Skip the green pepper and squash, use cabbage and carrots instead and add some scrambled egg or tofu. Around here eggs are 99 cents a dozen, on sale, and tofu is under $2. Some ingredients, like soy sauce or the oil to do the stir fry would last a lot longer than one meal.
Yeah its more expensive, but spaghetti still has some of the highest calorie/dollar ratios you will find. White spaghetti goes for about 0.35-0.50 a pound while wheat goes for 0.99-2.00 a pound. Either way, a single box is probably enough to cook dinner with. Same with high fiber bread. It is more expensive than white bread, but the cost isn’t a gigantic change, maybe an extra $0.50-$1 a loaf.
Ground turkey is cheap around here, it goes for $1.49 normally and is on sale for $0.99.
I wouldn’t consider that a healthy meal. Of course, living with a diabetic as I do definitely colors my views, but he can’t eat rice aside from the wild stuff (which I think isn’t rice at all). Rice is almost like pure sugar for a diabetic.
I love rice on the rare occasions I eat it, though.
For only a dollar, I can purchase a healthy, fresh garden salad from the Wendy’s aptly named dollar menu. They also have ceasar salar and chili for a buck, which I would consider to be relatively healthy choices. The dressing is in a separate packet. It is just as convenient to buy one of these pre-packaged salads as a burger. I think it can be too easy to decry fast food restaurants whereas we tend to give a free pass to the person making the food choices.
I believe Wendy’s operates in the New Orleans area, because I seem to recall some announcement about Wendy’s workers in the affected areas being paid even if they cannot return to work. If so, they should be applauded for this (along with offering healthy choices on their menu).
Simple answer is cook what dinner is to be and if they don’t eat it, they can go without dinner. Picky/demanding variety is nice, but in teh end food is food. Eat or starve - and it doesnt sound like missing a few meals would be that dangerous to your family, just annoying.
They will only eat red beans and rice once a month? sheesh - Mondays are now red beans and rice day - vary it by week 1 - generic italianate sausage balls, week 2 - generic keilbasa, week 3 is chunks of inexpensive ham, week 4 is vegan. Thursdays is now generic spaghetti with generic sauce and generic tossed salad day - add variety by doping it up with offering addins like chopped green&black olives, chopped onion, parmesan cheese, or simply by buying a different type of sauce each week. Friday is fish fillet and oven baked french fry day. Sunday is whole roast chicken with potatoes, carrots, celery and onion roasted in the same pan day. If they want variety, they can get a job and contribute to the food budget.
If you let the famiy dictate your economy/ineconomy then they will do it. If you want to contain your food costs, then they can suck it up and put up with a little less variety.
And yes, mrAru and I have spent the occasional time of several weeks or even months with nothing but a base of ramen or rice, and what I could modify them with [typically home raised chicken, carrots, celery, onions and cheap spices from the dollar store.]
I’m fine with the beans, and they’d easily fit into the budget.
As for fat - if you saute the onions, garlic & peppers, there’s some. But in our society, it’s almost impossible not to get some (indeed, too much) fat. So if your serve a meal with rather little of it, you need not worry that’s unhealthy.
I think it is important to note that eating healthy includes not eating large quantities. Assuming for a 2000 calorie diet, and eating 3 times a day, round up, that is 700 calories for Dinner.
Lets see:
Bag of Pasta- 1.19 (mid-expensive kind, Cheaply it can be as low as 79 cents)
1/2 Gallon of milk (skim)- 1.65
1/2 lb Beef- 1.00 (beef can be more expensive, but it is regularly 1.99 lb fresh) (80/20)
Spaghetti sauce- 99 cents (Hunts, can run up to 1.19)
Assuming two servings of cooked spaghetti, 1 glass Vit D milk, 4oz beef, 1 serving sauce and no cheese, you have this for your dinner: (per person, family of 4)
Calories: 700
Fat: 11
Protein: 37
Carbs: 103
Price: 5 dollars (sauce will last next time, milk will last another day or two)
A pretty decent meal, actually. I would say healthy, 14% of your calories are from fat, 21% from protein, and 58% from carbs. ACSM actually recommends a 20/25/55 Protein, fat, carb mix, and that is pretty durn close. Drink whole milk instead of skim, and you just about hit it.
Now of course it doesn’t work for everybody, and it is just one meal, but you can do a lot with pasta for variety, same with beans, same with rice, and they are all cheap. Chicken is relatively cheap too, and a portion shouldn’t be more than 3 oz.
This idea of eating a lb of beef, even with a family of four, at one setting is not a good idea. Personally I would cut down on the beef (1/2 serving per person)
Throw in a salad if you want to splurge. Sandwhiches are inexpensive meals, and PB may be high in fat, but it is generally healthy in single servings. On a bagel perhaps for breakfast. (mmm, its what gets me going in the morning) Some spinach leaves or lettuce on a sandwhich raise the price up, but skipping out on it, may be not as healthy, but it is certainly better than the alternative.
My parents raised me and a daughter on less than 50 dollars a week, and we certainly did not lack variety. (which, btw, 50 dollars a week is much less than your 15 dollars a day)
It’s not perfect, but it is an idea. 
I don’t understand why the presumption is made that a shopping trip must be made everytime a meal is to be prepared. In my part of the world, normal behaviour dictates that a single large shopping trip is made once a week. Is this different in the US?
That’s about what I spend, too, and I eat fruits and veggies most days.
But it doesn’t take 4 hours to make. It takes less than 1/2 actually in the kitchen. You can do other things while the bread is rising, and from start to finish bread takes 2 hours tops. I do it while I’m watching TV in the evening. If you make a few extra loaves and freeze them, you could have the week’s worth of bread done in an afternoon.
Eating healthy for cheap doesn’t take more money, but it does take more time, knowledge, and organization. I typically plan the week’s meals, do my shopping, and do the “do-ahead” part of the recipies on my Sundays.
Let’s see:
I live in the DC area, so groceries might be high here, but I can easily cook a hearty, not unhealthy dinner for 4 for $7 or so.
Some examples:
1 lb hamburger on sale - $2.50
1 big can of tomatoes - $1.75
1 can tomato paste - $0.75
1 box spaghetti - $1.00
2 cans of green beans - $2.00
Voila! Spaghetti and meatsauce with green beans
1.5 lb chicken pieces on sale - $2.50
1/2 lb of rice - $0.75
1.5 lb of squash - $2.00
1 onion - $0.50
1 can chicken stock - $1.25
Voila! Chicken with Rice and vegetables
1 lb dried beans - $1.00
1 ham hock - $1.50
1 lb frozen spinach - $2.00
1 pkg cornbread mix - $1.00
Voila! Bean, greens and cornbread
chuck roast on sale - $5.00
potatoes - $1.00
carrots - $1.00
Voila! Roast beef
1 lb cheap chicken pieces - $2.50
1 can of mixed vegetables - $1.00
1 bag of noodles - $1.00
1 onion - $0.50
1/2 c of sliced celery from the salad bar - $0.75
1 lb broccoli - $1.75
Voila! Chicken soup!
The transportation can be an issue; I suggest, and many people do, shop once or twice a week for groceries.
Prep time can be a factor. Cooking ahead and freezing, using a crockpot, etc. can help.
The werewithal to do this? Priceless, and something middle class college-educated white folks like myself take utterly for granted. If I worked for low wages, lived in a dirty, dangerous neighborhood, no if I grew up that way and everyone I know grew up that way, these options are not so apparent. If I saw this cycle of poverty and despair all around me every single day, I’d say “Fuck it, I’m going to Mc Donald’s”.
Um, in response to the inner city folk and no grocery stores … you can not carry much on a bus in the way of shopping bags, from a couple of stanpoints - you have the area surrounding your seat if you manage to get a seat on the bus and or subway, and don’t have to stand, and also casual pilferage by people taking advantage of your burdened state if you do try to take more than a souple of the little plastic thankyou plastic grocery bags. Also, the plastic grocery bags can rip…though this can be remedied by using the string bags or canvas bags you can buy.
In the absence of your own car, - let me reiterate - getting home more than a couple plastic sacks of groceries can be fairly insurmountable problem. If you have to draag along a few small children [under the age of say 9 or 10] it can be pretty much impossible in a crowded mass transportation situation. If you have 2 or 3 children under the age of 9 or so, it is just easier to hit the local convenience store or fast food logistically speaking.
Growing up in Russia with two working parents and the nearest grocery store at least a mile away we never had a problem. We didn’t have a car, nor was the bus a viable solution (it costs money, it’s packed, and you have to wait 20 minutes for it), so we just walked. I remember helping my parents carry groceries when I was 6. Sometimes we’d go to a farther (maybe 1.5 miles) stores because they were cheaper.
Granted, there was no fast food available, so that wasn’t an option, and that seems to be the only difference. Either you can’t support your own family on one full-time job (your family is too big), you are disabled and physically unable to go to the store (society’s problem) , or you are just too lazy (your problem).
Am I just misunderstanding the situation? Are there inner city residences with no grocery store in a 2 mile radius? How expensive is it to move out of inner city to somewhere near a grocery store that still has work if you don’t care where you go ?
I’ve been scrolling down this thread, wondering where exactly you are living. As it turns out, you are living within a few blocks of where I grew up (near Main & Chicago, though I live on the North Side now). We never did shop at Jewel or Dominick’s for much beyond staple canned goods or other packaged items (flour, sugar, milk, pasta, etc.)
We were pretty strapped for cash when I was a kid - long story involving single working mom. Mom did all kinds of creative things so we could eat cheaply and healthily. And no, we didn’t have a car, either, for much of that time - we relied on public transportation, and on our own arms and legs (and bicycles).
Admittedly, Mom has a good understanding of nutrition and is a pretty damn good cook, and we had a functional kitchen. My sister and I both learned to cook at an early age - by HS, I was probably making dinner as often as Mom was. We didn’t eat a lot of meat. We would make occasional family treks on the El to various ethnic or natural foods markets, before Evanston even had a farmer’s market. Mom would cook stuff on the weekend and put it in the freezer. She even did goofy things like tell us she was putting cheese on our popcorn, when really she was sprinkling it with brewer’s yeast for the B vitamins.
It was a group effort, and what we ate wasn’t fancy most of the time (I couldn’t look at a lentil or a PB&J sanwich for years after I left home) - in retrospect, a few additional spices bought in bulk at a trip to an ethnic neighborhood every few months would have gone a long way to liven things up. But I think Mom did a damn good job of feeding herself and 2 kids for next to nothing, and bonus - both of us turned out to be pretty damn good cooks, if I may say so. Healthy eating is a group effort, and even my sister, who has always been a fussy eater, managed to make it through childhood without starving to death.
Given, I live in a good neighborhood with good public transportation. But it boggles me that people buy meat at the Jewel for $4/lb., or peppers for $3/lb., when the little produce stand that is literally across the street carries the same items at half the price, and much fresher.
And why does eating healthy have to be an all-or-nothing proposition? Must it be all Whoppers, or nothing but unseasoned rice and beans? The vast majority of us can do a much better job of eating healthy food than we do, and it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg - I can buy chicken leg quarters at Devon Market, a 10-min. bus ride (or bike ride) from here, for $0.69/lb. - the $3.50 round-trip is an incorrectly calculated expense unless you are going grocery shopping every single day (which I doubt), and in any case, most people without cars will find it more economical to buy a monthly bus pass to commute to work, school, etc. anyway, so the incremental cost of that extra bus trip is $0.00.
Let’s face it - there are a lot of people out there who either don’t have the organizational skills, or just don’t want to make the effort to eat healthily - a lot of the time, ït’s sooooo expensive and hard to cook!" is just a cop-out.
Knowledge is a massive factor in cooking. My roomate whos mom is an excellent cook and who has seen me make my garlic bread managed to screw it up at the put it in the oven stage.
if you know how to cook at least the basics (that is have a basic understanding of cooking) you still need the essentials. a sharp knife, a clean kitchen, pots/pans spices (you can purchase bulk once in a while to load up) a few various utensils needed in cooking and serving.
and even then you need access to the raw food. here in seattle the grocery stores in the down town area are weird as hell compared to the suburbs. and most of the differences are due to security I would imagine.
its kinda scary that I am a better cook than every single woman I have ever dated, it wasnt that long ago that women were supposed to be cooks and most could handle the basics. (I am not trying to pull some sexist crap here just pointing out that cooking was important a generation or 2 ago, now not so much)
I would consider all of those different meals, and all would be happily consumed within a month’s time. (That’s what I was trying to get at by “red beans and rice and chili and rice,” but your post makes it clearer.) Thanks for the ideas!
Well, let’s not pin it all on them. It is my understanding, as I posted before, that variety is needed for “healthy”, per the FDA.
An Arky - thank you! Wonderful ideas, all of them. I could quibble that some of them are awfully bland an inedible without seasoning 
but I know how to jazz them up without adding too much to the cost. They’re going in my recipe file as reminders. Thanks!
Eva Luna - Thanks for the Devon Market tip. I haven’t been there yet. Will check it out soon.
Critical1 - If it helps, I’m a better cook than most people I know. Except for one man who went to cooking school. I don’t know if there’s a cooking divide by gender anymore - hardly *any * young people know how to really cook.
Hm, what I meant by Originally Posted by aruvqan They will only eat red beans and rice once a month? sheesh - Mondays are now red beans and rice day - vary it by week 1 - generic italianate sausage balls, week 2 - generic keilbasa, week 3 is chunks of inexpensive ham, week 4 is vegan.
is that you take your basic red beans and rice, and each week add a different meatlump to it. There is a hell of a difference between red beans and rice and chili and rice…chili is a cooked mixture of tomatos, red beans, peppers, onions and spices [with or without ground beast] where red beans and rice is basically rice and cooked red beans. I normally make red beans and rice by cooking my rice in chicken stock with herbs and some spices, and add a measure of cooked red beans [mraru likes canned red beans]
People from the inner city who have cars will drive to the suburbs to buy food. People from the suburbs will not drive in the inner city to buy food. It’s far more economical to open a large supermarket in the city. The only way to make money from a solely local population is to carry limited stocks at higher prices- which is what you find in the inner cities.
I love my homemade bread, but it is definitely a weekend activity. First off, once I’m off work, I have four hours to myself before bedtime. And I don’t like eating right before I go to bed. And I couldn’t imagine making it without the expensive food proccessor that came with our sublet…kneading may feel good and relaxing and medative after a day at the office, but when you’re doing physical work all day, the last thing you want is to spend twenty minutes bashing some flour just so you can have some bread. Homemade bread also doesn’t stay good as long as storebought bread, and let’s face, your pretty likely to eat the whole loaf in a day, which ruins the healthy aspect of it.
I’d like to make more beans and bread, but practically I can’t do it unless I get off early or am willing to wait until eleven for dinner.
According to this, the vast majority of 35 million people living in poverty in America are children disabled and the elderly. 7 million of them are the working poor- probably a large percentage of able-bodied adults. 25% of jobs do not pay a living wage.
And think that being un(der) employed brings you a lot of time. Job interviews, job research, and even securing public benefits takes a lot of time.
I will not shop at my local grocery store anymore because they charge $2.50 for a bunch of collard greens. I can’t think of anything healthier than collard greens, but I’m not going to spend $2.50 on something that will barely provide enough food for a side dish for the two of us. Luckly, I work near a good Chinese grocery where I can get them for a buck. Safeway also tries to charge fifty cents per head of garlic and a buck ninety nine for plain old yellow onions. Thank god I have an alternative.
Who does the cooking? What hours do they work and what sort of labor does he or she do? What is their commute time like and how many total hours at home do they get after work? Are there kids involved?
[quote=aruvgan]
Simple answer is cook what dinner is to be and if they don’t eat it, they can go without dinner. Picky/demanding variety is nice, but in teh end food is food. Eat or starve - and it doesnt sound like missing a few meals would be that dangerous to your family, just annoying.[/quiote]
Heh. Do you have kids? It’s not the starving thats a problem. It’s the screaming and the crying and the pouting thats an issue. After working some crapass customer service job all day, you really don’t want to go home to your own family giving you shit.
“Healthy” olive oil= $6.00
A couple bottles of spices=$7.00
The rest of the hamburger in the sale package=$5.00
Eggs for the cornbread mix=$2.50
If you like Devon Market, then you should also check out Fresh Fields further west on Devon (between Western and California), not to mention the other Indo/Pak groceries on Devon Ave., especially for spices and various dried legumes.
And if you haven’t already found it, check out Oakton Market a bit west on Oakton, just across Skokie Blvd. and the train tracks - it will completely blow your mind. (A tip from an Israeli friend of my mom’s who buys amazing leg of lamb there for about what you would spend in a supermarket for cheapo pork chops. Pretty much anything you buy there is half the price and twice as good as a regular supermarket, and the variety of ethnic items is incredible.) I get there about every other week, even though it’s a bit out of the way - it’s worth it.
I luuurrve The Marketplace on Oakton. That’s about the only place I can afford meat. And their produce prices are fantastic (although I’m a little disappointed in how quickly their produce goes bad - far sooner than nearly anyone’s but Aldi’s.)
Again, way too far out there for anyone without a car. I’ll go count my blessings again. 
Some of the posts in this thread are ridiculous. “Poor people don’t have access to healthy food.”
Um, I don’t think that’s the primary problem. When a person wants something, they usually figure out a way to get it. Even if they’re poor.
I used to work at a grocery store. (Kroger’s.) We had just about every kind of food you could think of. Our customers came from all walks of life. Based on my experience as a bagger for many years, the people on food stamps purchased the unhealthiest food we offered. Why didn’t they choose healthier food?? The richer clients in our store tended to purchase much healthier foods.
Ignorance? Possibly. But I don’t think that’s the primary reason.
For whatever reason, many poor people simply like the taste of unhealthy, fatty foods.