Yes, it does suck -- especially nutritionally. When I was an undergrad, my mentor told me that it's expensive to eat healthy food (fresh fruits and veg, whole grains, etc.)
It is ridiculous that they make people scrounge like that for meals as if you don't have more important things to do with your time. Weren't food stamps based on the assumption of a full-time person to shop and prepare the meals? Anyway, I recommend skipping the mach and ch in box, as well as ramen. Much cheaper to buy real past and real cheese or, at worst, the cheese slices when on sale.
Get the pasta on sale at 3/1 or 4/1. Cheese, you should find at $3.00/lb, $4.00 at worst 8 oz pasta .15 margarine .02 parmesan .03
Cheaper, tastes better. :) But, if you can pick up the boxed mac and cheese at 4 or 5 for a $1.0) (and they'll sell them at that price every so often, depending on the area, of course. Are you still in Oregon? Northern California?) Anyway, if it's really cheap, it's not too bad a deal. Mix it with can of tuna and 1/2 bag of frozen pean and extra parm for a casserole
The three of us just ate for a week on:
1 Turkey, 14 lbs. $8.08 1/2 bag green beans .50 1 can corn .34 1/2 lb carrots .25 1 onion .50 1/2 bag celery .50 3. c. rice .50 1/2 flour .05 1 stick margarine .15 Homemade bread (4 loaves)
(8 c. flour, 2 pkg yeast 1.30
1 stick marg, 1/2 c milk) 3 baking potatoes 1.20 Navy beans .10 1/2 c. peanut butter .25 1/4 c. jelly .15 1 gal milk 2.50 Pumpkin bread
1 sm can pumpkin 1.00
1/2 c. milk .10
4 c. flour .20
pumpkin pie spice .01
1 c. sugar .10
baking powder .01 Coffee .25 Iced Tea .35 1/2 lb. pasta .15 3/4 can Spaghetti sauce .75 Paremesan Cheese .30 1/3 c. mayo .15 7 grain cereal .75 cream of rice .33
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~ 22.00
Now, this is not fun, but this is the way we ate for years. Though, there were times when it was peas, carrotsm, beans, pasta, margarine, canned spag sauce, parm cheese and apples.. No meat. The vegetarians know this is a recipe for a disastrous lack of B vitamins. Back when my stepkids were little, we fed the 6 of us on something like $45/wk. When it was just the ex and sonshine, it was $25/week. Things were alittle cheaper but not much.
The trick is the roast thing. You make one up on Sunday or Monday. Have a roast, potato, veg, bread for a big Sunday meal. The next day, pasta/sauce/cheese. MEanwhile, throw all bones, celery tops, carrot skins and tops (cleaned), onion skins/tops, any left over veg from other means into a pot and boil with some salt and pepper.
Gross? This is how a French restaurant makes soup stock -- they throw peels (including onion skin), skins, left over mashed potatoes, potato peels, carrot tops, celery leaves, spinach leaves, you name it into a pot. It's cleaned, of course. Rescue the potato skins once cooked, season them and bake them for baked potato skins. If you have a blender, whiz everthing edible into liquid and put it back in the stock. Strain.
Make a roux of melted margarin and flour. Whisk into stock and heat til just comes to boil to cook all the flour taste out. Rreserve stock you can't use and freeze. If you're really frugal, put stock in fridge before making stew. Once chilled, skim fat from the top and use to make the roux instead of the margarine. You can keep stock in fridge with the "seal" of the solid fat on the top for quite a while.
Anyway, get a good stock out of, strain. Pick off all remaining meat from the bones/next. I mean everything. Make turkey/chicken salad and have a sandwich from the four loaves of homemade bread.
Add leftover meat, veggies, cooked rice, and cooked beans to thickened stock. Makes huge pot of stew that you can eat off, brekkie/lunch/dinner for the next few days.
Have pumpkin muffins/bread for snacks/brekkie/dessert/treat.
On Sunday, cook up a turkey, chicken, chuck roast, pork roast, ham. Even when I had more money, I lived this way because it's freakin' easy on the time budget.
You can get poultry at .60-.70/lb, watch the sales and stock up if you can. Chuck, pork, ham will occ. be available at $1.70/lb. It's almost always availabe for $2.00 /somewhere. Stock up when it's on sale.
Make the roast. Reserve all cooking juices (and make sure to use liver, neck, etc. from poultry) I recommend buying real pasta and not ramen. If you buy it at 3/1 on sale (or even 4/1 which happens about 4 times a year at most chains) you get 8 servings per lb for .25 - .33 as opposed to 8 servings for 1.oo with the ramen noodles.
Chicken or Turkey Divan is a change of pace:
Left over poulty Freshor frozen broccoli (2 cups) 8 oz cheese Leftover poultry stock flour margarine salt and pepper rice
Make roux. Thicken stock. Melt cheese into sauce. place chicken/turkey and broccoli in baking dish. Cover with cheese sauce. Bake. Serve over rice.