Oatmeal, with dried blueberries.

PB&J sandwich.

Any cheap soup, with minute rice to stretch.

 

Yes...Oatmeal, some brown sugar...or a little peanut butter. (I like blueberry syrup - but "cheap" it is not.)

 

Cheap is using up what you've got.

 

That's frugal, not cheap.

 

Something my wife concocts. It has rice and squash and garbanzo beans.

PS: Life is short. Use the "good" china.

 

I just had a PB&J and it was great. Most canned foods are cheap and good tasting.

 

Peanut butter used to be cheap, not so much anymore. Or peanut oil is removed and other stuff added, often has to be called peanut spread not legally peanut butter. It is convenient though. I still eat it because of that.

 

My wife told me about raw oatmeal. Take ordinary oatmeal and add milk. Add cinnamon and sugar if desired NO COOKING REQUIRED. The taste and texture is way better than cooked oatmeal and the raw oatmeal seems to digest slower. You do not need to eat as soon with raw oatmeal.

 

Overnight oats, add some apple pieces with the cinnamon.

 

scorched smoked sausage (or hot dog)
ramen noodles, boiled, drained, toasted in pan with the sausage.
some diced onion helps.
a dash of soy, maybe ketchup. the crispier the better!

ramen noodles with some veggie (cabbage, Bok Choy) and leftover chicken. (home canned if available)

 

Pimiento cheese quesadillas. Cheap but tasty and quick.

 

A $1 1# bag of dried Pinto Beans can get stretched to many meals. After they are cooked...

- make half of the batch into beanies and weenies (beans, ketchup, mustard, brown sugar, diced hot dogs) serve with a baked or mashed potato

- make other half into chili. Serve as is, make chili dogs, or wrap in a tortilla

 

For me it’s, frito pie. It doesn’t cost much and I like it. When I was a kid, my mother would put the Fritos, in a corning ware casserole dish. She would pour the chili on top and add some onions and cheddar. She’d toss it in the oven and we’d have Frito pie, for dinner. She’d feed our family of five, like that occasionally. Everyone liked it.

 

For me it’s, frito pie. I doesn’t cost much and I like it. When I was a kid, my mother would put the Fritos, in a corning ware casserole dish. She would pour the chili on top and add some onions and cheddar. She’d toss it in the oven and we’d have Frito pie, for dinner. She’d feed our family of five, like that occasionally. Everyone liked it.

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Same here.

 

I have become a money saving healthy eating monster since I retired and have time to cook/make my own.

 

Cornmeal mush with a slice of fried spam, heavy with the pepper.

 

Spent brewers grains, especially crystal malt, free if u homebrew. Great cereal.

 

I tried an experiment with spent grain. After the mashing process. I separated the cooling down grain and mixed it 50-50 with bread flour. I added a tblsp salt and some yeast to replace the natural yeast killed by the boiling process. This rolled out very well. I ended up with a heavy-grain type of bread. A wheel about 16 inches across. I baked it at about 450 deg. I am sure this type of bread was what people in the middle ages were able to bake with mud brick ovens and minimal food storage capacity. With the availability of meat, cheese, and vegetables. Life was probably survivable if not for health danger from disease. It seems to Me, the basic foods with lactobacillus help were able to sustain people until the advent of Pop-tarts.

 

Harvested venison, rice, canned corn. Bullet is $2 for many servings. Rice is $0.25. Corn is $1.20/can. $3.50/4 servings.

 

How much for the lease and the processing? Or are you fortunate enough that you get to skip those costs? If so, I envy that situation.

 

Some things can be made at home cheaply. Like a simple overnight bread. But fancying things up can quickly raise cost, I was just looking at a recipe That made 2 loaves at a cost given of $3-4 each. But it used a lot of butter , dried fruit, and nuts.
Homemade yogurt is cheap especially if you have milk getting old you want to use up. I scald milk in mason jar in microwave to kill any bacteria and prevent yogurt getting stringy, this doesn't heat evenly and can boil over so stir and watch. Let cool to warm And stir in 4-5 tablespoons of active culture yogurt. This time of year I grow in a warm oven. Depending on the temperature you can leave on counter which can take over a day and a half, in oven overnight. I use most in smoothies which vary in cost by what you use. Base is mashed banana and some honey. OJ and berries are good.

 

Chilaquiles is tortilla chips, bought or homemade, covered in a lot of salsa, I often use simple enchilada sauce made from chili's powder. Topped with sour cream or cheese and fried egg. Doesn't sound like much but very good.

 

Simple spaghetti works too. I made sauce out of cambell’s condensed tomato soup a pint of home grown tomatoes and some seasoning. The condensed soup was the most expensive at $0.60.

 

Spaghetti was the first thing I ever learned to cook. Its one of my most depended on SHTF foods. Noodles are cheap and a can of tomato sauce and a package of spaghetti seasoning and you are off to the races. And any left overs taste even better the next day. And for just a few dollars you can buy a bag of ready made Italian Meatballs so you get some protein wih your meal. A small package of ready made meat balls will make about three meals. A package of WM hamburger buns and a little butter and garlic salt makes cheap garlic bread.

There are lots of ways to eat cheap and still have a decent meal. Go to youtube and type in Depression Era Cooking and you will got lots of ideas for cheap meals.

It cracks me up when I see some of the supposedly "homeless" on a street corner begging for money because they are hungry but have a cigarette stuck in their mouths and need money. For what just one pack of smokes cost I could eat a couple of meals a day.

 

This has been a huge hit at our house, wife has requested this at least once a week

andouille sausage
Red, orange, yellow pepper, half of each
Sm yellow onion
White rice

saute that sausage and peppers and onions until tender crisp, add some seasoning (or don’t) toss into white rice. Booya.

sometimes I’ll toss in a bit of tomato sauce and make an etoufee, same ingredients.

if I have leftover chicken that gets tossed into the mix too. Whatever’s clever.

 

I can make 4 meals with a package of weenies, cheese and hot dog buns and a can of chili. Buns $1.50, chili $2.00, 1/2 pound block of cheese $2.00 and small onion $0.50 thats $6.00 for four meals of chili dogs. Thats a buck fifty per meal.

A depression era meal listed in the Backwoodsman magazine called Hoover Stew was:

A 16oz uncooked macaroni noodles
One pound cooked hambuger meat or package of weenies
2 cans stewed tomatoes
1 can of corn.

Cook macaroni per the box and before completely cooked drain and add HB meat that has been cooked and drained and stewed tomatoes. Add corn with liquid and simmer until macaroni is completely cooked. Enjoy.

 

A depression era meal listed in the Backwoodsman magazine called Hoover Stew was:

A 16oz uncooked macaroni noodles
One pound cooked hambuger meat or package of weenies
2 cans stewed tomatoes
1 can of corn.

Cook macaroni per the box and before completely cooked drain and add HB meat that has been cooked and drained and stewed tomatoes. Add corn with liquid and simmer until macaroni is completely cooked. Enjoy.

I know this meal well. Always wondered where it came from. I literally gag just thinking about it!

My goto cheap meal was (it isnt cheap any more) .
Blue box mac and cheese, can O' tuna, can O' peas.

These days, like others posted. It's spaghetti. Dried noodles, canned sauce, spices, canned mushrooms. 1/2 lb Italian sausage. can feed 4 peeps for $5 .

 

Raw over nite oats are not my favorite but toasting oats first in a dry pan, maybe with some nuts, helps tremendously.
All canned tomato products have jumped, Campbell's condensed tomato soup among the most. My Safeway has them at $1.99, on sale this week at $1.67. For around a 10 ounce can.

 

Making your own noodles is cheap and easy. All it takes is an egg a some flour. I lucked out and got an Italian made pasta machine at a yard sale last summer, and it's great, but you don't need the machine. Just use a rolling pin or an empty peanut butter jar to flatten the dough out nice and thin before you cut it up into noodles. Once you boil the noodles, you can add whatever topping you'd like, maybe a diced up tomato and some spices to make your own tomato sauce.

 

Agree, I don't know of many or any thing easier than making noodles.

 

Like I'm certain the OP does, I shop sales, stack deep, and build meals around that.

Recent deal was close-to-date canned turkey chili for 2 for $1. The ingredients didn't look too heinous, so I bought all they had.

Gets wrapped in a homemade tortilla with a bit of cheese and/or sour cream

Gets put on top of hot dogs

Gets mixed into rice, with some extra peppers, onions, can of corn, black olives if I have some open, to make Spanish Rice.

Gets layered in a dish with whatever else I have on hand - cheese, lettuce, diced tomato, peppers, onions, black olives, and gets scooped up with homemade tortilla chips.

 

Just about any canned stew or soup, poured over plain rice. Will feed 2-3 people for under $3.