This post generated a lot of interesting comments and great ideas not only for cheap foods, but for great ways to prepare your food and make it last longer. The pork shoulder (butt) was mentioned a few times and I will admit that I use those once in a while to eat cheap myself. Top Ramen was king with several people, and seems to have helped many survive their college days. Various ways to prepare chicken also garnered several comments as did PB and J sammiches. Some things I just can’t eat, like the roadkill mentioned or the Jose Ole burritos (3 for $1!). I have heard of people here in Wisconsin taking roadkilled deer and butchering them on the spot and taking the meat home for freezing. Out of so many good ideas I had to narrow it down, and I got it down to two.
Our runner up is Ozmo, whose wife, using a combination of newspaper coupons and a loyalty card purchased food and toiletries for a total of $50, but in the end with the coupons and loyalty bonuses $13 was paid to HER.
But our clear winner reminded me of myself back in my college days, where free food was my main draw. I will let John say it as he did in the comments:
Margarita Mondays at Acapulcos. Go into the Cantina during happy hour and for $1 you get a margarita (cheap tequila, but it still works) and all you can eat buffet. I swear, for a while there in college that was the only fresh vegetables I was getting. They also had these great little taquitos. You just had to make sure to get out before the karaoke started (or if you had at least $5 you could be drunk enough to last through it).
For this Eatin’ Cheap submission John, you are the man!
*Special thanks to Jonathan for making this certificate, which will entitle John to great respect wherever he goes, as well as the best tables at America’s finest restaurants.
“… here in Wisconsin taking roadkilled deer and butchering them on the spot and taking the meat home for freezing …”
I personally witnessed this happen in Indiana. I arrived after the carcass had been partly butchered on the kitchen table, on top of a layer of newspaper for the blood and entrails and stuff. The lucky finder of this free meat was a former fighter pilot who had been trained to surive in the woods for some punishing length of time. Once you have been through that, he told me, something really primal gets switched on in your mind, and for the rest of your life every animal you see, you can see it in terms of how meat it is made out of, and what it would take to twist its head off to get at the meat.
The meat was made into chili and jerky.
Yum, venison jerky and chili. Them’s good eats.