Tips: eating right on $7-$10/day?

Noah0506

Have you tried the "Slim Fast Diet"? My husband and I have tried everything for eating healthy and hadn't found much relief until we started this diet. We shop at our local Sam's Club and it's about 20 dollars for a 20 pack. You'll eat 2 shakes a day and one meal in the evening. While also consuming three 100 calories snacks during the day. Please give this a try! Let me know how it goes .

Evamutt

I buy low fat ground turkey & ground beef, weigh, make into patties & freeze & buy the veggie steamers. All easy & quick to cook. If you want to make it quicker, you can cook patties before freezing & keep some in the fridge. The way to mix it up is to put different seasonings on them & serve with different veggies, rice potatoes, etc

Evamutt

want to add that I got the big bag of normandy style veggies at coscto, precooked a big batch & put some butter, Parmesan cheese & garlic powder on them, delicious

RaeBeeBaby

PloddingTurtle wrote: »

I know a tow truck driver who spends most of the day on the road and who prefers a hot lunch. He used to be a junkfood/fastfood addict. Now he wraps his healthy lunch up in a foil packet and places it on the manifold of his engine while driving to heat it up. Inspired people gonna do creative things to meet their goals.

I have some hot and cold options I like for both breakfast and lunch. I know I have to prep in advance and have my breakfasts and lunches made and individually packaged in the refrigerator on Sunday night if I want to stay on plan for the upcoming week, so that's what I do.

Thanks for my MFP chuckle of the day! I'd be afraid my lunch would fall off and then I'd be out of luck, but then I don't know much about how big trucks are made. Maybe that's not even a possibility. IDK but it made me laugh.

RaeBeeBaby

Another idea for a quick hot breakfast is oatmeal. I buy the quick oats and make up a huge batch of my own oatmeal mix which includes oats, nuts, seeds, dried fruit and coconut (or whatever I have on hand). I put about 1/2 cup of this in a bowl and pour boiling water over it just to cover, then put a plate over the top to steam for a couple minutes. I often get this ready the night before, so all I have to do is boil water.

I'll add fruit and yogurt and it's a complete hot breakfast. Of course the more you add to the oats, the more calories and expense but it's not that much. If I'm going somewhere early I put the oats in a mason jar, pop the lid on and take it with me. Pretty handy.

kimny72

cedric_says wrote: »

My average day is looking like a breakfast burrito from Del Taco in the morning for around $5. Then in the afternoon or evening I'll stop at el pollo loco for a double chicken bowl ($6-$9) and or I'll stop at the super market for .5 to 1 lb of steak or chicken to cook ($5-$7). My average day is probably around $15 per day.

My main concern with re-heating leftovers is I don't like to use the microwave. Whether you believe using the microwave is okay or not doesn't mean much to me. I'd rather be safe and wait a few extra minutes to cook on the stove then increase my chances of complications later in life.. however, getting a hot meal in the middle of the day without is extremely difficult unless you can use a hot plate at work.

After considering a few of your recommendations, I suppose I could make make a few breakfast burritos myself at home all at once and wrap them in foil. (easy to re-heat without the microwave) In the afternoon, I could probably eat a salad but I don't like them much. Drink a protein shake in the afternoon and cook when I get home from work or re-heat a chicken bowl when I get home.

I generally don't fear microwaving, but the two in the breakroom at work make weird noises and get super hot and I seriously wonder if I'm going to end up growing a tail from using them!

My compromise is I use them to reheat my lunch once or twice a week, bring something I can eat cold twice or 3x a week, and buy lunch once a week. It's a nice happy medium I can live with.

For cold lunches, I'll make a sandwich or wrap, and a piece of fruit. Or I'll make a big batch of pasta or barley salad (pasta or barley, chopped veggies, bottled dressing, and then either beans or tuna or leftover shredded chicken or the like). On rare occasions I'll be on a green salad kick and bring that.

I'll say I think living without compromising is a naive goal, kind of like "insisting on perfection". Human civilization would not exist without compromise. Life is imperfect. If you consult 10 different you tube channels and 10 different popular blogs, you will get 20 different definitions of what "perfect" is and around 1,000 different things to be afraid of. People have been living with microwaves since at least the 1970's and the population is still growing and average life expectancy hasn't plummeted.

Get okay with compromise. That's where the ice cream is!

jgnatca

cedric_says wrote: »

What I mean by that is, is it possible to have quality, affordable, and convenience without compromising or compensating?

Yes. You will have to do pre-planning to make this happen. You have total control over the foods you prepare yourself, so you control the quality. Set an afternoon aside and prepare the meat of choice, then package it up for later meals. I will buy a family pack of hamburger meat and bake all the meat balls at once. They are made in to a meal right there and the extras are frozen for later. It takes no more time to bake a single serving of meat balls as it does to bake them all at once. Economical, quality, and time saving.

If you don't like salad, eat peas. Like frozen peas. Get yourself this:

You can now steam your frozen vegetables without a microwave.

I also recommend this:

You can steam your entire meal at once.

jgnatca

Point a radiation meter at the sun some time. Then at your computer screen, and finally at your running microwave.

rsclause

ritzvin wrote: »

cedric_says wrote: »

My average day is looking like a breakfast burrito from Del Taco in the morning for around $5. Then in the afternoon or evening I'll stop at el pollo loco for a double chicken bowl ($6-$9) and or I'll stop at the super market for .5 to 1 lb of steak or chicken to cook ($5-$7). My average day is probably around $15 per day.

My main concern with re-heating leftovers is I don't like to use the microwave. Whether you believe using the microwave is okay or not doesn't mean much to me. I'd rather be safe and wait a few extra minutes to cook on the stove then increase my chances of complications later in life.. however, getting a hot meal in the middle of the day without is extremely difficult unless you can use a hot plate at work.

After considering a few of your recommendations, I suppose I could make make a few breakfast burritos myself at home all at once and wrap them in foil. (easy to re-heat without the microwave) In the afternoon, I could probably eat a salad but I don't like them much. Drink a protein shake in the afternoon and cook when I get home from work or re-heat a chicken bowl when I get home.

There's a good chance the fast food chains are microwaving your breakfast burrito and the chicken in the salad bowl anyway (especially items where they mix cheese in with the minced meat, they often microwave for at least a few seconds to melt the cheese into the other ingredients).

Oh you would have loved my microwave. It was very small and fit on a shelf below a cabinet. It was so old a hole in the bottom had formed where it rusted out. Used it that way for years. Finally redid and got rid of that micro.

deannalfisher

rsclause wrote: »

ritzvin wrote: »

cedric_says wrote: »

My average day is looking like a breakfast burrito from Del Taco in the morning for around $5. Then in the afternoon or evening I'll stop at el pollo loco for a double chicken bowl ($6-$9) and or I'll stop at the super market for .5 to 1 lb of steak or chicken to cook ($5-$7). My average day is probably around $15 per day.

My main concern with re-heating leftovers is I don't like to use the microwave. Whether you believe using the microwave is okay or not doesn't mean much to me. I'd rather be safe and wait a few extra minutes to cook on the stove then increase my chances of complications later in life.. however, getting a hot meal in the middle of the day without is extremely difficult unless you can use a hot plate at work.

After considering a few of your recommendations, I suppose I could make make a few breakfast burritos myself at home all at once and wrap them in foil. (easy to re-heat without the microwave) In the afternoon, I could probably eat a salad but I don't like them much. Drink a protein shake in the afternoon and cook when I get home from work or re-heat a chicken bowl when I get home.

There's a good chance the fast food chains are microwaving your breakfast burrito and the chicken in the salad bowl anyway (especially items where they mix cheese in with the minced meat, they often microwave for at least a few seconds to melt the cheese into the other ingredients).

Oh you would have loved my microwave. It was very small and fit on a shelf below a cabinet. It was so old a hole in the bottom had formed where it rusted out. Used it that way for years. Finally redid and got rid of that micro.

that is about the status of my microwave currently - i think its 10+ years old

ritzvin

jgnatca wrote: »

Point a radiation meter at the sun some time. Then at your computer screen, and finally at your running microwave.

and while you're at it: bananas (one of the potassium isotopes), countertop, basement (uranium in granite→radon), smoke detectors, hand-me-down plates (the pottery glazes sometimes had some uranium back in the day), glow-in-the dark watches (also some of the older glowing green glassware and exit signs), older TV's (X-rays),...

strongerbytheday

Can you get a hot plate, toaster oven, or instant pot for reheating at your business? There is a huge sale on the 6 quart instant pot right now at Walmart.com ! With the instant pot I save a lot of money by quickly
cooking: dried beans, chicken stock, soups, stews, hard/soft boiled eggs, rice, homemade yogurt, so many things! I can cook a meatloaf and potatoes at the same time in the summer without furing in my oven and heating up the house. Do you have an Aldi near you?? I am able to stretch my grocery budget pretty far, by shopping there. I also frequent other stores just when I need to stock up on a specific loss leader sale, plus I check the manager’s specials while I’m there. I now know which stores on which days have the most meats discounted. They put bright stickers typically 50% off, when they are close to the sell by dates, so its easy to walk by and see what’s available. I buy the majority of my meats super cheap! If I’m not cooking it that day, I freeze until needed. They are typically much better than the best meat sales in the flyer. I choose from my freezer what to defrost for the next day’s meal. I pull something out of the freezer and put it in a shallow baking dish and put it in the fridge to defrost over night. One store also has marked down produce, I like to get ripe, speckled, bananas to freeze for smoothies. There’s so many things you can do to reduce your spending. Taking some time to navigate your stores and learn where to get the deals, and taking the time to cook and meal prep, will save you money. In the beginning it will take a little more time and effort but in time it will pay off. Instead of setting aside a bunch of time to cook a week’s worth of food, I like to cook a little extra, each time I cook, so I get a couple of extra meals out of it, with minimal effort.