Suppose you are a single mom.  It's three days before your monthly assistance comes.  The food bank gave you a box but it's getting empty.  You have a bag of rice, another of macaroni, 5 lb of carrots, a couple of onions, ten tea bags.  You also have cereal and milk for breakfast, bread and peanut butter for lunch.  But what's for supper.  You have salt, pepper, and margarine, a bit of flour and sugar.  And $10.    What can you cook?

 

 

My contribution was:  Mac and tomatoes

Ingredients: 

sausage or hamburger

onion (and/or celery or green pepper)

macaroni

large can of tomatoes

 

Fry meat, when partially done add onions.

Meanwhile boil water and cook macaroni

Mix everything together with tomatoes, heat and eat.

 

Hint:   Buy herb & spiced tomatoes for flavour.

 

It looks like you might have the makings for a groundnut stew. 

Rough Recipe

Sautee whatever veg you have,  onions, celery, peppers zucchini etc. (carrots and/or sweet potato are especially good), and you can use frozen veg too, like green beans. or tomatoes in any form - canned, fresh, paste.  If you have some hamburger, add a little. Add spices if you have them, chili powder, a touch of cinnamon - bay leaf - hot sauce packets from taco bell - whatever you have. When veg are almost soft. At this point, add some spinach or finely shredded greens if you have them. Add water to cover and simmer for 10 mins or so. Add a couple gobs of peanut butter (about 1/4 c) and whisk it into the stew, and let come to a boil.  Done.

Serve on hot rice. 

 

The ingredients for this nextone aren't in your pantry, but could easily be.

A good, nutritous dish is a baked casserole that can be made with food bank items. It's surprisingly good. i make it often. It gets easily mistaken for chili.

Fry up an onion, some celery, and whatever else you have on hand, peppers, zucchini, finely diced carrots etc. until soft.

Add

1 can of kidney beans, drained

1 can of lentils, drained

1 can of tomatoes (diced are good) with the juice

You can spice it up if you want with chili powder, garlic - lots of variations. Use different beans if you like. You can cook the beans and lentils from scratch ahead of time too, and use those in place of canned. Tomatoes can be in any form.

Throw everything into a greased casserolle dish. You can sprinkle the top with cheese if you have it. Parmesan works too. 

Bake at 370 until bubbly. 

 

Hi Seeler, the ingrediants you said she had didn't include tomatoes or meat etc.....I assume she is supposed to use the $10.00 to buy additional ingrediants? She will then have no money to fall back on. Will she run out of toilet paper? Start her period? Is she living close to a store? Will she need tylenol or cough medicine? It would be scary letting go of that last $10.00.

 

Your post is interesting. How many food banks provide access to recipes that are easy and nutritional I wonder? Or even stapling some recipes to the bags that are donated at the grocery store. It would make the "givers" think more about what is put into the bag especially when you have to include recipes for what's actually in the bag.

This past year has shown me how expensive it is to eat healthy and nutritiously.  I can't imagine someone on a limited income having to deal with eating around allergies or other health issues.  This past weekend I went to the grocery store to pick up fresh vegetables and meat to make individual meal sized portions for myself for 2 days, as well as my daughter.  So each individual container conained chicken, rice, and a variety of cooked vegetables.  I had 6 containers (3 meals for 2 days) and gave 5 meals to my daughter.  The grocery bill was $90 (I also had a few avacadoes and some fruit in there.  It is expensive to eat whole healthy foods.

 

A man from our local foodbank came and talked to us at church one day.  He asked that when we are donating non-perishable items that we try and give something other than KD.  Although they take it, he said they didn't feel it was a nutritious meal.  But what does someone do when they are short of cash.  When my children were young and we were on a limited budget, I often gave them KD for lunch.

 

If a person has a deepfreeze, or it is winter and they have a safe place to store them, I would suggest good frozen vegetables when they are on sale, which can also be added to hamburger, rice, pasta, tomatoes, etc. to make a variety of meals.

 

 

 

 

 

The other night I made cheap, low carb lettuce 'tacos' I sort of invented (i thought of it myself but I see on the net that others have too): ground beef or veggie 'meat' (I used ground beef but often soy veggie meat instead for ground beef recipes), taco seasoning, iceberg lettuce, diced tomatoes, diced avocado, chopped green onion, 1 small can of sliced black olives, a small container of fat free sour cream, one 1 dollar bag of corn chips. Basically, you make tacos/ burritos, and roll them in lettuce leaves instead of tortillas. I sprinkled a little bit of broken corn chips inside for flavour. I really love Asian lettuce wraps- 'build your own' Asian spiced meat and veggies wrapped in lettuce- but had none of the right spices, so I tried this and my husband and I both loved it. About $12-15 for 4 servings- 2 dinners worth. Groceries are expensive here. It might be cheaper for some of you. You might have to get 2 heads of lettuce depending on how many leaves are intact enough for wrapping, or use the broken leaves and make taco salad instead.

You could also use chili style beans and rice instead of meat or add them to it to stretch it out.

Mexican food has always been one of my favs!

A good meat base.....hamburger, veggies, tomatoes sauce, onions, etc.....doesn't have to be fancy, (with lasagne noodles, spaghetti noodles, elbow macaroni) will make a meal of spaghetti and lasagne(basic) and hamburger helper. Getting near the bottom of the meat mix? Add kidney beans or a can or pork and beans or Peel potatoes and make some shepherds pie or a meatloaf by adding an egg with bread crumbs.Could be stretched over 10 days.

 

 

 

The SDA's have some pretty good low cost recipes actually- that are SDA traditions. They favour meatless meals for big groups- so you could freeze it. I learned that and looked it up, and there were some interesting recipes, like cottage cheese 'meatless' loaf made with Special K as a filler- it actually looks tasty!

Some good suggestions here. 

 

It's true for my recipe she would have to buy the meat and a can of tomatoes, taking a big chunk out of her $10.  (she either lives near a supermarket or gets a drive with a friend.)   Perhaps it would be good to save it for emergency - but what is a bigger emergency than running out of food?  

kimmio - your recipe might work well at the beginning of the month.  Near the end, with only $10 I really can't see somebody buying taco seasoning, avocado, black olives, and sour cream. 

Many of us are used to having canned goods in the pantry, spices on a shelf, and sauces and condiments in the fridge.  On a limited budget over a period of time these things might not be readily on hand.

 

A big tub of margarine is a good buy. Being high fat it is high calorie and will curb hunger pangs, and with salt it makes large ammounts of rice eatable. (as well as other things that one may be able to get) .  USually middle class people will think that it is not healthy, however if one is ill, or a growing child, any kind of calorie is better than loosing weight. Which  the body makes up for by consuming it's self.  Espeically if one is growing or ill, that can really be harmful.

 

seeler, should we bring up the $100 thread. It was the best thread that WonderCafe has ever  started.

Two pancakes(flour, water, butter) with peanut butter melted on it makes dinner.
Make tortillas with rice and some pinched taco sauce or hot sauce.
You could grab either two drumsticks for homemade broth or a can of broth to be cheaper. Make soup with carrots and rice. Put the onion and carrot peels in the broth and then drain. Add carrots and onion with or without meat.
You could make a thickened gravy with the flour for over rice.
You could also make poor mans gravy.
You could put the drumsticks in the oven with broth and rice as a casserole.
You could use one drumstick for soup and the other for casserole.
You could grab a soy or sweet and sour packet from the front of the store for on the rice.

Grab a ketchup packet or two for tomato soup with pasta or rice.

I’m not going to offer a recipe, but would like to tell you about a couple from a church I used to attend.

 

Their ministry was simple and effective. They had 2 big freezers in the garage. They would come to church about every 2 months with a bunch of ice cream pails with a recipe to make a gallon of hamburger soup. It would be mentioned in the announcements that if you wanted to contribute – pick up a pail on your way out. We would make a double batch. Eat one and deliver a frozen pail to their garage. A pail of hamburger soup will feed a family a decent meal for about a week. You could extend with macaroni.

 

I think depending on how good of a shopper you are, it probably is doable for 5 to 15 dollars a pail.

 

Handful of crickets

1 cup chopped snap peas

1 cup chopped red cabbage

1tbs oil

1 crushed clove of garlic

salt pinch

 

chop peas & cabbage

heat oil in pan or wok

stir fry veggies & crickets

after 1 minute or so, add crushed garlic

once cooked to desired level, add salt

 

insects are a good source of protein, calcium & iron

Where do you get a handful of crickets? Can you raise them?

Never tried, but I'd up the garlic!

This is interesting reading for anyone interested in the topic of low-income eating. How about $1.75 per day (food allowance for single people on OW - believe it or not).

And this is Canada....

 

http://lblca.wordpress.com/

A quick note about stock or broth. If you don't do homemade, the cubes are by far the cheapest way to go. A box of 6 (same as 6L) is only $1 - $1.50. Some brands are Grace, Aurora, maybe knorr. A good flavoured stock can do much  to improve meals.

Oils and fats make life worth living too. I'd plan on having a bottle of olive oil (cheap or on sale) and using it sparingly. 

A project for 2014. You can actually do this challenge and use it to spread awareness of poverty in Canada. Food security is being lost for low-income people. 

Definitely going to give it a try.

 

https://podio.com/webforms/2217975/155788

*double post*

Another very relevant food related thread.  Some excellent suggestions have already been posted.  

For my contribution I would like to suggest some form of Group Cooking for Seeler's families and individuals who are struggling.  Would it be possible to get a few of them interested in actually making the soup for lunch?  I'd be tempted to ask them to make (with the correct supervision) way more than is needed.  Helpers get to take some home.  This could also be used as a learning project - dried beans are way cheaper than canned - so show them how to deal with them.  The cheapest healthy meals I know are based on dry beans or lentils and brown rice (which is more nutritious than white).  Best when salad is added or a cheaper veg like carrots or cabbage, but sometimes there just won't be money for a real veggie.

 

Maybe a local store will offer a really good deal on items for a Group Kitchen, especially if they get their donation recognised.  

 

My kids grew up eating potato soup often - and soups containing any leftovers from the fridge.  

These all sound like things the university food bank does.  Recipes, a list of resources, recommendation of trying out healthnuts for group cooking classes and they also promote Wecan foods, a group that buys food in bulk for a discount and gives people the choice of a meat, fruit and vegetable or bath baskets.

When I lived "on the margins", a group of us helped each other. Nobody had enough food income. So, one person would buy dry beans, another person would buy a slice of ham, another would buy an onion and someone would buy day old bread. We ate together the first bowls and each took some home.We each spent very little.

I remember that in 1982 I was given $32 a month in food stamps.

Hello everyone.  This is my first time posting on Wonder Cafe so I hope it sounds and fits with your line of discussion appropriately.  I have had a personal interest in this subject for some time and came across a reference to a very old food stuff for the "poor" that originated in the middle ages in Great Britan.....called "Potage".  I googled it just to ensure I was on the correct track and it seems so.  If I refer back to your original scenerio Seeler, it might not fit exactly, but it certainly could be used by this household in the future.  It is a bit of an "all in the kitchen sink" stew and consists of what ever was in the household......mainly revolving around vegetables but then adding what ever else was in the house at the time.  It was actually meant to be used and then continue to be added too over time so it rarely tasted exactly the same twice.  While the google reference indicated it was often served with bread, another reference I found made mention that left over stale bread was often added to the potage.  Hope this provides some food for thought.

Sorry.....forgot to add that I am actually experimenting with this concept currently to see just how viable this is in modern times, including overall costs and nutrician.  I am not doing it that scientifically but fairly simply for personal interest.

Great question waterfall ... I'm going to ask on Sunday when I see some folks who work at our local ecumenical outreach centre that includes a foodbank. 

welcome RuralDweller - look forward to hearing more from you.  Great sounding experiment with the Potage ... I hope you'll keep us posted!

True. I have lived on next to nothing for groceries in the past. I am aware that's not the cheapest meal, actually, but not really expensive. But it has all the necessary food groups. Fresh fruits and veggies are often lacking. Pancakes and peanut butter, for example, fills a person up- but malnutrition might set in if one made that everyday for a week, week after week. Too high in carbs, too. Tacos with rice and hot saice cures hunger pangs but is empty calories. Some of these meals are tasty but a person needs variety in their diet. I'd rather eat margarine and noodles with canned tomatoes most days of the week, and the taco meal once a week to get the protein and fresh veggies. I would forfeit a something, like a telephone, and wash laundy by hand instead of the coin washers, to have better groceries. Also- donate better food to the food bank! People get enough pasta and beans and canned mushy peas and KD and other canned veggies we never use. Donate some tasty food. We should think of how much we spend on each of ourselves, and spend the same on someone else, and cut back on other extra luxuries ourselves- because very low income people eat crappy food AND have no luxuries. Try donating our individual portion of the grocery bill every month. It would make someone really happy to have some tasty balanced meals and variety, a few choices, like we do. At least they need nutritious, and why not really tasty and satisfying? food too, instead of just good enough to fill the gap? If we can eat well, we should not be thinking of how others can best eat like church mice. I feel bad when I by a few food bank items for the drop off box and take home the good stuff- and when bringing in canned goods, people always donate stuff like canned beets, Lima beans and egg noodles- the things they bought a year ago and don't use. That makes me feel bad. I'd rather buy a street person lunch once in awhile than expect a family to be happy with the stuff I don't care for.

I use canned vaggies quite often, as well as frozen.  It's faster, and can be healtheir than fresh.  The only veggies I can think of that we consistently buy fresh are bell peppers, we eat quite a few and I've never seen them frozen unless it was in a mixture with other stuff.  Carrots would be next, but we don't eat them as frequently as peppers and we often buy the baby ones for convenience.  I do prefer the whole ones if I'm going to eat them raw, but for cooking I don't notice a difference.

 

Donating frozen stuff to a food bank doesn't work so well.  It's been a while since I've donated food though.  One time I tried to on behalf of a group and they wouldn't accept it as they had too much food!  Money is one of the best things.

chemgal, I actually found frozen peppers in my grocery store the other day.  It was a new product, and I was surprised.  I haven't tried them yet, but they looked good.

 

I recently saw a representative from a Food Bank on tv asking people people to donate fewer high carbohydrate foods like kd. 

She also said that  money is always the perfect donation for them. Makes it possible to run the operation.

Beloved, do you remember the brand?  I'll be looking for them!

Or donate more grocery money so poor families can but better groceries! I shopped tonight- a small box of cereal on sale and 1L of milk cost 6.50 here. That's normal.

I'm veering away from the original topic a bit, but one thing I think would be helpful is to stop the food bank competitions, at least how many are currently run.

 

In high school we had quite a few.  A food item was worth 1 point and a dollar was worth 2 points.  Two people in my class took all of the money and bought food that was 33 cents.  Similar strategies are used for pounds of food.  I see the point of the contests, but maybe a better way of doing it is to get a wishlist and do a point based system off of it.

Do they accept gift cards?

I don't know how much milk is.  A tetrapack of the stuff I drink, less than 1 L I think, is $2.50 on sale.  Cereal is expensive, we look at the aisle most of the time we go shopping and pick up 3 boxes if something we like is on a good sale.

I don't know.  My best guess is that some do and other's wouldn't.  I think most work with certain stores, and I doubt they would hand out gift cards to people.

I know thRey're not readily on hand that's why I didn't make the Asian version. The sour cream was 2.00, I think. A person could skip it. Point is, I didn't buy taco shells. I wrapped them in lettuce. And it was delicious. Taco shells would've cost 4.00 more. $8 for 2 meals worth. I bought a small 99cent bag of corn chips, crushed them and used them to season all the wraps. All told, it was not an expensive meal. Plus, kids have fun making their own tacos. They'd probably love it.

There were a couple of months not all that long ago, about two yrs ago, during an employment setback, when my husband and I were broke and we alternated between spaghetti and no name sauce, and frozen perogies, maybe some frozen peas, for several weeks. I put on unwanted weight and had low energy. But we didn't starve. At least, we didn't feel hungry but it's not good for you. We both are working now, we eat well but not gourmet by any means.

Maybe churches could collect an assortment of dried spices to give away. That would be a good little project too.

Even plain noodles taste great with exotic spices.

The 1L carton of milk (I don't think we have 1L tetra packs here- like juice boxes? I've never seen them. Fresh milk.) is 2.50. The small box of cereal on sale was 4.00. Usually close 6.00. Unless I buy generic cornflakes.

The milk I buy comes like this still:

http://islandfarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/IF_Milk_1Pct-1L.jpg

Chemgal: I looked up tetra pack milk. No, I don't think it's sold here. Just cartons and there are a couple of brands sold in recyclable glass bottles, old fashioned style. 4L in plastic jugs. I haven't seen bagged milk around here for a long time either. Chansen mentioned it recently and I thought, "they still sell that?". I only have faint memories of some people's moms using it.

Soy and almond milk is in tetra packs and is really expensive unless on sale. Regular milk is never on sale.

Yeah, I don't drink milk.  I stock up when on sale, as the best before date is usually for about 4-6 months.

 

Bagged milk is on ON thing.  We don't have it here either.

Sandwiches are good and easy to make. Simple. Lots of different things one can make sandwiches with. I lived in a little place with a hot plate, microwave- the hot plate was placed on top of the microwave- bar fridge and single sink (I placed a big cutting board across the sink with just enough space for the water to run and chopped vegetables there- no counter space, for a few years. I made a lot of sandwiches. It wasn't that bad.