Given the recent thread on saving money, curious if anyone has cheap meal recipes or resources. I’m trying to steer clear of beans and rice which are normally cheap foods, but I have a slight allergy to. Anyone have good ones to share?

Anything cheap for the Sous Vide or Instant Pots out there? Bonus points if they’re super easy to make.


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A buckwheat.
It's a king food, gluten-free; not a grain, though.
Cook it in the rice cooker.
Once it's done, put a bit of a butter on the top of a buckwheat.
Wait until it is cooled off. Add some salt. Then mix it.
Great side dish to anything - from fish to lamb.
Gravy will not not spoil it.

As a bachelor on a budget and somewhat health conscious, I routinely cook for myself. So, learn to cook creatively.

First though, also learn how to shop.

First step is to find the right grocery stores and know when they have their clearance specials and sales. Some meat departments, like the Safeway near my old house, have dedicated sections for their clearance meats reaching their "sell by" dates. Raid those and buy up discounted meats and either cook them immediately or freeze them immediately. I've saved so much money using that simple trick... sometimes hundreds of dollars on a single grocery trip with a cart full of meats often marked 1/2 off. Stock the freezer.

If you don't have a good deep freezer, get one. Then load it up when frozen foods are on deep discounts. Watch for sales and clear 'em out. Fish, shrimp, steaks, pork, whatever. You'll save hundreds of dollars and always have something in the freezer to thaw out and cook.

I typically make large meals providing for about 4-5 meals worth of leftovers. I'll then rotate thru my leftovers for an easy inexpensive variety throughout the week. I'll mix up the meals with something different, sandwiches, salads, a meal out, etc. so meals don't get boring.

Typical meals include lean meats such as grilled steaks, grilled chicken, lean ground beef or buffalo, fish, etc. Purchased in bulk or on sale these are very affordable. Grill up a few pounds of steaks, chicken, fish, etc. and boom, good inexpensive meals and protein.

Mexican and Italian are really simple, and in large batches with quality ingredients works out to under $5 per meal. For instance, I just made delicious spaghetti. Very lean and delicious ground buffalo from Costco was around $6 per pound, 2 lbs was $12. Some veggies (onions, peppers, garlic, etc.) are a few dollars. Quality pasta noodles and sauce, another 10 bucks. Shredded Parmesan cheese, five bucks. About $25 bucks invested. Will easily make 5 meals. That's about $5 per meal. Simple. Provides lean protein, veggies, grains.

Similar equation for Mexican - lean beef or buffalo, veggies, spices, and tortillas runs about the same price, provides the same simple number of meals. A large skilled makes about 5 or 6 meals.

Make up a third meal, maybe grill some chicken and get salad fixings (carrots, fruits, peppers, etc.). About $20-30. Several meals.

Supplement meals with protein powder shakes and milk, about $1 each amortized out. Add in some of your favorite snack fruits (apples, pears, bananas, pineapple, mangos, kiwis, etc.)... Drink a lot of water, especially to curb cravings.

Now you've got about $100 or less in groceries, and about 15 meals give or take, and a lot of healthy snacks and variety. 15 meals eating 2-3 times per day using snacks as supplements and boom, $100 for the week in groceries and eating fairly healthy IMO.

Buy in bulk, dehydrate or freeze extras.

During the Spring-Summer if your able to grow as much, or find sales and buy as much fruit, veggies and herbs as you can. Freeze or dehydrate. I have been working crazy hours the past two summers so my growing has slacked, but I have been going to local fruit stands and been buying in bulk.

Years ago, I read Ragnar Benson's Eating Cheap.

https://www.amazon.com/Eating-Cheap-Rag ... 13&sr=8-10

Some of its not very practical, but we took a lot of ideas from it that we built on and used for years when we lived in a rural area. The more urban the area, the less practical it is.

Another one that my wife keeps on the bookshelf is Eating Better for Less by Wolf, but I'm not sure I ever read it.

https://www.amazon.com/Eating-Better-Le ... 541&sr=8-1

Buy a fishing license and max it out. Fresh, salt, all river systems, go get razor clams, crabs, Manila’s, oysters, trout, salmon, rockfish, surf perch, bluegill, hell even these invansive carp smoke up really well.

Supplement with chicken, lean ground beef, veggies, whole grains from various grocery stores when on sale.

Pick blackberries, huckleberries, black n red currants, thimbleberries aka black cats/red cats or wild raspberries, salmon berries, Oregon grape, salal, hazelnuts, et al.

Get a hunting license and get some small game. Grouse, rabbits, even get a deer tag and hunt with a bow or black powder to benefit from either sex seasons. A big doe has a lot of meat on her. The organ meat of wild game and even farm raised anaimals is nutritious.

A guy can eat like a literal king for a few hundred dollars a year using what nature provides us.

I'd like to see some hard numbers on this, factoring time and equipment investment.

I'm thinking that the savings aren't really there in that proposition but would be curious to see numbers that truly factor time.

My old neighbor's boy was a gifted fisherman and caught lots of salmon. They ate very well.

But is that truly the case? They had a boat, probably at least a thousand dollars, and hundreds of dollars in fishing equipment. And a license.

Take hunting, for instance, a deer hunt may not be successful and net nothing. Let's assume you get a mature buck on day 1 of your hunt with time to retrieve it and dress it. A mature buck yields about 70 lbs of venison. That's a full day and a lot of work and effort to score about $200 worth of meat in a best case scenario. Assuming you succeed. You might go 3 days without seeing a deer. Or a week.
And there's probably processing charges and costs I haven't factored, in addition to the license.

I've nothing against hunting or fishing, and this seems like a good way to supplement food doing a hobby.

Maybe routine hunters and fishermen can chime in with real financial numbers.

It goes like anything else. If one enjoys it as a hobby then the cost per pound is supplemented by the cost per smile.

Reloading for example. I don’t enjoy reloading to so me it’s a cost per round PLUS cost of time. However if one enjoys reloading as a hobby, the cost per round doesn’t factor in the time because the reloader’s time is spent hobbying.

I’m not advocating spending thousands on gear to go fishing or hunting. That’s marketeering at its best. A fisherperson can catch nice fish off the bank with an entire rig bought at Wal Mart and a $175 surplus mil rifle with Russian soft points will kill anything in North America.

Good wild game meat is more than $3/lb if you buy it, but even an unsuccessful day in the woods, to me, is worth every smile I get.

To each their own. Alternative opinions aren’t wrong, they are alternative. :)

Well, I’m in the Midwest so no real salmon or clams for me to dig. We can grow anything in the summer here, unfortunately weeds are mutant overachievers here too. Don’t have fishing or hunting supplies. I’m not in dire straits, just wanting to pack away the savings.

We’ve been grinding some of our own meat, and have a decent stand up freezer. In some ways, growing in WA was more predictable. Things kinda vary year to year here based on how hot or wet the summer is.


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You’ve got some amazing freshwater fishing though. And deer everywhere with cheap tags.

A $39 ugly stick spinning combo will catch anything from big walleye to channel cats and a good deer rifle for evening tree stand hunts are cheap.

Just an alternative.

“Sell by today” plus a good vacuum sealer and freezer is a bonus too.

Like anything else, hunting and fishing are the time and place. My wife's uncle gets 6 to 8 Whitetails a year off of his farm (Pike County, Illinois - probably the top Whitetail hunting spot in the country). He nets a lot more than 70 pounds of meat off of each - but he processes them himself in the barn. He's a serious hunter - has a blind that sets up year round in a scouted part of his property that is a natural channel. If he doesn't get a deer in the first hour, he walks back to the house. It not unusual for him to get three deer on three shots on opening day. One year my BIL was with him and between them, they got 5 out of the same group. For him, hunting is worthwhile. (For the record, last year he did not get a single deer and you would have thought the world came to an end.).

For somebody in downtown Seattle, that ain't going to work.

If you happen upon a farm place with fruit trees that look like they’re over grown and dumping their bounty all over the ground, stop and ask about harvest for barter.

Many times those places have older owners who just can’t take care of the tree or the bounty anymore and will gladly trade as many apples as you can haul out for a couple fresh baked pies.

And even though some of those apples look like shit they cut up well and you can make some amazing pies, or ciders with very little effort.

Plum jam, home canned, from a fresh local heirloom tree? Fawk yes!

I've bolded and underlined the key phrase. If you factor the price of farmland, each of those deer probably cost $1,000 over the life of the farm (or looking at it in other ways, his farmland is simply producing "crops" of deer and helping to offset the cost of the land). Being self sufficient is a lot easier when you already have massive resources, like land for hunting or a river that cuts thru the property for fishing, etc.

Yeah, like you said, not a viable option for an urbanite in Seattle...

A bag of Trader Joe's Orange Chicken is $5. You'll get two or three meals out of it. if you eat 25 cents worth of rice with it.