The Working Poor Diet

[SirJosephPorter]

Another way to save money is to make your own yogurt. When we were earning 700 $ a month, my wife bought a yogurt maker. It pays for itself in a very short order. Milk costs a fraction of yogurt, a yogurt container which costs 3 or 4 $ can be made in less than a dollar with the yogurt maker.

Yogurt is an excellent source of protein, vitamins, calcium and is low in calories. Dairy proteins, combined with lentils provide all the proteins that a human body needs, without any cholesterol or fat that accompanies meat.

If you can survive without meat, then lentils and yogurt is the way to go, very healthy, nutritious and inexpensive.

[FONT=&quot]Incidentally, out of 700 $ I was earning, we managed to put away at least 200 $ a month[/FONT]

 

[CanadianLove]

I have seen it and live it. When the cost of housing, heat and hydro leaves you with little to nothing to put food on the table, you develop all sorts of tricks. From what I playfully call dumpster diving (cutting off the produce guy before the wilted carrots hit the bin) to a kitchen co-op - to guitar string snares and rabbit stew, there are ways to survive and get a lot of the bills paid too.

Get yourself a breeding pair of rabbits to cut the grass this Summer.

 

[Liberalman]

It has been proven over an over again that pre-made foods in cans or containers have preservatives in them that will give you a lot of health problems later.

I know because for years I was a can man which meant I opened a can of food and ate it from the can.

I later started warming it up in a pot and later I would ad stuff to it and later I didn’t use caned food just from scratch.

Anyone who can boil water can cook.

I always thought that cooking was a complicated task like rocket science until I started watching a cooking show that aired in the early 1990s called the Urban Peasant and he made cooking seem like the easiest task to do.

With the internet there are a lot of cooking video web sites like Sam the Cooking Guy and Cooking Meal with Gourmandia and iFood TV and Farmingscan.com and many more.

Cooking is not a complicated task and it will save you a lot of money.

I did it and you can do it too.

 

[talloola]

You're right a bout the yogurt. We have a 'blob' on our porridge every morning.

OUR ROYAL PORRIDGE, my invention, we have it every morning, will keep one
satisfied for many hours, depending how large a serving one makes.
My husband loves this breakfast, and it is a great way to start the day.

use soup bowl, and add portion of porridge, sprinkle on (ground) flax & sesame seeds, spread a mashed banana over top, add (any) kind of fruit you like, or none) on
top of banana, ( we use frozen raspberries and blueberries), put them in a bowl
first, and by the time you put porridge in bowl, they will be half thawed allready.
Spoon on top of mashed bananas.

put 'blob' of yogurt on top of that, sprinkle with granola, drizzle maple syrup
over top,(or whatever sweetner you want), add milk,
I buy whole sesame seeds and flax seeds, (very inexpensive) and grind them in coffee grinder, mix together, then
store them in freezer part of frig to preserve, very very healthy, and when sprinkled on the porridge, they just blend in.(don't eat them whole, as they will just
go right through without digesting), whole seeds will keep in the cupboard just
fine.
This tastes like a big yummy dessert, not a healthy sensible breaky. Enjoy.

 

[CanadianLove]

Fried Spaghetti. Bit of margarine with salt and pepper, maybe some garlic powder. Add as much pre-cooked spaghetti as you think you can eat and fry till heated and the margarine is gone - no sauce. Use a non-stick pan if you use small amounts of margarine. 2-3 slices of bread with mayo - no butter. 2 one-a-days for dessert. Big glass of milk.

 

[Tyr]

I think tracy raises a very valid point though wolf. A lot of people have lost the knowledge of how to shop cheap. So we have all these people who are suddenly out of work, and simply don't know HOW to do it without spending $1000 a month on food. They don't know what to do with flour, sugar, oil, and milk... they need to buy pre-made biscuits, just for an example.

The loss of jobs isn't the only problem, there's also the problem of an entire generation of people who don't know HOW to live poor. And those who still have jobs, who don't get what it means to stare at an empty fridge and try to figure out how to feed your family for a week on your last $10.

there are all kinds of ways to subsist on $5/pp a day. Question is would you want to do it? Hotdogs and/or KD works for me about one day a yr other than that, I make food a priority.

I can get by on $14/day and that's with some serious bargin hunting

 

[CanadianLove]

As bit of a protein suppliment, you can find the 90% protein in the drug store section of Wal-mart and some major food chains. The kind the weight lifters use. You don't have to use the recommended dose, just sprinkle a bit on your cereal, add a bit to your milk or Coco to bump up your protein intake to a good level.

 

[gopher]

$ 80 per month?

Pipe dream in this day and age.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

OUR ROYAL PORRIDGE, my invention, we have it every morning, will keep one
satisfied for many hours, depending how large a serving one makes.

You are right about this, talloola, unprocessed cereals (not the junk one gets in a cereal box) is very filling and one doesn’t feel hungry for hours.

In our nearby Bulk Barn (it is an Ontario wide chain, if not Canada wide), we get muesli in it simplest form. It is mostly cereal, with just enough fruit and nuts to make it palatable (which is how muesli should be, those muesli boxes which proudly announce 60% nuts or 70% nuts, are really desserts and should be eaten as desserts, and not as cereal). It is also very cheap (certainly a lot cheaper than muesli boxes).


I eat a bowl of the muesli before I go on a day long hike. One bowl of muesli gives you enough energy (slow release of carbohydrates) for at least a four hour walk, you don’t feel hungry for 4 to 5 hours after a bowl of such muesli (mostly cereal). You don’t need anything else to eat until you stop for lunch.

Porridge or oatmeal is the same. It is very filling, nutritious and costs pennies (provided you don’t’ fill it up with sugar, honey or junk like that). Oatmeal has got its own, inherent flavour, which is drowned by adding sugar or honey to it. I like just a plain bowl of oatmeal, many times for lunch I have a bowl of oatmeal and that is it (with perhaps a banana).

 

[Said1]

$ 80 per month?

Pipe dream in this day and age.

That's roughly what I spend.

A few of my friends and I trade food quite a bit. It's not abnormal for me to trade a pork chop or two for rice or some other item. More often than not, we also share what we cook, if we cook something big. This is something my ex-husband started. Some of his friends needed to visit the food bank on occasion so he would trade some canned or sweet items for meat.

My parents used to buy half a cow or hog (really big pig) and do the same thing with my mother's sister once in a while. I remember being really excited about getting a pile of Mac & Cheese!

 

[talloola]

I ate plain porridge for about 40 years, it took my daughters to show me how to
make it more interesting, now I make 'royal porridge', never plain again, unless
I have no choice.

 

[sirlorenzo]

If college taught me anything, it was cheap living. My favorite money saving food choice was to buy a giant box of Mr. Noodles (they work out to less than 30cents a pack) cook one or two of those up, and add in some frozen veggies which are also very cheap. If you're really poor you can omit the veggies, but as soon as the scurvey sets in I'd recommend throwing a few in.