OK, Give me your CHEAPEST meals.

One of my grandfather's ate lard and sugar on bread as a kid during the depression instead of butter and jelly. His family didn't have it so well during those days.

I love dessert. On a really tight budget, it helps to have that little bit of sweet to take the sting out of hunger. I haven't made this for years now, but it was our dessert way back when we couldn't afford fancy food. I'd take a couple cups of all purpose flour, add about a half teaspoon of baking powder and a pinch of salt and just enough water to mix it into a paste dough. Then I'd drop it by the big spoon full into about a 1/4 inch of hot lard in a frying pan and fry it up on both sides. Sometimes I'd put sugar and cinnamon on it or a little powdered sugar. Sometimes I'd stick blueberries in it and fry it. Just whatever I could find. I used to add the plain leftover fried ones to my deer stew for dumplings. Tasted pretty darn good.

I did make these a few years back and tried frying them in vegetable oil, but yuk!! You have to fry in lard for these to taste right.

my dad grew up during the depression and he still ate lard sandwiches all his life. he never ate skunk cabbage later in life though. he had enough of that when he was young.

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"All that is gold does not glitter..."

My oldest living relative is my aunt on my mother's side and she's now 103. My brother asked her to give him some advice on how to live a long healthy life and her reply was "eat lard everyday". To my knowledge, she's never been sick a day in her life, she still lives alone and keeps house and garden, and she's feisty as all get out.

Just ask Emerill. Pork fat rules.

I love lard. Just wish I could find it in it's natural state, instead of hydrogenated for extended shelf life.

It makes the best pie crust.

my local menonnite butcher sells lard for about $5 for @ 4 lbs. have you checked any local butcher shops?

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this message has probably been edited to correct typos, spelling errors and to improve grammar...

"All that is gold does not glitter..."

My Mom said when she was growing up they were so poor that Grandma would fix them an egg on a biscit to take to school on Monday,but the catch was they had to bring it back home so they could take it back the next day and so on til Friday,when they could eat it.This was so the other kids with more money wouldn't pick on them or laugh at them.Another man that I worked for once (a real self made millionare if ever there was one)said when he was growing up they were so poor him and his brother would hang out in the chicken house and wait for the hen to lay an egg.Then they would fight over the egg and when it would get broke thier mother would whip both of them because that was all they had to eat. Now for the OP,I would have to agree that soup, beans and rice or Raman noodles are about the cheapest eating you can get,add in some sliced hot dogs and it's pretty good ,still cheap too.A jar of peanut butter and a box of saltine crackers can go a long way for snacks too.

The butcher I used to go to would give it to you for free. You could even call ahead and ask them to save you some. Then he retired and nobody was interested in buying the business, so it closed.

The next closest butcher is about 50 miles from here.

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Get ahold of some pork fat from the meat dept. at the grocery store and dry it out.A lot of times they will just throw it away if nobody has told the butcher to save it for them,Not only makes great pie crust but the best fried chicken and biscits too.

My dh ate lard & sugar on bread during the 40s. Yuck. Some of the things his mom made to make the wee bit of money they had go further sound pretty awful. We were poor, but not that poor.

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God bless,
Bonnie
Opportunity Farm
Northeast Washington

"While we have the opportunity, let us do good to all." Galatians 6:10

We like to eat oatmeal and we buy it in bulk so it is really cheap. It doesn't have to be prepackaged oatmeal just the quick cooking kind of oatmeal. Put a couple handfuls in a bowl, add some really dark brown cane sugar or molasses if you have it, a dash of cinnamon and some raisins if you have them. I put in dry powdered milk whey from my baking supplies. You can mix all this stuff up together to get "oatmeal mix" and then when you want oatmeal put a couple handfulls of oatmeal mix into a bowl add boiling water and let it sit for about two minutes. A bit of butter is tasty added in, too, if you have it. This is bought food so it should fit your criteria of cheap food.

At the moment we are doing real well with Easter Roosters. Last spring a feed store brought in some chicks dyed blue, green and pink. Folks bought them, raised them and now almost all of them are crowing. We've got at least a half dozen roosters in freezer camp right now and folks are really glad someone was willing to take their roosters away.

Pink Salmon -five cents a pound (I buy it to feed my livestock)
mash potates from the garden
canned pumkin left overs from holloween (food banks get stuck with them on Nov1 so it freely given when people ask -they take up space and tend to rot as soon as the FB gets them.

pancakes but I do them like this


Look in fridge.
Is there any meat ? say pork
is there any cheese ? Look I am not saying amounts --thats when prey comes in
look around for vegs. think corn --something bland
never forget onions

chop and dice anything you can find
fold the "extra" that you found
into the pancake batter
serve with salsa aka diced canned tomatoes and spices and anything you just might like.

It's funning I am teaching my son to cook first hand no cookbook I am letting him explore with ingredents and spices --if he cooks it we will eat it. I want him to try different ingredents cause if you only know how to make meatballs with beef and you are in an area that has tons of salmon you might never see that with a little bit of thinking out of the box that you can

make salmon meat balls
switch the tomatoe based sause to
a white or alfredo sause
and some local diced veg. carrots or peppers
and then have company ask "where did you ever fined that recipe" and the
real answer "I created it when I heard that you were on the way so I was desparte.

I know a barfly who hits our local tavern at happy hour sandwich buffet time. He orders a $2 bar brand beer, makes three or four sandwiches, packing two in aluminum foil he brings with him to take them home.

He told me he eats one sandwich per meal of the two he takes home, so thats like 85 cents per meal for him and he has a beer to boot.

My personal cheapest home meal with only store purchased items would be ramen noodle , ground turkey and mixed vegetable soup I made at a friends home while visiting texas and they wanted my "soup nazi soup".

A pack of picante chicken noodles crushed (15 cents), two cans of GV brand mixed vegetables ( 1.10 ), one large onion diced (65 cents) and a tube of skillet browned crumbled ground turkey (1.60 ). Total cost of ingriedients $3.50. After 2 hours cooking in the crockpot with extra water added, a spicey faux chicken vegetable soup to feed 7 poker players with some seconds.

If you figure the 10 one cup servings as a meal , its 35 cents a meal. If you consider only the 7 people eating, its 50 cents a meal.

As a bachelor, I often live off crockpot soup for two or 3 days at a time because of the ease of preperation.

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"I didn't have time to slay the dragon. It's on my To Do list!"

Two burgers from my freezer, and a glass of milk from my cow.

'course the bun, and catsup is from the store

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Pasta with vegatables , rice and any thing , beans often with the rice, oatmeal i buy it in bulk at the bulk store 6 dollars for 15 poinds , grits again in bulk, corn pudding this is realy the same as grits but using corn meal and a little sugar if you go all out add a can of cream corn, corn pones basicaly a corn meal pancake , pancakes make my own frm scratch box stuff is a rip off
potatoes boilem , mashum, frysum ,bakesum and if you got some Finnlander in ya just eat them raw
stew a pound or two of venison sure go a long way in a duch oven of stew thinken it with a bit of flower and make sure to add cheap carrots and potatoes
chili or yankee chili yankee chili would be of course adding noodles to make it strech a bit more.

road kill- many countys have lists you can get on to get a deer
venison - my 25 dollar hunting licience had me butchering deer till i din't want to see anouther one till next year

apple sauce stop and ask it a local orchard if you can pick up the apples for deer or horses , then save the best looking ones and make apple sauce . that or look around many places intend on plating flowering crabs but they are set on semi dwarf root stock and if not poperly trimed they will send up suckers from the base of the tree these are often never trimed and it ends up with a 1/2 crab 1/2 regular apple tree the places that have these almost never want the apples fill up the trunk of the car and head home.

I like to take a whole chicken and cook it up for sunday dinner. Make some rice or potatoes and some green beans or corn.

Chicken $5
Potatos cheap but say $0.50
a can of green beans $0.50 store brand
make some home made biscuits with flour and a bit of crisco say $.50

so sunday dinner is for the 5 of us is $6.50. We usually have enough left overs, kids are only 3, 5, and 7.

The next day i strip the whole chicken down and make a pot of rice with the chicken in it. if we use the $1 bag of yellow rice and throw in a can of corn and mush rooms it is good.
Chicken paid in sunday dinner,
Corn $0.50 store brand,
mushrooms $0.50
Bag of rice $1
$2

So both dinner for sunday and monday is $8.50 for 5. that is about $.85 a person per meal when you plan them together. Not to bad and pretty good dinners.

i forgot split pea soup
1-bag split peas (washed and drained)
1 ham hock
½ lb carrots
salt and pepper to taste
6 cups water
a bay leaf

and remember if your somplace and they are serving ham ask what they do with the bone i have come home from many a holiday with a ham bone. this applys for the turkey carcas also

We sure didn't have alot of money when I was growing up. My mother always made sure that we had enough to eat, though. Every summer we planted a big garden to eat fresh during the season and to freeze for the remainder of the year. She would also go in 1/2's on a side of beef with her best friend. The meat went into the freezer and lasted the better part of a year.

With today's prices, I sure that these are a bit over $1, but they should still be affordable.

Salmon Pie - canned salmon, mashed potatoes, eggs, salt & pepper in a double crust.
American Chop Suey - Ground beef, onions, macaroni and tomato soup.
Cheese Hot Dog Bake - Slice a hot dog down the center & fill with chopped onions, sliced cheese (slice of bacon) and broil until bubbly.
Ravioli - Yup, just a can of Ravioli with garlic bread.
Spam Fried, baked, broiled - whatever. I didn't find anything to dip this in that would make it taste good.
Sausage - Sliced & fried in a skillet.
Open Tomato Sandwiches - Layer sliced sandwich bread, a slice of cheese, a slice of tomato and a slice of bacon (if desired) - broil until bubbly.
Spaghetti - She made a huge pot of sauce - froze what we didn't eat.

I just remembered my mom used to make "Goulash" I believe that is how you spell it. It was a whole pot of anykind of noodles and anykind of tomatoe/sauce and whatever meat ya had . Hamburger, etc... usually hamburger. It was very filling and very good.

Not sure if it would be the same everywhere and if garden stuffs count towards the dollar but today for lunch:

Shredded zucchini
Shredded potatos
garlic powder
basil
oregeno
1 egg
bread crumbs

Fried it all together and topped with Aldi's brand cheese. Both my kids and I are stuffed and have leftovers.

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I ask for so little. Just let me rule you, and you can have everything that you want. Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave. Jareth, Labyrinth