I am European, so cheap food was definitely not in the form of processed food. I liked sandwiches made with country loaves buttered with lard, slices of summer tomatoes, salt and pepper.
That's 12 euros nowadays.
Depends on the country I suppose. If you have adequate summer weather and a bit of garden, those tomatoes grow themselves. Bread is relatively cheap where I grew up and my grandmother even made her own bread. And lard would come from self grown pig that would be split with several families. It is not the same to live in a big city where you have to buy everything, and be in the country or small towns, where you can supplement with own grown stuff.
Nowadays people buy everything, they have no idea how to grow some veggies, care for some chicken, can food for winter. Out summers and autumns were full of canning after schools and my parent’s work hours, or weekend, vacations. You would buy the veggies when they were cheap in the markets, or grow yourself, if you had some land( we had a small garden, but sometimes we would find some strips of land outside the town via friends and colleagues of my parents, where we could grow more onions, garlic, beans, etc.)
And we had community. If you had surplus, you would share it. With a good community is easier to survive and thrive.
Also a big topic, people don’t know anymore how to eat seasonal. I have no problems eating cruciferous, root vegetables and potatoes the entire winter. In summer, if I get good tomatoes, I eat a lot of them. But I don’t buy them in winter. They taste like cardboard.
Purple potatoes from the garden. Purple all the way through. I am 50, I still grow them and they're still my favorite by far.
packet ramen noodle with an egg or leftover chicken pieces
shake 'n' bake oven chicken
hotdogs with canned chili and kraft mac 'n' cheese
dehydrated / boxed mashed potato and cheese
I grew up on a small farm and ever though we were so poor growing up, my mother was very resourceful. She cooked virtually everything from scratch. She also would go to both of the supermarkets in town and ask for their scraps and day old produce, dairy, and deli/meat market items. She told them it was for our animals, and the worst was fed to them, but we got to eat the better stuff.
But my favorite meals were when we got something prepackaged, because even though my mom cooked everything from scratch… she was not a particularly good cook. The two I have the most fondness for were a packet of ramen shared between the three of us, and another time a can of cream of mushroom soup (even though I greatly dislike eating mushrooms).
Growing on a farm makes you more resourceful. You can also grow part of your food. You can also forage. I thing being poor in a big city is awful, being poor in the countryside is more bearable.
Growing up in the farm is the only reason we survived those years. We had chicken which gave us eggs, we grew corn that fed us and the chickens. We also grew beans, among other veggies that supplimented our diets.
My dad also got the place for dirt cheap, so there was never a mortgage, or rent.
Instant Ramen Noodles for sure. I still love them.
You can incrementally make them better by adding:
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Broth Bouillon or any other ready made seasoning
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Mix butter at the end for a creamer sauce
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Remove some water at the end and add milk
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Or even better but more costly, heavy cream
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If you are super fancy, add some hotdog sausage
And the sauce you can do as much as you want, you can drain almost all water and make a more like a coating sauce or leave most of it and make a lot of sauce which also make one noodle package fill more.
Of course there is much more one can do but this is the most inexpensive things that I would do to make it more tasty.
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Not sure if I qualify as growing up poor, but a plain potato cooked in the microwave is cheap, filling, and comforting.
Oddly enough it was whoppers from Burger King! I think it was Tuesdays they would have $1 whoppers so we'd have those.
Pretty much every other day was pasta of some sort. I've grown to be probably the only person of Italian descent that avoids pasta because of it lol
Same thing, but KFC! In Canada they used to have Toonie Tuesdays, you could get 2 pieces of chicken and fries for $2.
Now for the weird part. My dad was kinda obsessed with KFC chicken. He had a colonel sanders shaped piggy bank, specifically for collecting $2 coins, for the singular purpose of buying fried chicken on Tuesdays.
Crepés. A type of thin pancake. We would eat it with our own made jam inside, rolled into tubes.
Didn't exactly grow up poor, but when my dad was between careers I just knew buttered noodles and parmesan was good eating. I didn't know it was hard times food lol
Butter noodles and garlic salt is superior.
For anyone not in the know, "buttered noodles and parmesan" is code for margarine and the green cannister of pregrated cellulose dust.
Haha it was the 90s so it almost certainly was margarine
Canned tuna on grits. Yum.
My grandma used to make shit on a shingle and I always loved it. I think the name was part of the reason I liked it, but it was some good comfort food I looked forward to as kid. Her version used condensed mushroom soup instead of milk and she used ground beef.
But to be completely honest. My favorite meal growing up was a shitty McDonalds cheeseburger & fries. It was a rare treat
Rice and soft boiled eggs and soya sauce
spinach casserole
Government Mac n cheese.
Not entirely sure whether I classify as having grown up poor. But hash browns (from frozen) and apple sauce (from the jar)!
Plain ol pinto beans. One summer, my dad was really strapped for cash, and we ate beans every day for at least a month, and I never got tired of them. I still love them now, almost 50 years later.
I could eat beans every day too, yum.
Rice pudding. Boiled rice, milk, sugar and cardamom pods topped with grated nutmeg.
Pinto beans and corn bread.
We would make beanie weenies. Cut up hot dogs in some pork and beans with a little syrup or brown sugar.
