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WayneCampbell posted:Mexican and indian groceries. Never buy spices from a grocery chain or a grocery owned by a white person. This really can't be quoted enough for truth. Buying spices with the entire packaging printed in english is begging to get ripped off, go find where everybody that isn't white and/or speaks english as a second language shops for groceries, then behold the wonder of reasonably-priced spices and fresh produce. Badia corporation and Indo-Pakistani stores are your friends, although with you living in Michigan maybe it's more Iraqi/Arabic stores. Either way, don't waste your time with McCormick or Spice Islands or that bullshit and you'll save a shitload of money. Also seconding the "buy in bulk" thing, my Costco membership has paid for itself many times over by now: regularly getting whole chickens for 88 cents/pound, 12-packs of thighs for less than $20, and whole pork loins for the same is like Christmas for my freezer. And the whole "buy paper towels for the year for $14" thing rocks too, you can essentially guarantee never running out of toilet paper for a year either for $11-$13. Also, you can't beat their $1.50 Polish-and-a-drink when you need a quick-and-cheap meal. You may not have a Costco local enough to be worth it, but there should be a Sam's or BJ's or similar that should work out the same. They'll also have 10-15 pound sacks of onions or potatoes for less than $5 if they're anything like my local Costco, which is a huge moneysaver as well. I've been a "poor" off-and-on(currently back to "on"  ) and you can eat drat well once you get the hang of ferreting out good deals and how to keep your kitchen stocked up in a way that fits your general cooking style. For example, I don't use beans all that regularly so I tend to just get a can or two when I need them for a recipe, but I eat a crapload of rice so I buy it 20 pounds at a time. Yes, I'm technically overpaying on the beans compared to soaking dry ones and cooking them, but when it's 68cents a can and you only need 1, it's not the end of the world. I also can't really get full without some animal protein in my meal(which generally confers a higher cost-per-meal compared to vegetarian diets) so I'll try to make a mental note of what day a grocery store tends to rotate its meats out by, even the pricey stores mark things down hugely when it's the day before the "sell-by" date. Unless you're at the seafood counter, those dates are generally pretty conservative. Hell, I've gotten lamb shanks for about a buck apiece at a Publix within 5 miles of a university in Orlando. Made enough ghormeh sabzi to eat every day for a week for like $6(I didn't eat it every day, but there was enough to do so easily).Pasta has been mentioned as well, it's dead easy to make extremely satisfying pasta sauces with minimal effort. Find a nice pre-made+jarred pasta sauce for cheap(please nobody accuse me of going Sandra Lee here, when you're working your rear end off constantly to scrape by time becomes an important factor in dietary choices), then sautee up some onions and garlic in butter, toss some bay and grind some pepper, chop+sautee whatever fresh veggies are cheap at the moment and add to the jarred sauce and let it cook together with the herbs/spices of your choice and bam you've got pasta that's miles ahead of any premade stuff. You can dice up a bunch of cheap-rear end tough stew cuts and throw it into the sauce to simmer while you cook the veggies for the sauce, and turn it into meat sauce with barely any added effort/cost. Make a quart or two and you've got enough sauce for several meals worth of delicious rather than mediocre pasta. Baking your own bread with the no-knead thing is a major, major cost saver if you eat a lot of sandwiches. It's the laziest thing in the world and you get fantastic fantastic bread out of it that freezes and keeps like a champ. It is totally absolutely extremely worth it to bake it yourself. Throw down on the King Arthur brand flour, it's worth the extra buck or two. Plus, if your loaf goes stale, you just got a large amount of breadcrumbs to fry things with or make meatloaf and such. Waste not want not is basically the golden rule for us "poors"(god what a lame troll) when it comes to eating . Oh, and don't waste the tops of your celery, it makes baby jesus cry. Toss that poo poo into your soups/stews/etc, it's crammed with flavor and disintegrates in no time. Kilersquirrel fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Oct 14, 2011 |
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Oct 14, 2011 07:28
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Moey posted:I believe in wasting my money on alcohol, so dirt cheap food is right up my alley. I know some of these things have been covered, but I am not looking for health input (I don't eat vegetables, yes I am a jerk, I feel the same about others). I know single-emote response = banhammer,but rarely do you get a situation this perfect for a  reply. I'm just going to assume you're eating vitamin pills regularly.Tangent to this, if your appetite for beer/wine is as big as it is for real food, doing the homebrew thing will save you bucketloads of money and produce far superior (and generally stronger) beer than you get from the big 3. Grab one of those plastic brewing buckets to make starting up cheaper. Fringe benefits of this include all your friends wanting your beer and being easily influenced to feed you in exchange for cold ones. I realize that might be going a little into the extreme, but if you've normally got a bar bill that's a significant chunk of your weekly income it might be worth a look at. It really is dirt simple and quite cheap, $30-40ish and a month of waiting for roughly 5 gallons of quality beer. However if you're not much of a drinker then I guess you can ignore all this.
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Oct 22, 2011 08:27
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Moey posted:Wasn't shooting for a ban on that post, was just rambling on my cheap eating habits. As for homebrew, I think it is awesome, but I mostly consume whiskey (nothing fancy either No, no, I just was half-expecting somebody to go nuts on your scheme of eating what is essentially convenience food so much of the time and have a bit of a sperg attack over it. The vitamins thing you should really think about doing though, you're probably low on a few important things by now. Take extra vitamin B complex, B is used up quickly to break down alcohol and you'll help prevent hangover and feel generally better after a good session of liquid therapy. It's always helped me, that's for sure. Also don't worry too much about the still, so long as you aren't brazen about it and don't try to sell(this times 100) then nobody's going to bother with the time and paperwork it would take to mess with you. Also blowing up a still is pretty difficult if you stick to the basics like a pot or a single thumper, and aren't an idiot.
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Oct 22, 2011 16:03
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Lolitas Alright! posted:Potato-leek soup! Make sure you roast or saute the leeks before you add them, it makes them sweeter and makes the soup perfect. Also, make sure you add some mace to the soup, just a little bit, but make sure it's in there. It works the same way adding nutmeg to a bechamel or other cream-based sauce does. Use bacon grease for your sautee/roast oil, leeks and bacon are best friends for a reason. Not a ton though, just enough to get by with, and it will really light up the soup.
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Nov 26, 2011 08:37
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Dangphat posted:Pig cheeks taste like pork belly but are a fraction of the price Wrong, cheeks taste better than belly. Jowl bacon is the best bacon, hands down. It fries up so so nicely with lots of delicious porkfat to do your eggs (and everything else) in. Or its highest calling, making cornbread.
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Mar 14, 2012 19:29
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Vulvarine posted:Edit; one thing I've been meaning to do was to start grinding my own hamburger. Does anyone know what cuts of meat are best for doing this? All of them. No, seriously. Get some lean tough stuff, some fatty stuff, cut off ends/scraps of the expensive parts, basically a little bit of everything. Makes the best hamburger, hands down. If you're looking to make hamburgers, buy a bag of the scrap bacon ends and grind up the leaner parts seperately, then mix in with the beef like 80/20 and regrind. It sounds stereotypically goony but drat it is tasty, without making your burger all crumbly or shrink up too much. e: and of course, partially freeze and then keep everything cold enough to make your hands numb and achy for best grind quality/results. Not working on a portion of the batch at the moment? Onto a metal sheet pan and into the freezer it goes while you work.
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Mar 17, 2012 18:12
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