My concern these days is high quality for reasonable prices rather than lowest possible price. In that category the big win for me is making my own bread. I’d expect that bread would be one of those cases where mass production would lead to unbeatable prices, but for some reason it doesn’t work out that way. I can make my own for about 60 cents a loaf, not counting my time (minimal actually) and the cooking gas. I’m sure there are loaves of bread available for that kind of price, but the quality isn’t there. When you make your own bread, you can see how it got the reputation as the staff of life and became a synonym for food. Add the peanut butter and jelly others have mentioned above, and you’ve got cheap, tasty, and nutritious all at once.

I also second the garden/grow your own comments above. I once got through nearly an entire summer on about $5 a week in groceries, mostly flour and sugar. Ratatouille is good stuff cheap when you have a garden.

fwiw.
John

There are green beans, sauerkraut, and most importantly, greens. An entire can of each has almost no carbs.

You can stuff yourself with a can of greens, 1 serving of sauerkraut, and 1 serving of corn bread, and still keep the carbs low. That might cost a marginal amount more than rice and oatmeal.

Even so, there is no reason to eliminate the ‘cheap carbs’, as long as you eat several small meals with sufficiently low overall carbs. Toss in a can of tuna and a couple of eggs for protein, and that should suffice.

I also used to go to a cheap diner, where a grilled cheese sandwich was only 89 cents. I’d dip the sandwich in A1 steak saucem which gave the illusuion of meat.

1. I suggesting making a long-term relationship with fellow frugal-eaters. What is ridiculous for 1-2 people, in terms of bulk purchases, is smart for a dozen.

2. A kitchen garden is always and excellent option if available. My family had an enormous garden when I was a kid. Every day we had fresh greens by using scissors to snip off the new growth rather than pulling the entire plant out of the ground and killing it.

3. Make friends with local farmers and gardeners. A lot of farmers will have products that are blemished that they will have trouble selling. *shrug* in soup it all looks the same. Plus many gardeners end up with far more than they can personally use. It’s delicious, in season and local. Hard to beat.

4. My favorite meal consists of a hot (spicy) Italian sausage with the casing removed, broken up and browned in a skillet. Chopped onions, bell pepper, celery and carrots, about a double handful, along with some garlic, red pepper flakes, cumin and thyme go in after the sausage has been browned and it’s all mixed together. Then when the vegetables are done the whole mess is served on hot white rice.

In general, for cheap eats, I tend to think like my Eastern European immigrant grandparents: cabbage, beans, rice, meat for flavor. I also cook Asian, which is also cheap if you shop at an Asian market (dried mung beans were $0.69/lb this morning at my favorite place, and “standard” Asian veggies and other items were similarly cheap). Really, the main ingredient is time. If you’re willing to set up the Crock-Pot in the morning before you go into work, or cook stir-fry with seasonal ingredients, or cook on weekends and freeze the food back, you can eat like royalty on a grad student’s salary. Nowadays, you pay mostly for convenience. My grandma would have killed for what I take for granted.

Jambalaya is to be made only from LEFTOVER meats, or meats that wouldn’t taste so good unless you mixed them in jambalaya juice, such as deer or other gamey meats.

That’s why jambalaya is cheap … because it costs “nothing” for the meat. It’s meat that was leftover from previous meals that might have gone to waste in the frige … chicken wing meat, thighs nobody wanted, leftover crawfish from the boil, that catfish that was too puny to fry up, that last half of a pork chop dad couldn’t finish.

If you have $30 for shrimp, chicken sausage to thow into a jambalaya, you might as well have shrimp cocktails, fried chicken and seared sausage!

Three meals for less than $15.00 and enough to feed at least 2 to 4 people each day.

Other than that…. the cheapest is Top Ramen with any leftovers or a beaten egg blended in. The college student’s friend. I used to make ramen soup in my coffee maker.

Being a type II jacks your food bill through the roof, and it takes a lot of creativity to get it back down.

The sugar substitutes are far more expensive than sugar, most startches are off limits or have relatively expensive substitutes, etc. It doesn’t help that I can’t stand the taste of most vegetables.

Tips:

1. French toast is still OK, but if you must have it sweetened the alternatives are more expensive. But even if you have to spend on a non-sugared syrup, its still cheaper than many other breakfasts.

2. You can’t go wrong with eggs, and the amount of things you can make with them as a major or minor ingredient is amazing. Use them to enhance a side meal into a full meal, like adding them to salads. Egg-salad sandwiches are cheap and yummy.

3. There are relatively cheap low-carb breads, but you really have to search to find that combination. My choice is Holsum Lite-r 35. (so named because it has 35 calories). Cut your sandwich bread bill in half by using an open-face sandwich.

4. Poor-man’s stroganoff – use ground beef on a bed of low-carb toast instead of steak strips on noodles. Sour cream isn’t all that bad of an expense if you don’t go overboard.

5. The cheap cheeses are mostly fillers, which have carbs, whereas real cheese has virtually none. Choose your poison carefully.

6. Meats are your budget’s worst enemy, but it’s difficult to omit them entirely. For them, A george foreman-type grill is your best friend. Low power usage compared to a microwave and very versatile.

7. Try this at work for your lunches: cook some cheap breakfast sausages in the microwave. Then scramble some eggs and microwave them too. You can do it all in one bowl as long as you do the sausages first and drain the grease.

Ramen is great; not only is it cheap (I can still get it at $.12 at Wal-Mart), but it’s “refrigerator velcro”. Dump a can of tuna (in water) in it, and you’ve got yourself a fast hearty meal. There are few things that don’t go well with ramen–the only drawback is the sodium, and if that’s a problem, throw away half the flavoring. If you’re being a little more upscale, you can go with Ricearoni or the Lipton/Knorr pasta or rice packets, although those run around a buck each if they’re not on sale. Sandwiches can be dirt cheap–it’s hard to beat PBJ. While a lot of TV-style dinners (especially the “healthy” ones run around $2-$4, some frozen foods can be had for under $1. I have a particular fondness for Jose Ole’s frozen burritos, which are still around 3/$1. Some vegetables freeze well, and are tastier and healthier than canned varieties.

For special treats, I like to make microwave stroganoff with 2 packets of Lipton/Knorr stroganoff-flavored noodles, 1 can of cream of mushroom, and upwards of a pound of pre-cooked frozen meatballs. Takes very little time and effort, makes 5-6 servings for not much more than $4.

Oh, and make as few trips as possible. The gas you burn getting there and back is almost as expensive as milk these days. Use as few perishables as possible, and do without for a few days rather than make a special trip just for them. Either plan out every meal in advance, or if you’re too lazy (guilty) to do that, fill your larder with as much variety (bought in bulk where possible) as you can cram in there, and be satisfied with the options you have on hand until you’ve run low enough to make a trip worthwhile.

It probably doesn’t need to be said, but I’ll say it anyways… DON’T EAT OUT. Eating out is for special occasions only. If you must eat out, and it’s not a special occasion, there are places you can eat for $2-3 (Taco Bell–skip the chalupa, eat from the under-a-buck menu), or buffets for $5 (pizza or Chinese, some of which have very impressive selections).

Delish!