Mine isn’t really a “Meal”, I used to put margarine spread on white bread and sprinkle a tiny bit of cinnamon and sugar on it as a sweet treat growing up.
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Lentils. They’re a superfood. Cook them with correct technique (hardly any technique needed, honestly) and season them properly
Savory oatmeal.
Rolled oats with cold soy milk. Microwave 2-3 mins. Add chilli oil, spice paste, or ramen seasoning.
Tasty and not unhealthy. The plan is to prevent unhealthy food leading to a negative feedback loop.
Egg noodles butter and worcestershire sauce
Toast two slices. Slice of cheese between. Microwave 12 seconds to melt cheese a little. Hate waiting for toasters though,
I once ate nothing but eggs and rice for 3 months. Rice too slow. Another time I bought a 9-pound sack of roasted, unsalted cashews at wholesale, and ate only that until it was gone. Interesting pale results in the bathroom on that one.
I made the first one for my mom when I was like 7-8 years old and it blew my moms mind that I figured it out before her, lol I called it a “ghetto grilled cheese” and it’s legit a staple of her diet still 20 years later. I only “discovered” it because I wasn’t allowed to use the stove.
Mine was to grab a big bag of the cheapest rice at the Asian supermarket and a bulk bag of black beans. Cook rice and beans then mix with soy sauce/black pepper. If I had eggs I would add a fried egg for breakfast or hard boiled for lunch / dinner.
While the stove was broken I would poke holes in potatoes with a fork and microwave them until soft. Salt & pepper or whatever seasoning you had. Butter was a great addition to this if it was around.
For a side dish or snack I would often do ramen coleslaw. Smash up the ramen noodles and pour over a whole bag of Cole slaw. Pour the seasoning packet on top of that. Toast almond slivers then at the end add some sesame oil to warm up the oil. Pour the almonds and oil into the slaw and mix.
Not foodie, so I just eat whatever takes the least time and mess to make. The toaster takes too long for me. Fold a slice of cheese in a piece of bread in under one minute!
I once ate nothing but eggs and rice all day for 3 months. (Took too long to cook rice.) Another time I bought a 9-pound sack of unsalted but roasted cashews and ate nothing else until it was gone in a couple weeks. (Interesting, pale results in the bathroom from that one.)
A whole string cheese with a piece of bread wrapped around it. Still goes crazy honestly. You just can’t let anyone else see you eating it 😂
Fried chick peas (I use cans since they’re more convenient, but even cheaper dried beans are fine too but you have to soak for 24h and then boil them first). But either way, seriously cheap, loaded with protein and fiber, and delicious:
Rinse beans and dump into a large dry pan on high heat. Move them around until they have mostly dried up and just barely start sticking to the pan. Then add oil - just once or twice around the pan is plenty - and some salt. Then let them fry in that little bit of oil. Move them with a spoon every so often to keep from sticking too much.
After about 15 min you have these golden brown crunchy and slightly salty little things. They’re great, and go with everything as a side dish.
Hot dogs with white bread instead of a bun goes CRAZY imo
Cut the hot dog lengthwise. Brown it in a skillet. Hot dog sandwich.
Disassembled hot dog
It’s like eating with a time limit!
Do you lay the hot dog diagonally?
Rice and black eyed peas, cooked with some millet leaves for color. Fry slices of onion in about 1 T of oil and pour it over the top. Then sprinkle a mix of fine crushed red pepper, bullion, and salt over it.
Most of West Africa has this in one form or another on the regular.
If you live near or attend a large university, the real struggle meal is just food from free events on campus.
When I was a grad student I’d show up to every event on campus where I knew there’d be food and fill up a Tupperware or two. Didn’t matter if it was connected to my department or not.
The rule was if you wanted the grad students to come to a talk you had to put out little cubes of cheese.
Seminar and BEvERages provided
Unrelated: I used to go to tech meetups in my city fairly often. There was one guy who always seemed to be there just for the food. I only knew him by his username (‘Lex R’ - a programming pun) and never talked to him. Tall skinny dude; if I had to guess, I’d say he was around 50ish.
Every meetup without fail, this guy ate so much pizza. One time I counted 11 slices. He also drank at least a 2L of soda - didn’t matter if it was diet or regular, he drank it. About 10 minutes before the meetup ended, he’d put a bunch of leftover slices in a pizza box to take with him. And he had a bottle of some kind in his bag that he’d pour the dregs of all the soda bottles into, and would take that with him too. It was weird because it was a tech meetup, presumably most people were making at least 6 figures.
Until today I had never considered that this might be his only source of food.
Great M.O. that. Why waste time cooking instead of learning? Bet he took that pizza home to watch History Channel.
Struggle broke or struggle sad?
*stuggle
I didn’t realize it until now…
Broke.
Beans and rice are so healthy and cheap, with so many variations. It’s always beans and rice for me.
Was considering saying the same. What are some of your favorite ways? I like refried if I have them, with cheese and cayenne.
Just had refried beans (just cumin & salt) today in breakfast burritos (eggs, potatoes, beans, onion, cilantro, cheese, salsa - we only eat once or twice a day on weekends and cook better stuff) and yeah pintos are one of my favorites.
Channa masala
Black beans on yellow rice is my kids’ favorite, they love black beans.
Red beans (cooked from dry with whatever veg we have) and long grain white rice with hot sauce like Tabasco.
I really like pintos on brown rice with tahini sauce but nobody else in my household likes it.
Chopped raw sweet onion on all of them.
Those sounds tasty. I’ll have to try the brown rice with pintos and tahini, i love hummus with heavy tahini. Thanks for sharing!
A can of chili over some cooked rice, add a little salt and extra hot sauce. This was my broke young adult fancy meal.
Hotdogs in ramen, hands down.
Our poverty “treat” as kids was toast with tomato sauce and a slice of government cheese, for a makeshift pizza.
We would put hot dogs in Mac N Cheese but never ramen, I did learn recently that some people put hot dogs in spaghetti and I wanted to try it but my husband absolutely refuses.
Hot dogs in spaghetti is the bomb. Add some butter and grated cheese and mmmmm delicious
I had water on stale bread with sugar 💀
