ramen
spaghetti
rice and beans
peanut butter
commercial white bread
canned meat – not tuna as much as canned chicken, Spam, Vienna sausages, etc.
powdered milk
I’m not counting those braise-slow meats like chuck or turkey legs because of their price, particularly in my neck of the woods. They’re cheaper than other cuts, sure, but their price points still tend to be out of range for those “food poor”.
I count convenience foods – fast food, convenience store food – as lazy. I knew a woman (single mom, 3 kids) on all sorts of assistance who fed her kids from one or the other every single day. The closest supermarket was maybe a quarter of the mile down the road from her. – easy, straightforward walk. She couldn’t have been bothered because she’d whine “But I don’t have a car!” whenever you suggested it, even if somebody offered to drive her.
The convenience store and the fast food joint, btw, were within a block of her home. Much easier to have one of the kids run to either.
Everytime I’m at the grocery store (it seems) I’m behind someone with a full-to-toppling cart who pays with WIC and EBT. So, out of curiosity I like to check out what they have. The constants are: lots of cheap, freezable loaves of bread, gallons of milk, tons of canned stuff, cases of ramen, frozen chicken pot pies, enormous packages of chicken parts, and enormous amounts of eggs. Sometimes lots of tomatoes and jalapeños, but rarely much fresh fruit or veg. It seems to me like these carts often contain lots of stuff that goes into cooking a meal, with some easy to prepare stuff and next to no fun junky stuff.
One of my favourite late-night snacks is open-faced grilled cheese.
Simply slice cheese, place on bread, and grill in the (toaster) oven until the cheese is bubbly and browning. Optional toppings include tomatoes, hot peppers, or onions.
A liberal amount of pepper is required for seasoning.
WIC has restrictions on what you can buy with the program. I know this because every time I am behind someone using WIC, they have bought the wrong kind of eggs, or whatever and there is a lengthy discussion about whether they can get jumbo vs. extra large.
That brand in particular dominated the low end of the market (I think it was five packages for a dollar when I was in school). It’s different only because it was price positioned very cheaply, it contained little to no actual meat content (other than maybe some bouillon-type meat extracts in the seasoning packet), and the seasoning is super-heavy on the MSG, which can (in the short term) induce feelings of satiety.
Now, ironically, ramen is one of the hot trendy food-culture flavors of the day (albeit in a much, much nicer form than the instant supermarket versions). http://www.cnngo.com/singapore/eat/ippudo
Chicken parts like thighs, backs, wings etc. are good value when money is tight.
Get two meals for your buck. First boil the chicken with some salt until its cooked. Pull the meat off and use in a rice dish (rice, frozen peas, chicken pieces and some cheese) is cheap and very filling.
Put the bones back in the water. Cover and simmer until it reduces down about half way. Refrigerate. Next day add water, a few vegetables carrots, peas, beans, left over rice, any left over chicken meat etc. Now you have soup for dinner.
2 family size meals from that one package of chicken thighs.
With practice and some seasonings you can make tasty meals very cheaply.
This thread makes me sad. Half the things in this thread I consider to be comfort food, and were treats when I was little. I mean, we weren’t poor. I lived on a farm and we grew a garden, but it was just what everyone did to have extra veggies, it wasn’t a poverty thing. If something didn’t grow well in our climate, we bought it at the store, and I always had awesome school lunches by my mom. Fast food was a treat we got on the weekends when going into the city, not something bought because it was cheap. I like cup o’ ramen because it was something I choose to eat once in a while, not to survive on.
I guess I come from a family of bad cooks? Mom isn’t a bad cook, but she was the last one to get home from work, and I always wanted supper before then so I’d be that 11 year old latchkey kid putting chicken fingers in the oven.
Ramen noodles is the go-to, but from my own most impoverished days it’s
-Krystal hamburgers (for those not familiar, very similar to White Castle)-
When I was somewhere in the forests to the south of Broke-land back in the mid to late '80s Krystals was always having a scratch-off contest and you’d usually win something: free fries, a free burger, a free drink, a free combo if you were lucky, so whenever I had a couple of dollars I’d go there.
-Rice and broiled chicken
This is a personal one rather than general observation. There were some price wars between a couple of grocery store chains and both had leaders specials of 10 lb. packs of chicken leg quarters- ultimately got down to $.19 per pound at one- and we stocked up on them (with money we got trading in Coke bottles just for good '80s poverty measure). At the time our oven was broken and we couldn’t afford to fix it- you could broil but you couldn’t bake- and we’d sometimes broil the chicken to get a respite from fried, and of course rice has been cheap for as long as anybody living has been alive so it was the standard.
The weird part is I still like all of the above, but I couldn’t eat them for years. I suppose the difference is now when I eat them it’s by choice.
And of course broke students know how to loot all-you-can-eat buffets like it was the Vandals Prom Night in Rome. Amazing what you can get in pockets and, ideally, purses if you just take a little foil with you.
My mom and I often had lunches of canned Niblets corn and Vienna Sausage, cold, right out of the can. I had Spam several times a year and would make canned pasta or instant ramen as a quick lunch. Simple spaghetti is still one of my favorite foods, and I often have rice with meals. Canned soup, white-bread sandwiches, and chicken parts are stuff I buy now, and I’m not poor at all. These are just normal, quick, and easy food options. Funny how it is.
My grandmother, born in 1913 the oldest of seven children on an Appalachian farm, says that their dinner on most nights was navy beans and home-canned tomatoes on homemade bread.
My own strategies for saving on grocery bills involve oatmeal, pasta, dried beans, potatoes onions and cabbage. And whatever chicken parts come cheap.
Reading this thread has made me resolve to donate a Thanksgiving and a Christmas dinner to the food bank this year.
That’s so kind of you, Sattua, and such a nice reminder to share. You’ve inspired me to inquire at the nearby disabled living apartments about inviting a few folks who would otherwise be alone for the holidays. We’re not rich by any measure, but I try to be appropriately thankful for how much I do have.
I think that people ought to make a distinction between poverty food as in “what would I eat if I were poor”, and “what poor people actually eat”, which varies quite a bit by ethnicity.
For example, my guess would have been beans w/ bacon, stuff like cabbage, potatoes, rice, pasta, whatever vegetables are on sale, and stuff like that.
However, living in an area where there’s a pretty significant black/hispanic lower-income population, the black folks seem to buy a lot of pre-processed stuff, and junk food, while the hispanics tend to get a lot of fresh produce and also tend to frequent the hispanic food stores nearby (as do I; produce is good and cheap, but the meat seems sketchy)
For the 20 years mrAru was in the Navy we always invited guys in his division home for thanksgiving, christmas or easter [the commands usually had a 4th of july picnic for everybody]
Of course occasionally we had issues with our guests, like the one time it hadn’t been made clear when we said free range turkey he didn’t realize we meant go out grab one, and kill and clean it to get it ready to eat … he decided he would rather hide out inside and watch football :smack: I think the hanging it upside down in a kill bag and whacking its head off sort of scared him a bit …
That’s sort of been my shopping cart the last six months - little fresh veg because I was able to put in a HUGE garden this summer. So I could spend more of my budget on the rest of the meal - grains and protein. And the occasional fresh fruit.
I’m sure some nosey busy-bodies were convinced I was making poor food choices, but they couldn’t see the seven types of lettuce, 3 beets, 4 carrots, 3 types of onions, the turnips, chard, kale, bok choy, spinach, parsley, basil, squash, 4 varieties of beans, and the peas I was getting out of the garden. Oh, and dad sent me his home-grown garlic.
So the grocery cart had a lot of bread, crackers, pasta (including, yes, ramen), milk, eggs, butter, cooking oil, rice, and a bit of meat (including, yes, enormous packages of chicken parts when they were on sale).
Really, it was the condiments like soy sauce, spices, and the like that cost the most, but you really need them when you’re heavy on rice and beans.
My groceries are pretty basic and include a lot of pantry staples so I can cook from scratch, so I guess even though I’m technically poor, I don’t feel that way because I have such good meals.
When I think of poverty food, I think of the folks in town who live in public housing and are unable to get to the grocery stores for the basics they need to prepare “real” food. They’re stuck trying to make do with what they can get at the closest 7-11: sugary, salty, frozen, convenience foods that may be filling but rarely as nutritious as the beans and rice they might make if they had the shopping options I do.
It’s certainly not the cheapest way to feed a family, but poverty sometimes forces people to make bad choices. I recently read that WalGreens is adding grocery sections to try to bring healthier choices to “food deserts” in inner cities, etc.
I know, the restrictions are really strict (and I’m always behind that someone too!), but I think you only get $25 a month, so that didn’t account for all the other stuff.
I think what I sort of left out in my post that while I am noseying all over someone’s cart of food stamp food I’m rarely judgemental about poor choices- hey, I’m getting Little Debbies, so who am I to judge? Usually I’m just interested in how they’re stretching a food budget. And I construct little sample menus in my mind based on what they’re buying. Because an overflowing cart of food takes a really long time to check out, and US Weekly may not have any pictures of stars who have become too skinny or cellulite-riddled.
I’m pretty sure I’m not living in poverty, but a lot of what has been mentioned is stuff I eat every day. Living single, I don’t get all that hyped up about making fancy meals if I can eat something cheap and simple that (to me) tastes good. Tonight, for example, I had me some ramen with seasoned mustard greens, onion, a bit of garlic, and a dollop of sriracha sauce; maybe not to everyone’s taste, but I love it. Same for rice and beans; same for a meal of braised brussel sprouts and instant mashed potatoes, same for a simple pasta with a bit of sausage and tomato sauce.
I’m thinking real poverty food is living entirely off of scratch-and-dent stuff, or, as someone mentioned, things like jam on a saltine or ketchup served as a vegetable; or cat food, that supposed mainstay of destitute old folks.
I’m surprised at the handful of people who mentioned Chipped Beef on Toast. This is actually a favorite of mine and find it’s pretty expensive. If you get the frozen kind (Stouffers) it’s like $3.50 a box if it’s not on sale. If you make it from scratch with the Carl Budding meat packs it’s still at least $2 before you make the sauce. And that only makes one serving!
I remember having a cookbook called “Cooking with Peg” which was a “Married with Children” cash-in that had recipes for things like “Tang Wipes” which was to take a slice of bread and wipe it along the sides/bottom of an empty Tang Jar, lol. There was also something called “Vending Machine Soup” which required you to obtain many fast food ketchup packets and water for the broth. THAT is poverty eating.
For me the generic 4/$1.00 generic mac and cheese mixes (already mentioned) are the be-all and end-all of poverty food (next to ramen). To make matters worse, my parents would only use HALF of the cheese packet, ostensibly to use the other half with plain, bulk, macaroni at a later date. What ended up happening is they ended up having a kitchen drawer full of about 45 half empty cheese packets and we were stuck eating nasty, watered-down mac & cheese about once a week.
yeah we call them instant noodles, or “maggi mee”. even as a kid, we don’t eat them plain - always with an egg and yesterday’s leftover.
noodles aren’t a trend in Singapore. it’s an alternative staple to rice. it’s not unusual to eat them everyday. however, there are so many varieties (not to mention the differences between cultures like Chinese, Malay, Indian, Peranakan, Japanese, Western etc) that simply saying noodles isn’t going to give anyone a common mental picture.
from my perspective, your remark is like saying the potato is a poor man’s food and that it is ironic that you find it served alongside steaks in expensive restaurants.
This thread makes me sad. Half the things in this thread I consider to be comfort food, and were treats when I was little. I mean, we weren’t poor. I lived on a farm and we grew a garden, but it was just what everyone did to have extra veggies, it wasn’t a poverty thing. If something didn’t grow well in our climate, we bought it at the store, and I always had awesome school lunches by my mom. Fast food was a treat we got on the weekends when going into the city, not something bought because it was cheap. I like cup o’ ramen because it was something I choose to eat once in a while, not to survive on.