Menus and Recipes for Live below the Line Challenge

[Amaranth]

Here are some more recipes developed for the challenge. The two curries and the Cambodian Fried Rice are the most apealing to me.
http://restlessdevelopmentbelowtheli...ecipes_20.html

Anyone do the 2012 challenge?

[Tussiemussies]

The only problem I see Amaranth in your original post is that most of those foods are starches. I guess the rice and beans make a protein, is there any way to incorporate more fresh fruit and vegetables?

Christine

[Jilly]

I tried this earlier this year, and fresh vegetables, fruit and meat are too expensive unless you produce the stuff yourself, and I am guessing that the overall costs of production might still be pricy if you do not have huge production over which to spread the expenses.

I have diabetes and try to eat as little meat as possible, but whilst I am going to try this whole thing again, I am not able to stick with the spending limitations. Even so, I feel that it is a good self-challenge and I always hope to find recipes that are healthy without making control of my diabetes more difficult.

Still, it is a personally satisfying and useful exercise in understanding how much of the world eats.

[try2bfrugal]

I tried this earlier this year, and fresh vegetables, fruit and meat are too expensive unless you produce the stuff yourself, and I am guessing that the overall costs of production might still be pricy if you do not have huge production over which to spread the expenses.

I guess it depends where you live. Chicken legs and thighs are on sale here fairly often for 59 cents a pound. Chicken breasts with the bone for 99 cents. Those are a really good deal because they are mostly meat and yet they still have bones for stock. There's lots of seasonal produce at the Asian and Hispanic markets for 10 - 50 cents a pound. At 30 cents a pound on average that's 3 pound of produce for a dollar a day per person, if you can stick to just eating (or preserving for later use) what's on sale each week. We could eat pretty healthy for a few dollars a day each total if we didn't spend extra on organic and had time to cook every meal from scratch.

[peggy]

One thing I think most don't consider with a challenge like this is, if you are living on $7.50 for 5 days, chances are you don't have a car or gas to put in one. You can't drive around looking for the best prices. I think a better understanding of the challenges folks on very limited incomes would be to pick a store near you, within walking or bus distance, then put together your meals from that store. If you are lucky you have more than one store within walking distance, but very poor neighborhoods often don't have these choices.
Also, I sometimes think these extreme challenges are not very helpful in understanding how poor people in THIS country live. Why not settle on a budget, one that would be in line with poor people here or one in line with someone on food stamps, then take a month and do it. Plan your meals and stick with them for a month. No cheating, and no free food at work, etc... as someone mentioned. Everything counts, soda from the vending machine, cup of coffee on the corner, everything. I would start with an empty cupboard that had minimal spices, the basic ones.
Just my 2 cents.

[Jilly]

Peggy, I have been thinking the same thing, this time. If I want to keep my Internet, which I do because I need it for my volunteer jobs and because I love it, I have to make some significant changes in how I am using my resources.

This topic reminded me that sooner is much better than later. I have no information about this web site, Doctor Yourself, but I found this page last night. Even though it looks as though the prices of items has not been updated for more than a decade, it looks like it will be helpful to me. I hope that it is all right to share the link.

Doctor Yourself
http://www.doctoryourself.com/eatwellcheap.html

[JaneV2.0]

The only problem I see Amaranth in your original post is that most of those foods are starches. I guess the rice and beans make a protein, is there any way to incorporate more fresh fruit and vegetables?

Christine

And sadly, a starch-based diet is disastrous for anyone prone to metabolic syndrome, including type 2 diabetes. There are places and ways to shop to maximize food dollars--Grocery Outlet and Aldi stores, loss leaders at larger markets, ethnic grocers that often have good deals on fresh produce. And I wouldn't rule out food banks or dumpsters for produce.

[SteveinMN]

The only problem I see Amaranth in your original post is that most of those foods are starches. I guess the rice and beans make a protein, is there any way to incorporate more fresh fruit and vegetables?

And sadly, a starch-based diet is disastrous for anyone prone to metabolic syndrome, including type 2 diabetes.

That's what bothers me about the Prudent Homemaker, too. I realize you do what you have to do, and PH has the benefit of being able to grow some of her own vegetables, but both menu plans rely very heavily on refined/processed starches and that is a recipe for future problems for many.

The other issue, which I think will manifest itself if/when PH's kids get into a world beyond the house, is that they may be very picky eaters because they just haven't been exposed to a variety of foods and so much will be "strange" to them. I will admit to having a leg up on that because I grew up in a suburb of NYC, so there was plenty of ethnic food around to try. But being willing to try new and different foods is a key to cutting the food budget, too. At the farmer's market, I shop the Hmong farmer's stalls specifically because I know that, hiding on the side tables, there are veggies that most non-Hmong here don't eat. And they're cheap relative to their better-known domestic cousins. Ditto for the ethic markets here which have less of a problem eating, say, goat and rabbit or a wider variety of seafood, or eating more of the animal (tripe, tongue, sweetbreads, tendons) than most Americans will eat.

[peggy]

Peggy, I have been thinking the same thing, this time. If I want to keep my Internet, which I do because I need it for my volunteer jobs and because I love it, I have to make some significant changes in how I am using my resources.

This topic reminded me that sooner is much better than later. I have no information about this web site, Doctor Yourself, but I found this page last night. Even though it looks as though the prices of items has not been updated for more than a decade, it looks like it will be helpful to me. I hope that it is all right to share the link.

Doctor Yourself
http://www.doctoryourself.com/eatwellcheap.html

That's a good link Jilly. Those items should still be fairly inexpensive, and it's true a simple diet can be a more thrifty diet. it can also be more healthy as this link shows. We Americans are kind of spoiled as to our diets. We expect the cook to re-invent the wheel every night and no repeats for several weeks or longer!
I'm kind of guilty of this when I tease my husband and daughter about their breakfast. Everyday, always bacon and eggs. Always. The only thing I change up each day is the fruit portion.
I'm going to think on this list a bit and see what kinds of meal I can come up with. It will probably have to be mostly on paper as I could never get the husband on board for a challenge such as this, although most of those foods on the list are already in our diet. He is a meat eater, and complains if there isn't at least some at every meal.

[try2bfrugal]

One thing I think most don't consider with a challenge like this is, if you are living on $7.50 for 5 days, chances are you don't have a car or gas to put in one. You can't drive around looking for the best prices. I think a better understanding of the challenges folks on very limited incomes would be to pick a store near you, within walking or bus distance, then put together your meals from that store. If you are lucky you have more than one store within walking distance, but very poor neighborhoods often don't have these choices.
Also, I sometimes think these extreme challenges are not very helpful in understanding how poor people in THIS country live. Why not settle on a budget, one that would be in line with poor people here or one in line with someone on food stamps, then take a month and do it. Plan your meals and stick with them for a month. No cheating, and no free food at work, etc... as someone mentioned. Everything counts, soda from the vending machine, cup of coffee on the corner, everything. I would start with an empty cupboard that had minimal spices, the basic ones.
Just my 2 cents.

Again it depends where you live, but in my area most of the lower income areas are Hispanic and they all do have Hispanic grocery stores scattered around. The places I shop are generally not where people with elevators for their Cadillacs shop, and they are in urban areas where people walk to the stores from their apartments. You can see the pedestrians at the traffic lights either carrying shopping bags or borrowing the carts to get their groceries home.

One issue for the urban poor is access to stores. But another is simply knowing what to buy and having the time to make it. Most grocery stores have thousands of products and 99 percent of them are all some sort of expensive processed or convenience foods. I was reading a story the other day about a person in poverty not having much more than a can of soup to eat. Canned soup is one of the highest cost foods you can buy per calorie. But convenience and processed foods are such a part of our culture because of advertising that many people don't get that. Even the extreme coupon shows usually just have people getting good deals on things like canned soup and Gatorade. And magazines are beholding to advertisers for their existence so they aren't going to promote just eating simple, whole foods to save money, either.

I don't know anything about the urban poor in places like Chicago or New York, but where I live I do shop at stores where the urban poor live and it is possible to eat very well on a food stamp budget if you know what to buy and what not to buy. But understanding what to buy and to use cloth napkins and towels and how to make foods and cleaning products from scratch when you might be working 2 jobs and don't have a lot of time to cook and clean is another challenge. It can be done but you have to basically unlearn everything advertising has told us is the normal way to live for the last 50 or so years. I have a lot of free time to work on projects like this and I am still figuring it out.