Grains.
I cook this on Sunday and eat it all week long. Some days with chedder, some days with tortilla chips, some days with cilantro, etc, etc.

http://www.recipesource.com/main-dishes/crockpot/08/rec0869.html

I’ll use vegetable broth instead of the tomatoes otherwise I think it’s too mushy. And I’ll often change it up with black eyed peas vs black/kidney beans.

I already gave the link to the “One Dollar Diet Project” on the Day Three post but forgot to mention that they also include a recipe page http://onedollardietproject.wordpress.com/recipes/

hi jacob. my favorite meal is probably a baked potato with butter and pepper. seriously. the thought of this for lunch makes my whole morning happy. another thing i love is carmelized onions on pasta with parmesean. in fact…carmelized onions in any fashion is frugal and fabulously good.

cheers.

RE: WalMart: While I don’t like the world domination aspect of WalMart, I have nothing against efficency per se. Besides which, if WalMart isn’t going to do it (take advantage of labor, “unfairly” force companies to accept razor thin margins, you name it), likely some other company will. It’s just the law of entropy applied to economics. There will always be some organization trying to take advantage of the situation for its own benefit.

The ugly truth is that people get taken advantage of by other people who have more power or money than them. Even if we created a situation where people weren’t taken advantage of, we (people) as a group still have on out-group that we will continue to take advantage of–the other organisms on this planet that we use for our own benefit. Maybe this is ugly, maybe it is beautiful. But as far as I can tell it is, and always will be, true.

We happen to live in a society where some of us can, through thrift, earning, or inheritence, get into a position where we don’t need to work anymore and can experience economic independence or “wealth” as defined by Jacob, at least for a limited time. Everyone in our society can’t do this, because someone has to be left to produce the goods we are using while we are not working. We are buying their labor with our cash and investments in this scenario. We can either take advantage of that opportunity, or not. I’m not sure how that fits into my above diatribe, but somehow it does. Somewhere into this also fits the notion of ecological limits (which we are currently beyond) and the availability of cheap energy to magnify the effectiveness of human hands in such essential areas as agriculture. If we didn’t have that (and it remains to be seen how long we do have that), things would be a lot different.

After reading in Doris Jantzen Longacre’s “More-with-Less Cookbook”, I altered one of her recipes called Creamed Chicken over Confetti Rice Squares.

The Rice Squares part became a Rice Casserole for me.

She says:
3 c. cooked rice
1 c. shredded cheese
1/2 c. chopped parsley
1/3 c. chopped onion
1/3 c. chopped sweet red pepper or pimento
Add:
3 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 c. milk

I did:
2 c. cooked rice (a mix of wild and brown for cost and nutrition)–can substitute white rice

1 c. shredded swiss (low sodium kind)–can substitute other cheese

Parsely, onion–the same as above
1 c. chopped broccoli (raw)
1 grated carrot (raw)
1 cup cooked lentils–can substitute any cooked bean

1 c. any meat I had left over–chopped (optional)

spices to your taste

Added 2 eggs and 1 1/2 c. milk (I use coconut for cooking, but dairy milk will suffice)

The whole thing got stirred well and poured into a oil-sprayed casserole dish and baked uncovered for 40 mins at 350. It came out stiff enough to cut into wedges after cooling, and held its shape for lunch the next day.

Since Hubby and I have assorted food allergies and diet restrictions, this will undoubtedly cost you less than it did me.

Leave out the rice and increase the eggs from 2 to 3, pour into a greased pie pan instead of a casserole dish, and you just might have a good crustless quiche on your hands! I’ll never know–Hubby’s allergic to eggs unless they’re mixed with something (like in batter).

I’m surprised no one mentioned polenta. Cornmeal in bulk is super cheap and practically free if you break it down on a meal by meal basis. Topping can be anything. I dress up polenta by adding tomato sauce, cheese, chilli flakes and some “meaty” item like mushrooms or actual leftover meat (from a curry or so on)

My favourite comfort food, which also happens to cost pennies, is pasta al olio! Yum!

Sautee some garlic in olive oil and toss with cooked pasta. Smother with parmesan cheese and maybe a few chili flakes. Done.

Olive oil and parmesan aren’t particularly cheap but are valuable kitchen staples and you don’t need much. I figure this works out to less than a buck a plate.

Fried rice
Chop up an onion or two. Saute in oil until soft. Stir in cooked rice (cold leftover rice works best; I usually use brown). Add soy sauce and hot sauce to taste. Clear a space in the middle of the rice, crack in a few eggs. Let cook, stirring occasionally. Add a handful of peas (I use frozen), continue heating until the peas are warm. I sometimes make this without the eggs if I don’t happen to have any. This is my favorite dinner.

Soup
Soup turns out differently every time I make it, as it depends on what I have in my pantry. I’ve recently made a cauliflower lentil soup and a black bean salsa soup. It usually works out to be about $5 for a soup that lasts for at least 12 servings.

Potatoes, cubed and boiled and tossed with extra-virgin olive oil, kosher salt, fresh cracked pepper, and minced fresh parsley. Under $1 per serving.

Many other pasta dishes would also come in under $1 to $1.50, depending on the sauce and ingredients. Even a sauce with heavy cream and mushrooms I think would slide in under $2 per serving.

Here’s the common denominator among everyone I know who has low grocery bills: they are slim. If you want to cut your own bills in half or even more, start eating much more modest portions. Because this will be difficult for some of us at first, it’s best to take up some new hobbies and interests at the same time. When you get really absorbed in an activity you like, food simply becomes fuel, not an entertainment activity in itself.

We can take lessons from Palestinian refugees who have been living and raising children on almost nothing for decades:

Breakfast is hummos: cooked garbanzo mashed with garlic or garlic powder, tahini (buy in bulk,it doesn’t spoil), citric acid, salt, maybe a little cumin for flavor.Or you can do it just as well without tahini.

Bread is flour, oil,salt, yeast or sourdough starter. You can make a fire pit, flip a stainless steel bowl on top of it, roll out the dough really thin, and throw it on the hot bowl to bake, flip, and voila!

Lunch is lentils or any beans, sauteed onions with rice and yougurt made with powdered milk.

Dinner is leftover whatever, or maybe even just bread dipped in olive oil and thyme,and tea.

If you come up with some really cheap veggies somewhere, you can sautee those, too. If not, no sweat.

dessert or baby food could be corn starch pudding made from powdered milk.

Ricemash (2 meals):
1 can Beans (any type, $1)
1 cup rice (free)
1 sauteed onion ($.5?)
frozen mixed vegetables ($1)
season to taste with: Cumin, Curry Powder, Chili Powder, Garlic, Cayenne Pepper

Leftover (Cowboy) Stew:
1 cup coffee ($.2)
2 cans beer ($.5)
2 carrots ($.2 ?)
2 celery ($.1 ?)
some mixed vegetables ($.5)
.3 pounds ($1)
1/4 cup of lentils ($.5)
season with garlic, cumin, bay leaf to taste

Mexican Bean and Tortilla Soup
source: Pretty Darn Quick (PDQ Vegetarian Cookbook)
This recipe is incredibly popular at our house. We usually triple or quadruple the recipe when we make it so it lasts us for days 🙂

Serves 4

2 c water
1 (14 oz) can (1 3/4 c) low-sodium veggie broth
1 (16 oz) can refried vegetarian beans
1 1/4 c mild or medium picante sauce
About 2 oz corn tortilla chips, broken into bite sized pieces
DIRECTIONS

1
In med pot, combine the water, broth, beans, and picante sauce. Bring to a boil over medium high heat, stirring often to incorporate the beans. Reduce the heat and simmer, covered, 10 minutes, stirring a few times.
2
To serve, divide the soup evenly among 4 bowls and top with equal amounts of tortilla chips. Serve immediately.
3
Variation: Mexican rice and bean soup:
4
Omit the tortilla chips and stir in 1 cup cooked white or brown rice and 1 cup frozen yellow corn after the mixture comes to a boil.
NOTES

213 cal 13 protein 5 fat 1 sat fat 30 carb 8 fiber Refried beans often contain lard. Make sure they are vegetarian.

Here’s my favorite rice/lentil pilaf, a complete meal in one pot, nutritional excellence and very inexpensive. I make it in a rice cooker for convenience, but a standard 2-quart saucepan works too.

2 cups mixture of brown rice and lentils.
(I usually use 1 1/2 cups rice + 1/2 cup lentils, but other ratios work too, if you’re short of one or the other.)

4 cups water.

1-2 carrots, sliced
1-2 ribs of celery, sliced
1 onion, sliced
cloves garlic (optional)
a few Tbs olive oil (optional but good)
salt and pepper to taste

Combine all and simmer gently until rice and lentils are tender and liquid is absorbed (about 45-50 min). Turn off heat and let steam 15 minutes before serving for fluffy texture.

Leftovers are good for lunch the next day. Enjoy!

My favorite is sweet potato hash.

Dice an onion and throw it in a pan with butter or oil. Peel 2-4 sweet potatoes and shred them in a food processor (you can do them by hand, but you may end up with knuckle seasoning) and throw them on top of the onion. Season with salt, pepper, cumin, and chipotle, add some chopped kale, and fry it with a lid on for 5 minutes. Toss to mix and cook for another 10 minutes. You can optionally add some chopped andouille or other sausage.

When it’s done, put some in a bowl and top with a fried egg. This makes enough for a week of lunches or dinners for me.

when I was poor I did comparison shopping of raw ingredients. carbs like rice and potatoes cost about the same as fat like peanut butter or canola oil, on the order of 2000cal/$1. Protein similarly costs the same, be it lentils or cheap chicken. the lentils have free carbs attached. Then there’s fruit, veg, and spices, which can be done at the $/lb rate, and I’d suggest 3-4 pounds per person per day. Making meals cheap usually means skimping on either protein or veg, which means a need to eat more elsewhere. One exception: sprouted beans! at pennies a serving, they are cheap veg and protein combined.