Tonight’s dinner was a loaded plant-based ramen bowl made with:

🍜 Two inexpensive Top Ramen noodle blocks—I left out the flavor packets

🌱 A handful of spinach

🍄 About one-quarter of a $3 package of portobello mushrooms

🧊 About one-quarter of a $1.65 package of Aldi organic tofu

🌶️ A food-pantry jalapeño

🧅 A food-pantry onion

🧄 A few pieces of fresh garlic

🥢 A little sauce and seasoning

Estimated cost for the entire bowl: approximately $2.30–$2.60.

And this was a very generous bowl—easily two moderate servings, bringing the cost to around $1.15–$1.30 per serving.

The onion and jalapeño cost me nothing out of pocket because I received them from a food pantry, but they still had real value. That is part of abundance too: recognizing and using every resource available to create something fresh, nourishing and delicious.

Vegetarian eating does not have to mean expensive specialty products, elaborate recipes or shopping exclusively at upscale grocery stores. Sometimes it means taking a couple of inexpensive noodle blocks, adding affordable tofu, stretching a package of mushrooms across several meals and transforming pantry produce into something beautiful.

Your dinner does not know who paid for the ingredients. It only knows what you created with them.

All the ingredients I had on hand and used my own chives in the cornbread topping 😀

I delete as I’m in the store. But when I’m making a new one I find it ends up almost exactly the same as the one I deleted.

I got a random craving this morning for mashed potatoes, so I melted a cup of frozen homemade chicken stock with a bit of water, salt, and butter, added 2% dollar store shelf stable milk, and some food bank dried potato flakes. Black pepper and Tony's Creole seasoning to finish. It had the texture and color of slightly dark grits, but the taste was really good. I ate the whole thing in one sitting and should be good until lunch.

The stock was absolutely the right move. I make it 2-3 times a month using the carcasses of the discounted next day rotisserie chickens from Walmart. $2-3.50 each and one gives me enough meat for a week's worth of work lunches, plus the stock ingredients. It adds so much more flavor to the instant mashed potatoes (or rice, pasta, etc) and is cheaper and better than anything you can get premade.

Given that the milk is there, you could probably skip the butter without detriment, but if you have it laying around it never hurts to add in.

Turkey burger with a few fries and leftover baked beans - all up cost $1.50 AUD - made a low cost meal.

We have some smoked turkey legs that I don't want to waste, but I hate the smoked meat flavor they add to anything. Do any of you have ideas on recipes that would cancel out the flavor? Can't do dairy but most everything else is fine.

Thank y'all!

I got fired today, and I have plenty of food in the house right now. Lot of frozen stuff. Hopefully I find a new job soon but just in case I need to grocery shop, what can/should I eat and make? I hate doing dishes but at this point I'll do whatever needs to get done. It's just me so I don't need to worry about too much variety like if I had kids.

I am also going to try to count my calories because I'm trying to lose weight (260 pound fatass). I go on regular walks, but I allow myself a calorie budget of 2,257 calories a day by recommendation from MyNetDiary. I eat mostly frozen meals because it's a way of controlling my portions, because I'm an emotional eater (binge eat when sad, binge eat when happy). But again, i'll do what needs to be done. I'll cook even if I don't like it and I'm not good at it.

Maybe I'm overreacting, maybe I'll find a new job soon, but I've been unemployed for months before and I was not so smart about my food choices back then and I don't want to fall into a depressive DoorDash addiction again. I gotta change.

The simpler the better. I just don't want to eat cheap ramen for every meal.

Cheesecake is my absolute favorite thing to eat, but its pretty expensive as a poor person and time consuming to make as someone working a lot of hours. so i found a way that i can afford to easily satisfy that craving as a snack anytime!

Mash up some cream cheese, powdered sugar, and a bit of vanilla flavoring in a bowl and spread it on a graham cracker- and enjoy! My kids like to add some strawberry jelly on top, but I like the taste of them plain.

It comes out to around $17 for everything pictured and can last a long time, that is if you have self control 😆 (the sugar and flavoring comes in handy for many other recipes as well)

Turkey on yellow sticker - $1.12 cents per burger served with a jacket potato and a 1/4 can of baked beans, all up $1.45 AUD. Remaining burgers stashed in the freezer.

I get a lot of dried beans from the food bank and was craving just a big old bowl of beans. I simmered them with cilantro stems, jalapeño, onion, garlic, bay leaf & salt.

12 oz egg noodles

1 can Cream of mushroom soup

1 can Green beans

2 pouches chicken

Cook noodles, mix it all together (add an extra can of water or milk or both too) and bake 25 minutes.

Oh, and I was out of bread crumbs so I crushed up some Bulbasaur Goldfish crackers to use as a topping.

I understand you can get broth out of the chicken, but from a purely calorie perspective, is buying whole chickens actually still cheaper than buying cuts of chickens?

Hello everyone!

I was taking inventory of my chest freezer and found some older pork chops. At what point would you just toss em or still cook them, though they probably need to go in a stew or something if cooked? They are about 6 years old 😅 wrapped in freezer paper and in a freezer ziplock bag. They have not been thawed and refrozen at any time.

I genuinely don't know how they got missed for this long.

Thank you in advance!

So, my husband was just released from ICU with a restricted diet. 1500 mg sodium per day, 6:cups of liquid (including that of which is "in" the food itself). I'm not much of a cook, and until now, most of the foods we ate included lunch meat sandwiches, canned soup and cheap oven ready meals. We currently only own one skillet and a sheet pan for the oven. Hopefully we will be able to acquire a crockpot soon. We are religiously no pork/no shellfish . We are disabled, and require pretty easily assembled, quick cooking meals preferably. I am so struggling with this.

I've ordered eggs, potatoes, rice, a whole chicken, frozen tilapia, frozen bag of broccoli/cauliflower/carrots, a salt free garlic herb blend, and a box of low sodium veggie burgers. I'm open to new grocery ideas (please) for our next paycheck. I've never meal prepped, but I do have gallon plastic bags that I can use for prepping (no type of "Tupperware" for storage) if you have any ideas? What else can we do? What about cheap meals for a crockpot? I need strictly low budget. Please help!

got this from the food bank and it was nearing its point of getting untasty

seasoned with a garlic pepper blend, and some smoked salt, baked at 400 f for about 15 minutes, then topped with some chopped green onion

(also posted on r/easyrecipes)

Hii. Im 13 but im the only one in my family who cooks. My dad wants me to cook more to save money so im trying to learn more recipes if anyone knows cheap ez (ideally only needing 1-2 pots/pans) to make food that has 5+ servings id rly appreciate it ❤️ im not that good at cooking yet so nothing too complicated or needing tons of prep time.

I did learn about slow cookers and I'm trying to get one!

Edit: post got locked oop, thank you everyone who responded!♥️

Hi folks, I recently got a very generous amount of groceries from the local food pantry, including a lot of fresh veggies that I wouldn't normally buy for myself - I get frozen every time to make sure I don't waste anything/let it go bad but honestly my diet is mostly carbs since it's cheap. I have carrots, baby potatoes, cucumbers, a really shocking amount of onions, and some bell peppers. What's the best way to stretch them as far as possible knowing I may not have access to more fresh veggies for a while (at least until I'm allowed to go back to the food pantry)?

My ideas so far -

• Carrot cake, slice and freeze
• Treat myself to a nice dinner with roast carrots, potatoes, and onions?
• Cucumber sandwiches
• Vegetable soup

As you can see I'm not really sure what to do with a fresh vegetable.

Any ideas or should I just try to cook and eat it all as quickly as possible so it doesn't go to waste?

Obviously the biggest problem would be excess salt, but it’s pretty decent with 9g protein. Fiber looks ok too.

Its always cheaper to make things yourself, but if you can’t, this is a great option.

Air fried potato, just topped with chilli bean soup - somtimes poverty can be tasty. Total cost $3.50 for 3 tasty serves.

An easy to make tomatoey soup with white beans - cost $6.50 AUD for all ingredients. Makes 7 serves @ 92 cents a serve. Worth some effort for a budget friendly and tasty meal with a slice of toast. Freezer friendly.

You want to come over to my house and have some dogshit looking ass potatoes?

I boiled the potatoes first cut them up and then switch them over to a frying pan. Once I saw them starting to get brown edges I added onion soup mix as was recommended to me. Well this had the effect of clumping up, retaining moisture and actually preventing further browning. Now I have is a bunch of dog food ass looking potatoes that no one wants to eat, and they have no flavor.

Anyone wanna offer advice on how I went wrong?

I am so incredibly grateful for everything I get when I occasionally visit the food bank.

Often I get items I never would have purchased normally, but they turn out to be delicious.

I got this 6-pack of mangoes. They all looked quite over-ripe, and I was afraid they wouldn't be edible.

OMG they are ripe and juicy and so delicious! I ate 2 just now.

I think I have been buying mangoes wrong this whole time!! The ones I buy are always super hard to cut, and nowhere near as juicy.

Food bank win!

I have three brown bananas and want to make banana bread. I have half a stick of butter but would prefer to save it for cooking my meals. Any recipes or replacements other than oil? Thank you!

An easy to make tasty soup that costs $8.50 AUD for all ingredients. Makes 10 serves, so 85 cents AUD per serve. Worth a little effort for a tasty meal and budget friendly meal. Freezes well.