Feel free to ask me questions on how to eat on a budget so you can keep your strength up while organizing against those that wish nothing more for you to work until the day you die and own nothing of consequence!
Man where were you 8 years ago when I ate zero protein because I didn’t know it could be cheap. Couldn’t afford animal products and was conditioned to believe those were the only viable source of protein.
Btw I’d like to add textured vegetable protein to the list! It’s one of my go-tos nowadays.
Textured or texturized vegetable protein (TVP), also known as textured soy protein (TSP), soy meat, or soya chunks, is a defattedsoy flour product, a by-product of extracting soybean oil. It is often used as a meat analogue or meat extender. It is quick to cook, with a protein content comparable to some meats.
Soy flour turned into little chunks to give feeling of chunks in things you’re used to having meat chunks in while being high in protein. So like burritos, stews, pasta sauce, stuff like that.
I grew up a similar way! My mom always referred to protein as meat. Needed to add chicken or beef or pork to be the “protein” to make a dinner complete.
Never mind it being cheese or bean based, meaning it had tons of protein.
I would have to do the math on TVP on if it’s a better source of protein per buck than like split peas. But glad it’s working out for you!
Another great one is seitan aka wheat meat, and it’s really cheap if you make it from flour rather than vital wheat gluten. Still pretty cheap if made from vital wheat gluten too.
It’s just a class that is absolutely exploring people. You can’t become a billionaire without it. You can absolutely become an honest millionaire so it wouldn’t make sense to use that.
Yeah like there are folks who are worth 10ish million who just bought a house 50ish years ago that gained a lot of value and had dual incomes that saved all their money for retirement.
100 million folks are on THIN ice, but there is probably an author or inventor out there who made something really nice and everyone they worked with was also well taken care of. Most of them are probably garbage, but not all of them have to be. Some famous actors also were well known for making sure everyone got paid what they deserved on set and were very generous.
I just don’t see getting to a billion without someone being taken advantage of on the way though.
To be positively translucent, even someone with $1,000,000 in the bank has 1000x less than the poorest billionaire. For other disturbing facts, see mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/.
“Sean Aloysius O’Brien… They fished his body out of the Allegheny river a week before the strike ended. Thirty two bullets he had in him. Or was it thirty four?” -Miles O’brien
Seconded. I would have issues that kept getting worse as I got older. I noticed that whenever I did keto, I felt much better. When I combined it with going gluten free, I felt amazing. Well, dad gets diagnosed with Celiac and my old DNA test results mentioned I was a carrier and more likely to develop it. I haven't had the endoscopy yet, but it's pretty likely. This sucks as I love bread and baking it.
Anyway, if gluten is an issue, rice flour can be used for a lot of things and corn/potato starch is a good thickener (whichever is cheaper where you are).
I’ve been eating gluten free for 15+ years now, and it’s gotten so much easier now. Though the food definitely costs more if you want any sort of grains.
When I was diagnosed I had basically no symptoms (my mom was also diagnosed). Now if I eat gluten I’ll end up feeling similar to a hangover. It’s amazing what your body can get used to if you’re eating it constantly.
Now that I’ve been eating gluten free, several of my other food sensitivities and allergies have become more mild or gone away entirely. Milk was a big one when I was younger (tested negative for lactose, but the milk proteins can look similar to gluten to your immune system).
That’s why I never trust immigrant veterinarians. They are always very quick to jump to suggesting that I should put down my dog. I swear the more Asian they look the more likely they suggest euthanasia. Even if the condition my dog is in is very likely treatable. At this point I am very convinced that all the corpses do not go to cremation at all.
The “red necks” who do road kill specials are just fighting against ground beef being $5/pound (which is somehow after all the subsidies they get in the US)!
I feel like some red neck making fun of is straight up just making fun of folks who found a way to make do and be happy. Like owning your own land with a little pre fab you learned to maintain yourself, and eating lots of hunted game? Good stuff.
10 pounds of food for $3 sounds great, but in a pound there is only 300 calories about, depending on type/peel/etc. So 3,000 calories for 3 dollars. At $1 per 1000 calories it isn’t bad.
But let’s compare to this 5 pound bag of flour for 2.38, at 3 cents an ounce:
A pound of flour has 1,600 calories. So this bag of flour that is cheaper than the potatoes, has 8000 calories for 2.50. But you’ll need to put in some elbow grease to make it edible. Doing a sourdough is probably the cheapest way to do it since all you need is flour, water, salt, and the starter you made using flour, but it is more time intensive. So about 3,200 calories for a dollar.
Rice comes in with a very similar amount of calories, but just a little more expensive at 4 cents an ounce:
At once again 1600ish calories for a pound of dry oatmeal, it is 1.12 per pound. So it is creeping up closer to the price of potatoes TBH, and if you were super on a budget the oatmeal would be the first to go. But I suppose potatoes aren’t “that” much worse than oatmeal. But my thought was oatmeal is good breakfast option so wanted to include it, and the top bit is mostly setup for bottom.
Knowing this stuff is helpful to our daily lives because rich people hate us.
I think you need to include energy cost in the preparation stage. Bread requires a hot oven, which is a real amount of electricity — it’s close to $0.40/kWh where I live. From this link it says that a bread maker uses only .36kWh, but an electric oven would be more like 1.6kWh. So bakita single loaf of bread, you end up with a not insubstantial fraction of the total cost going to heating the oven.
Of course, many bull foods require heat, so it gets a little sticky this way. Oats/oatmeal probably wins out here, as you can just soak them overnight.
Good point! Rice makers are super efficient, so rice made with that might be the winner. But honestly the cheap carbs you can stand and make edible cheaply are probably just what you gotta go with.
Only slightly related. One weird thing I noticed when moving to Japan is that peanuts and beans were way more expensive than the US. I guess the equivalent here would be moyashi (bean sprouts) and cabbage.
soy (in the form of edamame, tofu, and natto) is probably the cheapest option. Eggs are usually next on the list for people over here.
Edit: seafood might or might not be an option before eggs depending upon where one lives. Organ meat as well as we eat heart, liver, etc. a lot here as well.
Every time I cook rice it comes out bad. Tips? I’d like to be able to make edible rice without purchasing an appliance. Movies and history tell me this is possible??
It’s possible but the cheapest rice cooker is going to be more consistent than a seasoned pro. I can cook rice fairly well without a cooker but 1 out of 10 times it’s awful.
2 to 1 2 cups of water, bring it to a boil 1 cup of rice, add after water is boiling Reduce heat to simmer (simmer is less than medium but higher than just warm, on my stove it goes up to 10, I turn it down to 2.4). Put on lid Wait 20 minutes Eat
If it starts to boil over with the lid on just lift the lid so it will go back down. I add either some oil and salt or some (1 or 2 tblsp) salted butter to the water. People will tell you to rinse the rice first, but that’s level 2, get to level 1.
Rinsing rice does wonders. Without a rice cooker you’ll need to strain it, but it’s still worth it.
Measure rice by volume. Let’s say 2 cups worth
Put into fine colendar and rinse until the water comes out clear. Mixing with your hand will speed this up. You can also do this in the pot you’re going to cook in and dump water out
Put strained rice in your pot
Add cold water. The ratio of water to rice matters a lot and varies by species of rice. The ratio will be printed on whatever container your rice came in. For Jasmin rice it’s 2 water to 1 rice, so for our two cups of rice you’ll need 4 cups of water
Cover, turn on medium-high heat, being to boil. Don’t go far because it will boil over when it does boil
Turn the heat down to low, crack the lid, and set a timer. The amount of time needed will vary based on rice. For Jasmin, 15 minutes is a good check-in time
Pop the lid. See water bubbling up? If yes, replace lid and come back in a few minutes. If not, use a wooden spoon to get a peek at the bottom of the pot. See water? If yes, replace lid and come back fairly soon to check again. If not, your rice is done. Turn the heat off, fluff, enjoy.
We made rice for years using this method and it is a very reliable cooking method. Rice doesn’t really leave you a lot of wiggle room though, which is where a rice cooker comes in handy. As an added bonus, some rice cookers come with water lines in them. I measure my dry rice into the cooker, rinse using the cooker, dump most of the water out, and fill to the appropriate level.
Different species of rice have very different textures and somewhat (subtle) different flavorss.
Some rice, like basmati, can be cooked using the pasta method (intentionally use way too much water and strain the excess off after the rice is cooked). I guess all rice could be cooked that way, but you would be giving up some starch.
Cooking rice is a notoriously hard problem (and for that reason I recommend noodles instead) but my tip is:
Don’t (!) do the 2:1 thing where you mix 2 cups of water with 1 cup of rice. Some of the water will boil off and the ratio will be distorted, except if you close your cooking pot, in which case it begins to foam like crazy and give you something to clean up
Do just fill a large pot with lots of water and make it boil; then when it boils add the rice and cook a certain time with the pot open. I’ve made the best rice this way.