Rotten food, or food that has otherwise decayed into a state most people would think of as non-usable. Similarly, things that aren’t food but fill the stomach, like sawdust or paper.
Rats. Possums. Raccoons. Other vermin species (aside from deer) that you don’t need special tools to catch and kill. This is cultural, however; some people like a good possum stew. Similarly, some people like insects and arachnids of various kinds, but most Westerners would have to be pretty far down to consider them food.
Condiments as a main meal. Ketchup soup is an old standby. Similarly, using water to fill the stomach.
Traditionally, anything home-grown or killed by a family member was a poverty food, but that is no longer true.
My husband grew up eating a lot of turkey necks, (and whatever farmers could trade for work on their farm equipment.) They were dirty cheap because no one else wanted them.
Ramen is about 15 cents a packet, which is about one serving.
I remember collecting cans to cash in and if I found five, I could get a Little Debbie snack and be good for a few hours until it was time to eat generic Mac n Cheese. We didn’t always have butter or milk to add, though, so it was kind of nasty.
My MIL, when my wife was a kid, would boil up some pasta, then, with a bit of water in the pot, would mix in a packet of instant gravy mix. Add some boiled potatoes, and dinner was served.
I agree with RyJae and Chronos most ‘poverty food’ is actually pretty expensive. I can make chef salads for my family of 4 for less per serving then the cost of a pound of hamburger. Hell, I can make a ratatouille w/ bread for less then it would cost to take the family to McDonald’s.
I grew up in a middle class home; I ate lots of Ramen because my parents knew I could cook it myself. I still keep some in the house, but my kids don’t eat it much. We are poor, very much so.
I think of poverty food as all the cheap off brand box mixes that you add minimal stuff to - rice o roni, critter helper, stuff like that, in addition to the McDonalds type fast food. Basically modern ghetto foods that take minimal prep if any.
I may eat happily what many people think of as poverty food, but I do it because I happen to like beans and rice, vegetable only soups based on potatoes, cabbage, onions and maybe carrot. I love my ramen soup made from a brick of ramen, a chicken thigh, half a small onion, 2 stalks of celery and 2 carrots with a pinch of herbs and salt and pepper to taste. It is actually comfort food to me as well as being a fairly nutritionally complete meal. I thrill at taking a tough bit of beef and braising it into tenderness.
Poverty food isn’t what the food is, it is the degree of laziness to me. There is nothing wrong with a dish of rice and beans with a single slice of bacon seasoning it instead of a side of spare ribs with the rice and beans as an afterthought.
I grew up in poverty and I can tell you right now, I thought those kids who ate hamburger helper were rich. We never got boxed food because it costs more that making it yourself.
We had a lot of potatoes. Mashed, in soup, baked (oh my did we get baked!), etc. Lots of rice. We had stir fry frequently in the summers because my parents grew a garden every year. Poverty food is growing three to four times as many green beans as you need so you can sell the extra to buy the new tv. (Since the red tube went out six months ago and all.) I spent hours canning on the weekends with my mother so we could put food up for the winter.
The one food I remember very well that no one else has ever heard of is a Japanese peasant food. My dad called it Oyakidanburi (I think that’s how one would spell it in Romanji.) He lived in Japan in his 20s and learned to make a few things there. he cooked the stir fries and taught my mom to make a super cheap onion soup. You boil onions (picked up for free on the corners of the roads because they fell off the farm trucks) in chicken bullion (bought in bulk at WinCo) and serve over cooked rice (also bought in bulk.) If my parents weren’t feeling the pinch quite so much that day they would drop an egg or two into it. It’s not a bad soup, and quite filling because of the rice.
A pot of dried beans & cornbread. Beans are a cheap source of protein.
The cheap red cans of Campbells soup. If needed you can add two cans of water and there’s still some flavor.
A loaf of bread and a store brand package of sandwich mystery meat. Use a half slice per sandwich. You don’t have to bite into meat with every bite. Just enough meat so it’s not a bread sandwich.
Yes, I’ve been through hard times and I know how to stretch a dollar. Last resort don’t eat and drink lots of water to fill your stomach.
Worst two weeks of my life and gf’s was the time I got robbed right after cashing my paycheck. Two weeks of living off soda pop bottle deposits, and every penny we found in the sofa cushions. Not a fun experience. But we did get through it without ever begging money from the relatives.
I guess my brain is behind the times, because when I ask it what “poverty food” is it says “things that are brown and white!” as in, you know, beans alone or bread soaked in milk with sugar or whatever. But the top part of my brain realizes that now poverty food comes in a freezer bag from Central Processing Warehouse.
Tesco in the UK used to do instant noodles at eight pence a pack. That was about six years ago - they’re probably 12p per pack now. My flatmate and I called them “junkie fodder”. The one in Maryhill, Glasgow would always sell out of them by mid-afternoon.
Boil kettle, break noodles into pint glass, pour water over noodles, season to taste, stir and eat.
Black-eyed peas and cornbread, catfish, game, government-surplus cheese, whatever lived in the garden – fresh and put up (that means canned or processed at home), chickens, beef and other various farm animals, killed and butchered on site. I am old, but not that old. I was poor, but not that poor.
I think of poverty food as big starches: rice you buy in bulk, grits (a really great poverty food at one time, dirt cheap, more expensive now but still very cheap compared to even the cheapest fast food), potatoes, and flour. If you buy those you can generally afford enough butter to make them palatable. Cheap meats includes those chicken thighs you buy in bulk (I like chicken thighs, not everyone does) and hot dogs. Not so much hamburger any more, except for those noxious bulk packs that are opaque cause they dont want you to see how gray the meat is. Yech.
i’m a tad confused on the usage of “ramen” here. are we talking shorthand for plain, instant, cup noodles served with nothing else? because when i hear ramen i picture these. how are they any different from, say pasta?
We never got boxed food because it costs more that making it yourself.