26 days, limited budget - let's say €2.5-€3 per day max.

Target: healthy foods
Problem day: must eat out at least 1-2 days per week
Can cook: yes
Need: good food

I don't really need ideas for eating out, but I would like to expand my horizons as far as cooking my own meals is involved. So share!

make a big ol' pot of stew. Lasts a few days, goes well with noodles, rice or potatoes. =)

26 days, limited budget - let's say €2.5-€3 per day max.

Target: healthy foods
Problem day: must eat out at least 1-2 days per week
Can cook: yes
Need: good food

I don't really need ideas for eating out, but I would like to expand my horizons as far as cooking my own meals is involved. So share!

What do you mean by Problem Day?

Anyway, good things are roasts/stews/chillis. Pretty much anything you can make a lot of at a time will be cheap. You make one roast, one thing of chilli, and one stew/hearty soup and you'll be pretty solid for the month. When I make each of those I can usually do it for under $15-20 canadian. I could do it for around $10 US when I was at home, but mostly because I knew more exactly what to buy.

Here's some simple recipes that I use, but most require either a large pot or a slow cooker.

Pork Roast/Beef Stew:
-1 decent sized pork roast (2-3 pounds/1-1.5kg Around $8) For Beef Stew sub in 1-2lbs of beef stew meat.
-Handful of potatoes preferably not baking potatos (3-5 potatoes depending on size $2-3)
-1 large onion ($1-2ish)
-frozen or canned peas/corn ($1-2 total. If you buy frozen you can use them again in the later recipes because the bags contain more)
-Salt/Pepper
Optional:
-Carrots (I usually leave these out because I don't eat enough carrots and end up wasting half the bunch because you only need like 2)

Just cut up the onion and potatoes and put it all in the crock pot. If you want to get fancy then season the pork and brown it on all sides in a pan before putting it in the pot/slow cooker. You can then cook the onions in the pan and use water to deglaze it so you don't lose flavor. Cook it until you can pull meat off the roast easily with a fork.

Chili:
-1-3 lbs ground beef depending how meaty you want it ($5-8)
-Peppers: These are tricky because they vary depending on where you are. I usually use 2 jalepenos and 2 banana peppers. I would consult someone at the super market or a friend who knows about peppers around you that can help. Generally I like 2 medium-hot smaller peppers and 2 medium larger peppers though. Price really depends on these
-1 large sweet onion ($1-2)
-1 can of canned tomatoes of your preference ($1 diced, stewed, whole peeled, whatever you like. A can is a fine amount regardless of type)
-1 1.5 litre bottle of V8/tomato juice. Most recipes call for tomato paste and water. I prefer to just use tomato juice ($2)
-2 cans of beans you like. I usually get a can of chili beans and a can of kidney beans ($1/can)
- corn like above.

Cook the meat, onions, and peppers in a pan. Add some chilli powder and cumin if you have it. Put this stuff in the pot/slow cooker and add everything else in this order:
1. meat mixture.
2. Beans partially drained (don't completely drain, the bean juice will thicken the chili)
3. frozen/canned corn (if canned, drain it all)
4. canned tomatoes.
5. Tomato juice.

Tomato juice goes last because usually you won't be able to fit ALL the juice right away.

Cook this for like 5-6 hours. Stir it occasionally and make sure to taste it. Add the remaining tomato juice as it cooks down.

Don't add too much salt until the end because a lot of water will cook off. I usually salt it to taste in the last hour or so.

A good way to know if it's about done is that the meat will start to look red because of the tomato juice. You'll notice when you start it will still look gray/brown like standard ground beef, but after a lot of cooking it will start looking redder and the sauce will coat the meat more than slip around it.

That's all I got for now, but generally slow cooker meals get really cheap per serving so they are good cheap meals in general. They're also usually delicious.

To eat a healthy diet, you need carb, protein, vegetables, and fruits. These were my pick during college. I spent roughly $20-$25/week on this. Rotate, and mix and match these.

Carb options: Rice (last a long time!), Breads, and Potatoes.

Protein options: (This is probably the most expensive). Sausages (not hot dogs), cheaper-cuts meat, beans (cheap!), chickens, milk.

Vegetables: Cucumber, brocolli, cabbage, green onions, etc. Lots of varieites, and they are mostly cheap.

Fruits: Bananas are the default. Here in the SoCal, it's about 69c/lb or cheaper. Sometimes grapes or blueberries if they are on sale.

Quick meals:
Cereal and milk are great. Add toasted bread and sliced bananas, to make it better. I still do this even to this day.

Oatmeals are also good alternative.

Eat out option:
Go somewhere where they serve big portions. So you can take the rest home. Chinese food is my favorite. Here in the US, you can buy decent Chinese food for about $9/dish, which combined with your own rice, can last for about 2-3 days.

The answer is simple: Food bank.

Are you in the US? If so, Wal-Mart does price matching on any coupon you can find. So we occasionally show up with coupons we found online from groceries thousands of miles away, and they honor them. We typically come home from Wal-mart with 50 pounds of food for $30-$50. Recent wins: Large avocados for $0.20, half-gallons of Langer's juice for $0.99, dozen large eggs for $0.79, 5 lbs of bread flour for $0.99, oranges for $0.16/lb, kiwis for $0.10, etc. Usually produce gets the best deals, followed by dairy/eggs.

Here are some of the stores we check for weekly deals on:

Rancho Markets (look for "weekly flyer" on their home page)
http://buylowmarket-utah.com/
http://buylowsupermarket.com/ (these are different deals than the previous link)

You could learn to extreme coupon and get a whole bunch of crap for free or cheap. There's sites now that tell you exactly what you have to do and where to go.

That being said, I'd get big items like uncooked chicken, pot roasts, sausages and make them into gumbos, stews, soups, and chilies.

You can pretty much throw anything into stew or chili. Meat, vegetables, rice, beans.....

You can also eat them with pretty much anything. Mix with Ramen, dip with a loaf of bread or chips, eat straight up.

I'd also do PB&Js but you're from UK and apparently only the USA appreciates peanut butter and all it's glory.

If you aren't worried about the health benefits, you can do a box of mac and cheese, that also goes good with chili.

No coupons, please . I'm perfectly fine with suggestions of any kind, although I was really looking forward to cool new ways as to how different people approach the problem. My conundrum is kind of self-induced in that I really wanted to finally change my eating habits after a long bout of unsuccessful trying. The solution was to spend all of my money on upgrading my gear, leaving me a budget that would strain my ingenuity as far as feeding myself goes. It's a new year's thing. Kind of stupid, but probably more effective than relying on sheer willpower .

In any case, I'm glad to see people actually prefer to cook for themselves! I'd really like to try out some new stuff I've never possibly even eaten. A few of the suggestions in this thread sound pretty enticing and I'll definitely try them out. Above all it's refreshing to see people suggesting something other than dumplings or macaroni and cheese!

>> What do you mean by Problem Day?

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It was supposed to be in plural, indicating that there are a few days each week that I can't make my own food or eat food from the day before (also known as eating out )[/font]

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PS - no, I don't live in the US, which is also why I wrote the price range in euros in the OP [/font]

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PPS - too many smilies for one reply [/font]

It was supposed to be in plural, indicating that there are a few days each week that I can't make my own food or eat food from the day before (also known as eating out Posted Image )

Why would you not be able to eat leftovers?

Anyway slow cooker meals are probably your best bet because they allow you to use really cheap protein. Stir fries are also really cheap, and that's pretty much just put stuff you like in a pan until it's cooked. Usually in the order protein->aromatic veggies(onion, garlic, celery, carrots)->other veggies and putting sauce or seasoning on as you go. It's more expensive because you need better quality meat so it doesn't taste like jerky.

Another option would be whole birds like chickens or turkeys. Turkeys not around thanksgiving usually come pretty cheap in pieces as well.

Farmer's markets are absolute gold when you are trying to eat cheaply. Here in Boston (where the cost of living is fairly high in most respects), I can head down to the farmer's market on Saturday morning, and pick up 100+ lbs of fruit and vegetables for around $20. If you go there in the evening as they are closing up, you can get twice that in remaindered produce, although the choice/quality obviously won't be as good.

As others have mentioned, almost anything is cheaper if you buy it in huge quantities, particularly the staples: rice, beans, potatoes, roasts... It's also a lot easier to cook for a large number of people (you can cook bigger meals because all of you will eat it before it spoils, where one person couldn't). The obvious conclusion to draw from both of those points, is that you should be doing communal cooking wherever possible!

If you have roommates, pool your grocery money, and rotate who cooks for everyone on a given night. Even if you don't, find friends who also like to cook, and either do potluck-style communal dinners, or trade off dinner invitations.